Internet Explorer 7 Confessions

I have a confession, after holding out for a long time, keeping my distance and dissing IE7, I caved.  It’s inevevitable, so I might as well jump in.  My geeky wife has been using it for awhile, others who I respect in the blogosphere swear by it, so I decided to give it a shot. 

According to Microsoft TechNet, IE7 will be pushed out as a high priority update later this year.  This image below is similar to what will appear when it is being pushed out on you.

Also, if you manage a network and don’t want this kind of update installed like that, download this IE7 Blocker Toolkit, which “… includes both a Group Policy template and a script that set a registry key to prevent Automatic Updates and the Windows Update and Microsoft Update sites from offering Internet Explorer 7 as a high-priority update.”  However, this will not prevent local admins from installing IE7 on their own, but it does allow you some control over how and when you push this update out across your network.

So, what’s my first impression?  I’m glad you asked.  At first I was highly impressed, it is refreshing to see some real changes in IE.  The tabs are nice and sites that IE6 seems to choke on are rendered correctly in IE7, such as this site.  IE6 shows my middle column not centered, due to CSS positioning issues, IE7 handles it correctly. (Firefox does too. )

I wish I had more control over how the tabs function, Firefox gives me complete control over my tabs with a plug in.  One thing that I still miss in Firefox is inline auto-complete on the address bar.  I have enjoyed having that back, I have not seen this in Firefox at all. (someone let me know if I somehow missed that or if there is a plug in for this, please.)  There are many more features that I’m sure IE7 has that I haven’t discovered yet.  Everything I have read about it says that it is more secure than it’s predecessors.

The bottom line is that I feel like IE7 is a contender once again in the browser wars, but I think I’m still loyal to Firefox.  It’s comforting to know if Firefox somehow went away, there is a suitable back up.

I’m already looking forward to Firefox 3.0, coming soon.