IE 7 Sucks and Blows Concurrently
Today, I took the plunge just to try what the dark side had to offer… I downloaded the latest incarnation of the browser from hell, Internet Explorer 7.
I know; I betray the browser gods by tasting the forbidden fruits. In repentance, I will perform 5 Hail Linus’s and confess my sins at the Church of the Fiery Vulpes (their website).
My argument to support my actions is, how do I truly know I don’t like something until I try it for myself?
[continued…]
I’ll start with the bad and work my way up to what I actually thing is acceptable, if not slightly better than, other browsers on the market. This isn’t an amazingly scientific way of comparing the two browsers, but it’s about as accurate as I’m willing to make it right now.
Dislikes
- VERY slow to load pages. In a comparison between Firefox and IE7 both open already and loading pages that I haven’t gone to in ages (cleared out of my temp files), IE7 took almost twice as long to get and render the page.
- Half assed GUI. The GUI is something between a mix of the Windows 95 square look and a wanna-be Web2.0 set of icons when using WindowsXP in the Classic Style (my preferred and minimalistic method of using XP). The looks is marginally better when switching to the XP Style, but the headache from the Cartoon/Toy OS makes my quickly revert back. The rounded edges that each tab gets when viewing in the XP Style should be standard regardless of which OS style you are viewing the browser in.
- It still doesn’t come close to passing the Acid2 Test Though Firefox is still lacking as well, it is significantly more standards compliant than IE is.
- Lack of powerful customized plugins. Though I probably wouldn’t trust a third-party IE plugin, the lack of tools like the Firefox community’s plugins to solve common web annoyances is, in itself, quite annoying. I love being able to see the current weather without going to a website. I love being able to cut out certain scripts and advertisements from web pages. I love having my Google calendar and gmail a single click away. IE lacks all of the customization that makes browsing with Firefox so much fun. period.
- Center clicking doesn’t open a new tab. One of the best features of Firefox is that you can click any link, any shortcut, or any button to open a new tab. Not so in IE7 from what I’ve been able to figure out. You have two choices; first to “ctrl”+”t” to open a new tab and then click on the new link that you want to open or, second, “ctrl”+click on the link you are trying to open. More buttons, more hands, more confusion. A simple center click would fix this and speed up your web browsing experience. The good news is that MS at least enabled center click to close individual tabs.
Likes
- The RSS browser is well designed. The IE7 team definitely did at least one thing right; the RSS viewer works well, is organized in a very useful manor, and is very easy to use. The problem is that I don’t often use just a viewer; I will use Firefox’s live bookmarks to view the stories titles since it takes up less screen clutter and loads faster. I’ll give MS a B for giving it a shot though many people will probably never see or care to see this feature.
- The webpage quick view is cool looking. Nice feature, but, as AJ pointed out when I chatted with him about it earlier, it’s not something a geek like either of us would care to use often enough. It’s eye candy, but not the fastest way to move around your tabs.
IE7 Pictures
Conclusion
As the title states, I’m quite unimpressed with the new Internet Explorer and will certainly not be making the jump to using it over Firefox based on this current software release.
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