John alerted me to the first public beta of IE7. The tabs support was overdue. It's pretty good overall though there is not much new compared to Firefox. Microsoft might have done an okay job considering the mass exposure once it gets preinstalled on the next version of Windows, Vista (end of 2006)

First caveat for pirates, IE7 installer checks for authenticity of Windows version, cracked version probably no go. The install takes 5-10min (downloads a lot more from the Microsoft site)


Restart required, whoa lame


After rebooting, IE puts itself in the quicklaunch menu, startup time is pretty fast. IE7 has a revised version of its "run once" page where you can customize language and a new option about phishing (a new system where you can prompt microsoft.com to see if a site is legit)


The big features are tabbed browsing, popup blocking, quick toolbar search and rss feed support. IE7 also supports extensions, here called "add-ons". The menu bar layout is kinda cool (file menu appears when hitting alt), essential icons to the right of tabs)


The only thing it has on Firefox is the "expose view" though this can be achieved the extension foXpose


Overall no breakthrough but a solid release, bringing tabbed browsing to the masses is cool, Firefox users are sure to be scoffing (it is missing the password manager, find as you type which is mad gold, keyword search, tab reorder, tab navigation)

Bottom line: bloated. Word of caution, IE7 gets rid of you old Internet Explorer, there might be some applet support issues, upgrade carefully

Download IE7 Installer (11.2 MB)
Feature tour