Interweb Explunker 7

Microsoft has released the newest version of its flagship browser: Internet Explorer 7.

Risking the wrath of the IT department I went ahead and downloaded and installed it on my work computer. The install process went very smoothly. I started the install, went to lunch and when I got back the restart your computer prompt was staring me in the face. After a quick reboot IE 7 was up and running.

One thing that hits you instantly when you run IE7 is the task bar at the top. Its been put on a serious diet. Its been reduced down to two lines. The top line contains the back and forward buttons, address bar and search bar. The search bar is a major new feature of IE7. Much like the Yahoo, Google or MSN tool bars which allow you to search using the appropriate search engine this functionality is now built right into the browser. You can change which search engine the bar searches which is a nice feature for people who use something other then MSN.

The second bar contains the new tabs feature. Instead of opening 8 individual windows of IE to browse your favorite dirty sites you can now open one window with multiple tabs. The tabs line up across the top and you can page between open sites with one quick click.

Due to the reduced task bar at the top you get the advantage of seeing much more of a webpage at once. It threw off my usual browsing habits at first. Im used to going to a website and scrolling down to exactly what I want to look at.

Im sure there are bugs and problems that I havent found yet but so far IE7 is new enough to that the features are welcome but not different enough to scare people away.