A few months ago I started having problems with IE 6. It would crash, was slow and gave me major problems. After reading Microsoft's recommendation that I should completely reinstall Windows XP since there is no easy uninstall and resinstall of IE by itself I started using Firefox.
Firefox is a pretty cool browser - RSS feeds, tabbed browsing (which I don't think is that useful) and a few other features (along with the fact that it wasn't crashing on me) made it my browser of choice. There were a few problems: websites didn't always render correctly, I couldn't view MSNBC video content (Microsoft requires IE to view their content), but for the most part it worked well.
Don't get me wrong - I'm no fan of Microsoft and I understand why people support Firefox. That said, I use the best solution I can find, and I'm glad that the Firefox guys are forcing Microsoft to get their act together.
This week I got brave and decided to install Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 to see if it would solve my IE crashing problems. I'm happy to say that it was an easy install and did solve the crashing. And along with that it turns out I really like what it has to offer.
What I've found so far:
- Performance seems very snappy
- HTML rendering has worked correctly on all the pages I have checked
- The new mechanism for managing RSS feeds and favorites is very cool - simple and fast to use
- The interface is streamlined and VERY simple (this is NOT what I expected from Microsoft) :-)
- Integrated search with your choice of search engines is nice - I can now get rid of the Google toolbar. Microsoft even kept Google as my default for me.
- Correct printing of Internet pages is quite nice
- I like being able to zoom in and out on pages
- Built-in support for anti-phishing and managing IE add-ons is useful
- The research toolbar is very useful - search Encarta, dictionaries, company profiles, etc (though you will never find the toolbar because it isn't obvious at all)
The two things I don't like:
- It is harder to immediately see the status of pages being loaded
- The refresh page button is in the upper right corner - if it were in the upper left corner by the forward and back button it would be more intuitive
Competition is a GOOD thing, I can't wait to see what the Firefox guys do to one-up Microsoft!
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