May 27, 2006
Started Testing IE7
Ever one to look to maximize my browsing experience, I recently downloaded Internet Explorer 7 Beta. I’ve become a dedicated Firefox user, but I’m willing to keep an open mind as to whether the 800-lb gorilla can keep up.
Unfortunately, early testing isn’t very promising. I see some good signs, and see some bad signs as well.
The Good:
First, they finally have tabbed browsing. Frankly, this is one of the premier user-interface complaints about IE6. If you’re not familiar with tabbed browsing, you need to be! It’s a whole new way to access the web, and Microsoft has finally jumped on the bandwagon.
Second, they finally have add-ons. Called “Extensions” in Firefox, they are external applications that users can install to change their browser experience. In Firefox, I use several extensions, as I prefer to customize the browser to be exactly how I like to browse. IE7 beta is new, so there are currently not many add-ons available, but this could be a big plus. Firefox without extensions would be only slightly more competitive than IE, it’s the work of all the extra developers to create these add-ons that make it so versatile.
Third, it appears that they’re doing better to meet agreed-upon web standards in the browser. This is just an early look, though, but this blog used to appear differently in Firefox and IE6. In IE7, they’re much closer to being identical. There still may be some back-end things that are different (I’ll leave that determination to people who know more about the standards), but it is looking better from a user perspective.
The Bad:
First, I mentioned that they have add-ons. At the moment, those add-ons are mostly created by outside companies, and they’re mostly not free. Some of these add-ons are as expensive as $50 or so, for the same thing you can get free in Firefox. As I said above, this may change, but from Microsoft’s previous behavior, I don’t think they’ll offer the same sort of open-source access to individual developers that has made Firefox so great.
Second, the interface is klugey… This could just be a beta thing, but I don’t particularly like it. And at the moment, I don’t see much in the way of “skins” to modify it. Or, it could be that I’ve only played with it for a short time, so there may be some features that I haven’t gotten into yet. But out of the box, it’s quite a bit different than IE6, and not necessarily in a good way. They do say that one of the goals was to create as much browser space as possible, which they’ve done, but again, what they have is no better (and quite a bit worse) than Firefox.
Third, there are no real innovations that I can see here. At this point, it seems like Microsoft is simply following others, and not really doing a great job of it. Of course, that’s been their business strategy for years, so it may be enough to maintain their market position, but it’s certainly not enough to make me switch back. It’s a temporary stop to the bleeding, not a cure.
My conclusion:
Microsoft, in my opinion, was hemorrhaging users to their competition over the last few years. Mozilla is a much stronger product, and has met the unmet needs of users. IE7 will help Microsoft quite a bit to stem the flow. But they haven’t completely caught up. The product, at least in its current form, is still not as good as what Firefox provides, and without high-quality free add-ons, it’s not likely to get much better. The improvements to the product will cut down on the rate at which people leave Microsoft, but I don’t think it’s going to stop it, or help them to win many users back.
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