IE7 Beta Public Release

[Hamma]

Well I guess Microsoft got tired of people just passing the beta around and decided to go for a public release:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/ie7/ie7betaredirect.mspx

So if you wanted to check it out now is your chance ;)

[Ghryphen]

<3 Ie7

[Hamma]

I guess I will have to reinstall mine.. not sure if the version they have there is newer or not and of course.. it doesent say. :\

[Ghryphen]

Version: 7.0.5296.0 is what mine says downloaded from the open beta.

[Rbstr]

Hmm, It uses arial as the defaut font, that's kewl. Somethign about it seems wierd to me however, it seems like it might be anti-alliased but it's freaking my eyes out.

Thing I notice off the bat:

I like the interface with below exceptions.

no mouse gestures :( I have to reach for the back button again!
can't move the address bar, or the search bar.
Don't like the always on tab bar thing, with home buttons and stuff in it, and I can't move it around. I normaly have my TV window over that section of the screen.

Definently a better IE experiance, a firefox in MS clothing? Not (yet?)close.

It's got potential, but I think it real depends on how customizable it eventualy becomes, how much flexability will MS give developers in making add-ins. At it's base(from 30mins of surfing) the browser is on par with Firefox, but ff's extentions blow it out of the water.

Also in a stunning turn of events, IE uses more memory then FF now.

[Mag-Mower]

Ouch, that would be a huge hog then... BEcause, for some reason, my FF uses 74,808 K... ouch

[Ghryphen]

Weird fonts? Advanced Internet options uncheck Clear Text. I use my mouses back button for going back :) The reason why the address bar can't be moved is for security I heard, harder to spoof the bar somehow (don't ask me how, that's just what it is).

[Setari]

Here's something, after a few checks to make sure it happens, IE7 doesn't seem to kill the process once the browser closes. Maybe that's just me, maybe I changed a setting, but that could become a problem.

[Rbstr]

Well mouse gestures do all sorts of other stuff, opening tabs, windows. I use my mouses button sometime too, It's wierd I kinda alternate, so sometimes I'll catch the back with the button, other I'll be like "wtf go back", and realize what's going on.

The browser has nothing that FF doesn't offer for me, If you are still using IE 6 or never got into using extentions in FF, they're near interchangable.

[Hamma]

I always used my backspace button to go back pages :D That clear text thing you noticed is the stupidist thing ever to enable by default. The text all looked really fuzzy to me when I first installed it. Was the first thing I disabled.

It would be great if they added in extension support.