At Mix 06 today, they released the new preview version of IE 7, and on the IE 7 weblog, they announced that they had made the same version available to the public. I suppose I really ought to have paid attention to the disclaimers on the IE 7 website, but you know us geeks… who can resist a new toy? Besides, having been (at one point in my career) Microsoft’s product manager for IE (Version 1, and for a time Version 2), I really wanted to see what was new! So I went ahead and downloaded it.
I have to give the folks at Microsoft full credit. This version actually installed. The last IE 7 beta I downloaded not only wouldn’t install properly, but it wouldn’t uninstall either. Luckily I had Firefox on my PC at that time, so I could still browse. For me, anyway, Firefox is still a very foreign experience. It just doesn’t feel right. Anwyay, a day or so layer, someone on the IE support forums suggested a Windows rollback, which worked.
So, IE 7 Beta 2 Preview did install. And, after a reboot, I was able to bring it up. Very slow loading. But, lo and behold, there was the MSN page, inviting me to take a tour of the features. So, I did. And at that point things started to go wrong. First, the pop-up blocker warned me that it was blocking a pop-up (the self-same tour of features), which left a great big ugly white square on the screen that didn’t redraw. In fact, nothing worked. So, I executed the three-finger salute, and checked task manager. Ah hah! Iexplorer.EXE consuming 99% of CPU resources.
I killed it, and tried again. I browsed a few sites, and while it was sluggish, it seemed to be working. Perhaps it was just the tour that was the problem.
Next, I browsed to the very popular saunderslog.com. Hmmm… first thing I noticed was some minor differences in rendering from Version 6 to Version 7. Nothing super bad, but I’ll be editing my CSS again. Bummer. Then I tried out a few of the buttons on the top of the browser. Stuff like the RSS button and so on. And that’s when things started to go bad again. I got the subscription center open, but couldn’t close it. The Yahoo toolbar kacked. Tabbed browsing looked good, but wouldn’t render properly.
To make a long story short, I killed the browser again (it was starving my CPU, once more), and then hit the control panel and uninstalled it. The good news — at least you can uninstall this one.
IE 7 Beta 2 Preview looks very promising, has a slick new UI, and lots of cool new features. I can hardly wait for a working version.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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I'm not thrilled that MS is releaseing more beta junk. I couldn't get the first one to install either. Firefox Feels right to me, and if anyone is still on the fence, try it out.
http://start-free-download.com/firefox.html
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