INTERNET EXPLORER 7.0

New Features

Extensive information about the new features in Internet Explorer 7.0 can be found at Microsoft’s web site:

www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/about/features

The following is a partial list of the new features in IE 7, along with our personal opinions.

MS Says: Makes Everyday Tasks Easier	We say:
Simplified User Experience The Internet Explorer 7 frame is reorganized to make it noticeably simpler, more streamlined, and less cluttered with unnecessary items. This maximizes the area of the screen devoted to the webpages that you want to see and makes performing the most common browsing tasks easy.	Well, maybe, that is, once the user adjusts to the new “look and feel” of IE 7. Where did the Menu Bar go to, and why are the icons so small? And where did they put the Refresh icon?
Advanced Printing Automatically scales a printed webpage so that it's not wider than the paper it will be printed on. Internet Explorer 7 also includes a multi-page print preview with live margins, resizing text to avoid document clipping, and an option to print only selected text.	This is a nice feature in that the user has more control over how web pages are printed. The user can graphically adjust printer margins, and entire pages are printed as a single graphic image, thus allowing the user to print a web page that would otherwise spill over onto two sheets of paper on a single page.
Instant Search Box Web searches using your favorite search provider can now be entered into a search box within the toolbar, eliminating the clutter of separate toolbars. You can easily choose a provider from the dropdown list or add more providers.	Not exactly a new idea, but it does allow the user to pick the search engine of their choice for searching.
Favorites Center Offers easy and fast access to Favorites, Tab Groups, Browsing History, and RSS Feed subscriptions. Expands when needed, and can be anchored in place for even easier access.	Frustrating to find Favorites as a new user. Where did the Menu bar go to?
Tabbed Browsing View multiple sites in a single browser window. Easily switch from one site to another through tabs at the top of the browser frame.	Firefox users will be right at home with tabs, however, this is new for IE users. This is the most noticeable difference between IE 6 & 7.
Quick Tabs Provides easy tab selection and navigation by displaying thumbnails of all open tabs in a single window.	Accessed via icon or Ctrl + Q displays small images of all open tabs. User can switch windows by clicking on thumbnail displays. Mac users rejoice!
Tab Groups Tabs can be grouped and saved into logical categories, allowing you to open multiple tabs with a single click. A Tab Group can easily be set as the Home Page Group so the entire Tab Group opens every time Internet Explorer is launched from the Start menu.	Allows the user to set multiple “home pages” to open when launching IE. This is very handy.
Page Zoom Enlarge individual webpages, including both text and graphics, to either focus on specific content or to make content more accessible to those with vision limitations.	Users can adjust zoom by changing view level in lower right corner of the IE window, or by holding the Control key and scrolling the mouse wheel.
Dynamic Security Protection
Security Status Bar Enhances awareness of website security and privacy settings by displaying color-coded notifications next to the address bar. Internet Explorer 7 changes the Address Bar to green for websites bearing new High Assurance certificates, indicating the site owner has completed extensive identity verification checks. Phishing Filter notifications, certificate names, and the gold padlock icon are now also adjacent to the address bar for better visibility. Certificate and privacy detail information can easily be displayed with a single click on the Security Status Bar.	Enhances awareness yes, but who can remember what all the annoying pop ups, dialog boxes, and icons mean? They just get in the way and users will soon learn to automatically dismiss them, thus defeating their purpose.
Phishing Filter Proactively warns and helps protect you against potential or known fraudulent sites and blocks the site if appropriate. The opt-in filter is updated several times per hour using the latest security information from Microsoft and several industry partners.	This is a great idea, but not well implemented. Hopefully MS will probably address this in future versions. If enabled, as recommended, IE suffers a performance hit as it has to communicate with a MS server to compare the URL the user is visiting to a database of non-phishing sites. For a demo of what the phishing filter is expected to look like see: blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/09/463204.aspx
Cross-Domain Barriers Limits script on webpages from interacting with content from other domains or windows. This enhanced safeguard will further protect against malware by limiting the potential for malicious websites to manipulate flaws in other websites or cause you to download undesired content or software.	This should prevent unwanted scripts from executing on your computer, thus reducing the amount of malware being deployed on your computer.
Fix My Settings To help protect you from browsing with unsafe settings, Internet Explorer 7 warns you with an Information Bar when current security settings may put you at risk. Within the Internet Control Panel, you will see certain critical items highlighted in red when they are unsafely configured. In addition to alerts warning you about unsafe settings, you will be reminded by the Information Bar as long as the settings remain unsafe. You can instantly reset Internet security settings to the "Medium-High" default level by clicking the "Fix My Settings" option in the Information Bar.	Not at all new, simply renamed. The term “Fix My Settings” is a bit of a misnomer, executing this command Resets My Settings. This should have stuck with the name Reset.