IE 7 comes out with little or no bling
I love Laptop Magazine. I read their feeds and find tons of good info over there. With that being said, I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what they were thinking when they posted this.
Here are the parts that get me.
For example, IE7 detects the presence of RSS links and adds them to a Favorites Center that puts Favorites, Feeds, and History in a single, navigable window. Within the RSS reader itself, you can search and reorganize items by date, author, and title.
Ummm… Firefox invented this long ago did it not?
Tabbed browsing in IE7 gets supercharged with a Quick Tabs preview page of visual thumbnails that lets you view each open tab on a single screen. The group-tab feature turns the current cluster of open pages into a Favorite that reopens all of these tabs with a single click.
Poor Microsoft. This feature sounds excellent, but we all know we’re getting it with Firefox 2.
Microsoft has also taken a cue from the open-source browsers and has enhanced its add-ons. A launch catalog displays Microsoft and third-party toolbars, form fillers, and other extensions that you can plug in and manage easily. Here’s hoping that developers get as creative with IE7 plug-ins as they have with Firefox’.
Too little, too late.
In the grand battle between Firefox and IE, we think that IE has a bit of an edge in this release, although the Firefox 2 betas we have seen will catch it up a bit. Many of the things we like about Firefox have been implemented in IE7 and have been polished to be more streamlined and useful. For those of us who spend a lot of time researching and working on the Web, IE7 represents the best and most aggressive IE upgrade we’ve seen in a while.
How so? I still have seen NOT A SINGLE strain of evidence that suggests IE7 has an edge of Firefox. None.
Call me a FF fanboy if you wish, but IE7 is going to have to create something completely different, unique and original for me to throw out my plugins, browser skins, solid security (I have suffered zero attacks since I started using Firefox), fast surfing, RSS readers and all the rest of the jazz.
Sorry to say this LAPTOP Magazine, but I think you’re trying to be a little too friendly here. While IE7 may be a step up from EI6, we have to remember that IE6 set the standard bar just a few inches above the ground. With standards that low, it isn’t difficult to exceed them.
