Tuesday, November 21, 2006

First Impressions of IE7

I finally did the deed...I downloaded Internet Explorer 7 to my laptop computer and started playing with it. First impressions...I don't like it very much. It is difficult to get used to, especially since I use Firefox. It has a whole different look and their is no menu bar across the top.

The other thing I don't like is that it doesn't remember what pages I have open when I turn it off. Firefox will restore all the web pages I had open when I shut it down. That is very handy. I have also had it lock up on me a couple of times, once while running my StoryBook Album page from my own website. Also, IE7 has only a few add-ons whereas Firefox has hundreds of add-ons available that are very valuable and useful .

As most reviewers have stated, Firefox is a much better browser in all categories and I believe them. I am going to stick with my Firefox 99% of the time. I may not even download IE7 in my main studio computer.

On the same subject, here is a short paragraph from the latest edition of WXPNews:

IE 7: Are we there yet?

Internet Explorer 7 was released in final version just over a month ago, and it's distributed as an automatic update. The auto upgrade is relatively painless, and the new IE offers many advantages over its predecessor, such as tabbed browsing and the anti-phishing filter, ActiveX opt-in and other security enhancements. Unfortunately, it still contains a few bugs (or are they "undocumented features") that result in my using Firefox much more often than I would otherwise.

One of the most annoying in everyday life is the tiny font problem. We're talking really small here, and changing the text size in the View menu has no effect. You can use the zoom here to make the text readable (118% does the trick), but the problem is that the tiny fonts only appear on some web sites, so when you go to another site that doesn't have the problem, you have to adjust the zoom again. Firefox displays both pages in a reasonable font size without the need for adjustments.

The other, potentially more worrisome but much less frequent problem is IE lockup. Every once in a while (maybe once every three days), IE 7 just quits working. I'll be browsing with no problem and then when I click a link or type in a URL, it just won't connect, just sits there spinning its wheels for minutes. Meanwhile, Firefox will connect to the same site immediately.


A Fun Website:

Check out this collection of amazing cloud photographs, some of them from right here in Washington. There are also a couple of great Aurora Borealis videos.

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