I know most of us use alternative browsers (i.e. Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc) and have long forsaken Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser; however, Microsoft has just released their brand new copy of Internet Explorer 7 for download today.

What makes IE7 so special and different from IE6? I can't really answer that. I couldn't find any reviews that weren't about the beta, but then that's probably due to the fact IE7 was just released. Given a little time, I'm sure there will be multiple reviews on the Internet about it, as well as plenty of beta-testers who'll come forward with their stories. If your heart is really set on reading a review about IE7, then you can read this review about the IE7 Beta from PC Magazine.

Just from what I've read about IE7, it supposedly has taken a lot of cues from the two most popular alternative browsers (in other words, Firefox and Opera), implimenting such features as tabbed browsing, multiple page views, improved security, and an integrated RSS reader, to name a few.

So if anyone is interested in giving Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 a whirl or thinking of switching back to it after using a different browser, now might be the right time. As for me, I'm sticking with Firefox. I just can't live without my extensions, and no matter how good IE7 is, it doesn't have any of those available for it.

Since I've been using Neoplanet (a browser that uses Internet Explorer or Netscape as it's base, offering more options such as skins and channels to use as favorite links and many other things that make it the best browser for me) from when I first got online on my own computers - I'll download IE7 and that way my Neoplanet will be using the IE7 instead of the IE6 that it uses now

I have tried Firefox and use it for testing my website with it so it can be compatible with it and so that you guys who use Firefox don't get in trouble on the site here... but well Firefox just doesn't cut it for me - I find Neoplanet to be far more satisfactory for me If they made Neoplanet work with Firefox I could consider it - but the way Firefox is now, I don't wanna bother (check Neoplent screenshots below with my current skin and all...)

Looks nice, Elsa. I might try IE7 and Neoplanet...that is, if they had extensions. That, to me, is Firefox's main draw. By itself, Firefox isn't much to talk about. But with the extensions added in, it becomes a very capable browser and somewhat unique to the person who's using it.

A lot of people tout Firefox's security, but Firerox can be compromised just like Internet Explorer. The main difference between Firefox and IE is that, regardless of how many people today use Firefox, they are still in the vast minority. Most online users use IE, mostly because that's what comes with Windows. It's simple and easy to use, and there's no hassling around with downloading, installing, updating, etc. If everyone suddenly switched tomorrow to Firefox, I bet we'd see the similar security concerns in that browser, just like we see in IE today.

It's really similar to the whole PC vs Mac debate. Are Macs more secure? Yes, they are. Why? Less people have and use them, simple enough. I've used Macs extensively, and they are by no means more capable or stable than PCs. I've seen entire rows of Macs crash, for no apparent reason. If everyone were using Macs, then viruses, worms, trojans, etc., would be written for the Mac, not the PC.

And you know what kills me? Have any of you seen those Mac vs PC commercials? You know, where the Mac is portrayed as a cool, young guy and the PC is played by an uptight older man in a suit. Basically, the premise is that the Mac can "do a lot of fun things, such as a video and image editing, and play music" while the PC is good for "making spread sheets and pie charts." It's ridiculous. The commercials naturally leave out the one reason that makes the PC so much more entertaining than the Mac--the PC can play nearly any game available on the market today! And, speaking as a former graphic designer, I can attest to the fact that PCs are just fine for A/V and image editing, since I've used a PC and a Mac for both, and found them to be equally good in their job.

Anyway...I'll stop ranting now. That wasn't really the point of this thread, but I just got a little carried away.

I'm with you on the PC/Mac thing. At college, a whole row of Macs wouldn't allow anyone to sign in but the rest of the Macs on the other side did. As for graphic work, I prefer PC's just because I use them more although in college we solely used Macs.

I tried IE7 beta a while ago and I had no problems with it. I especially liked the new tab feature where you can have more than one window open in one window. It makes your screen a LOT less messy. Especially if you have boatloads of windows open at once like me.

*nods in agreement with DPX and Jules* We have those advertisements here as well. Although they're cute and humorous (especially the latest with the guy called PC curling up and begging Mac to just let him lie there and depreciate), it does misrepresent PCs.

But I admit I have been thinking about my next computer. Should I get a Mac that has dual capability...? So I can continue to run my existing Windows-based programmes?

I will probably download IE 7, unless it's got issues running on a PC that still uses Win98. I will still use Firefox - I have become very comfortable with it, and I feel more secure in using it than in using IE.

Damn you guys beat me to it. I'll make a post later today when I have time explaining the major differences between IE6 & IE7 plus I'll post a few reg hacks to make IE7 even better.

Here's a review of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 by a Firefox user. It's pretty in-depth, and even-handed. If you're interested in IE7 (even if you're not, and want to see what MS did this time around), then this might be one of the best reviews to read.

Al, they don't even have IE7 for Win2000 yet. Besides the 9x series & ME are no longer supported. So in your case I'd recommend Opera!

But anyway here's the post I promised a week ago:

IE7 has been stripped down and re-written. They pulled out a lot of 10+ year old code that was buggy and full of holes. ActiveX is now opt in. CSS support is up to 2.1 & fully supported. XHTML & HTML are fully supported. Transparent .png images were fixed.

Tabs was added into the browser so no more MSN toolbar or IE GUI like Advant or Maxthlon(sp?). And they work really well, if you don't want them you can turn them off. IE7 has a great quick tabs feature that rivals Operas. FF users please remember that Opera invented tabs so please no claims of copying FF. A search bar was also added.

If you want quick tabs like Opera and later Firefox then leave IE's page update set to "automatically." It will let you go forward and back with a minimal update. It's not quite as fast as Opera's but considering it updates I like it.

RSS is built into not only the browser but also the operating system and it is awesome, Mozilla users should recognise the icon. RSS autodetects feeds quite well.

They added a little page zoom feature like Opera and it's nice. The print preview has a new option to shrink to fit pages.

The interface might takes some getting used to as its been streamlined. Just hit the alt button to view the menu bar.

Now its time for some speed settings:
1) Increase the connection limit. This tweak allows IE to make up to 16 connections per server. Requires restart of IE. Do not use if no dial-up.
2) If you're not using a proxy, uncheck IE's "Automatically detect settings" option on the Tools | Internet Options | Connections | LAN Settings dialog.

If you want more tweaks: http://enhanceie.com/ie/tweaks.asp

Just something to note -- my Dad downloaded IE7 and after he did, he was unable to log onto any of the Virtual Private Networks (VPN) he needs for work. Fortunately, he was able to uninstall IE7 and once he did, the VPN's worked again.

So I don't know what the exact problem was (I wasn't there to see it), but if you connect to a VPN, you may want to hold off on IE7 for a while. At least until they either fix a few issues in it, or until someone figures out why exactly my Dad's VPN's were inaccessable with IE7 installed.

I dunno, I tend to avoid anything made by Microsoft these days. Only thing I really use is the OS. And even at that, wait until a service pack is released, that way you KNOW it's actually going to work right.

*huggles the cuddly Firefox*

I love the Windows interface -- much more then the Mac's. I have to use Word because of work, but I find WordPerfect much easier and much more intuitive to use. On the other hand, it's kind of hard to beat Excel. The main thing from Microsoft that I stay away from is Frontpage or Word as an HTML editor. It generates such garbage, unreadable code. I'll hand code a page in Notepad before I'll use either to make a webpage.

Okay... I lied. I love MS Word... Mostly because in school, that and Excel are what we HAD to use, and I got MOUS Certified in both. *shrugs* No matter what you do, you can't get away from Microsoft anyways.

I like MS Explorer 7 largely because of the tab feature that allows you to surf multiple websites without having to open a new window. I loved it when it was in Opera and that was a primary reason why I used that program in lieu of Explorer for a time.

Anyways about the PC vs Mac... those commercials are amusing, but ridicules. PCs have always had tons upon tons of games released for them and I didn't even know if Macs had that capability! In fact, often times I wonder if the Mac could run that many games. And let's not forget emulation on the PC that allows you to play classic console games (and heck, there's even an emulator for the GameCube and you know how advanced that thing is).

Till next time stay cool

Firefox has had tabbed browsing for a long time. It is by far the browser of choice for me. I cannot live without my extensions. I am constantly amazed at how annoying some pages are with IE after getting used to them in FF. There are a couple of things that I wish that FF did like IE, but there is much more that I prefer the way FF does it.

I like Microsoft Word. In fact, I tend to like the entire Microsoft Office suite (for the most part) and yes, I even like Windows! Oh my God?! Did he say he likes Windows?!

Yes, I did.

It's actually a fairly stable and user-friendly operating system. There are, of course, three very prominent problems with it though:

• Utilization - Since it is so widely used, it has to accomodate everything. What this means is that Windows has to be a "jack-of-all-trades" OS and this will affect it somehow, someway. MacOS, in general, gets to focus on a relatively narrow area.
• Customization - PC users are far more prone to change hardware and various internal settings on their machines than Mac users (who for the most part are content with what they have, don't know how to change things or can't change things due to constrictions placed upon their machine by Apple). Because of this ability to customize relatively easily in Windows, issues can sometimes occur since every computer is set up differently with different pieces of hardware and software.
• External Attacks - On the surface, this looks like an inherent weakness in Windows, but it's not really. Sure, there are some problems with Windows (Vista is a sure sign of that), but for the most part it's because of the widespread use of Windows that hackers and virus creators "do their thing" on PCs as opposed to Macs. After all, if you're going to go to the trouble of hacking a machine or creating a virus, you probably want to do the most damage possible and that means assaulting a Windows-based computer, not a Mac-based one (or even one using Linux or whatever).

Anyway... back to Microsoft Office. I like it. I think it has some useful programs, the best being the "main four" (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access) and the others ranging from mildly useful to completely unnecessary. I've been using Office 2007 at my university computer labs (it's technically designed for Vista, but will run just fine on XP and 2000) and it's exceptionally cool. I really like the changes they've made. The programs are far more intuitive to use now and although the new placement and interface takes a little getting used to, it quickly becomes second nature to use -- besides, it looks sci-fi and futuristic!

I would say that any consumer OS needs to be a "Jack of All Trades", but the fact that Windows is so highly customizable mitigates this somewhat. Apple tries to make the Mac OS do everything, too. Most Mac users wouldn't be caught dead with anything else and this would not be possible if Macs didn't do it all, too.

I agree with you about security. Right now Mac are in a "sweet spot", where they are common enough to have decent support from 3rd party software and hardware vendors/manufactures, but still have a low enough profile to not be much of a target for malware authors.

I have not yet seen Office 2007, but I can easily believe what you say about it. We have Office 2000 at work; I have Office XP on my workstation; and I have Office 2003 on my laptop. Each successive version gets easier/more intuitive to use.

Firefox had tabs from the start back when it was still called Thunderbird. Opera invented tabs so I used Opera when ever I wanted to surf with tabs. I rather like the way IE7 runs tabs and if you wanted tabs in IE6x you had a few options. First you can install the MSN/Live toolbar, you can install either Avant, or you can install Maxthon as both use IE as their core.

Firefox has always seemed like a novelty browser to me, especially since I used regular Mozilla (now Sea Monkey), Netscape (6.1 was the last good non-bloated), and of course Opera. Most of ff's plug-ins were features that were built into Opera. quick tabs, spell check, content blocking (ad-block).

I started to get really annoyed hearing how ff was so much more secure than IE from people who had no idea about computer security at all. Setting ActiveX to prompt to run & install has been available since 6.x versions and people should be running a firewall & anti-virus anyway. I really started to hate Firefox users when people would auto reply "get firefox" on forums when I was discussing webpage coding errors. As if ff would magically correct the code, when in reality the page would usually not load in ff where as in IE it would since IE can ignore code errors and still render the rest of the page.

For me, every time I've been about to ditch IE for Opera (the best browser) MS has fixed my biggest problems. First it was XP-SP2 adding a pop-up blocker and then IE7 adding tabs, fixing .png issues, Protected mode, and a ton of little things. So now IE is back to my full time browser with Sea Monkey as a close second. I still have Opera installed and always up to date in case IE7 somehow fails. I also have Safari installed as well.

Some add-ons for IE to help pass the time. (IE has had add-ons since version 4.0, that's before ff was even though of)
IE Spell - an awesome spell check for IE that works just like Opera's. http://www.iespell.com/
IE7 Pro - this add-on adds tons of features to IE, I installed it just for it's ad block. It's crash recovery is good too. http://www.ie7pro.com/

Or you mean Firebird.


The spell checker is built into FF.


Fanboys can turn me off of almost any OS or program. Usually they are also some of the least informed. I have my preferences, but still see the flaws in my favorites and strengths in those that I am not fond of. There are many things that I like about IE over FF, but find that for me the pluses of FF outweigh those of IE.


I gave up on Opera a long time ago as javascript didn't seem to work right very often. Yes, I know that they were trying to be very WWW compliant, but it was frustrating. And no, I have not tried Opera in a while. Perhaps javascript support is better.


Even most Mac users that I know don't use Safari. They seem to mostly use FF or Camino.

I was tempted to wait until Dec. 30th to respond to this, bit I know that I'd forget yet again. So for the heck of it here are my responces.


Yes, when I'm tried I sometimes switch the two.


Yes, now in the 2.x versions. Mozilla Sea Monkey has it as well and I like it.


Opera is very good now. But this is also a problem with Javascript as there is no real standards set for Javascript.


I have it installed just for the heck of it. I just wanted to see what it was like. I probably use IE the most, but I use Mozilla Sea Monkey & Opera quite a bit as well. I still use IE as my main browser because I can customize IE to the point that it can do most anything FF can do. www.ie7pro.com

Give the Opera 9.50 beta a try, among many things it's speed is quite impressive. http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/next/