25 August 2006 in Microsoft | Comments enabled

IE 7 Logo

For those folks that like to keep up with the latest happenings in Microsoft land, RC1 of Internet Explorer 7 is now available for download on both XP & 2003 platforms.

Grab it IE 7 RC1 here.

- JD

Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 157 user reviews.


3 comments. Add your own comment.

Allan says 26 August 2006 @ 20:04

The installer of this RC1 was both annoying and disturbing.

1. Why does a browser installation requires to reboot the machine? twice!

2. After the first reboot the installer hijacked my machine and did whatever it wanted for 15min including all sorts of crap not related to browser installation.

3. The installer bypassed my firewall which requires to manually approve outgoing connections.

And after all these shenanigans, it’s still the same old IE6 with Beta tabs and nothing really new. Light years behind firefox.

traskjd says 27 August 2006 @ 13:19

Valid points Allan. I guess the reboots come from how baked into the OS Internet Explorer is (my understanding is that the installer updates parts of the networking stack which is most likely why a restart is in order).

Windows has always been sub-optimal for needing restarts for installs. Windows Vista adds significant improvements in this space which is another good reason to upgrade to Vista when it arrives.

Overall I find IE 7 quite good. I am using it about 50/50 with FireFox (partly because at the moment I’m testing compliance so need both). I suspect IE 8 is going to be the sweet spot – a lot of IE 7 features are to balance the playing field (and jump ahead in some places).

Thanks for your comment Allan :)

– JD

Flamer says 10 September 2006 @ 01:00

Got Firefox 2.0 beta 2 yet?? Very polished…

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