Of course, I installed the Internet Explorer Beta 3 . There is so much to expect from the IE 6 that version 7 is, well, late. A couple years late, to be exact.

Let us start with a little history: after Microsoft’s share of the browser market grew to almost 100%, the Internet Explorer development team was dismantled. Of course, Netscape’s decision to rewrite Navigator 4 did not help matters much. It took almost 2 years to show the world version 6 and by then it was too late anyway. In the meantime AOL had acquired Netscape and AOL has a natural talent of buying great companies and ideas and rendering them virtually worthless (ICQ, Netscape, Nullsoft / WinAMP). Other browsers had a certain market share but it was never significant enough to worry Microsoft or Netscape.

Finally, FireFox started gaining more and more ground in the market. After the Mozilla Foundation killed the Navigator project there were only two major players in the browser market: Internet Explorer and, you guessed it, FireFox. The second was liked for its better support of JavaScript, CSS and security. Updates for FireFox are published on a regular basis (Internet Explorer updates from Windows / Microsoft Update are not updates, they are [security] patches) and new versions usually had new features.

It was only a matter of time before Microsoft would update Internet Explorer. IE7 was supposed to ship with Windows Vista but a beta for Windows XP is published (the final version is rumored to be available in November 2006). Microsoft had many reasons to update Internet Explorer as soon as possible. First of all, IE security flaws (ActiveX!) pushed Microsoft to purchasing Giant software and their antispyware software, which is now in beta testing and will become and integral part of Windows Vista. Internet Explorer had good support of HTML and JavaScript to stay alive for a few more years. Of course, FireFox’s support for CSS is still better than IE’s. As far as DHTML goes, sometimes Internet Explorer works better and sometimes FireFox.
The new Internet Explorer finally supports transparent PNG images. It funny that the Solaris version of Internet Explorer supported transparent PNGs but the Windows version never did! There is a Microsoft Knowledgebase article that helps transparent PNG files shows properly. The problem is that Microsoft is asking Web developers to edit their Web pages to support IE (not that other way around). As a Web developer, it has been a hassle to include additional code and sometimes wait for the whole page to load, so that the colored background of the image would go away.

I was wondering, whether to mention that Internet Explore 7 still lets adware and spyware install without permission but after listening to 2 members of my staff I am sure that it was not just me. Microsoft has decided to let the user filter out the bad stuff, rather than fixing all the security holes in IE (which might be an impossible task without rewriting the software). They added a colored address bar (so has FireFox ) that lets the user know if the connection is encrypted or if the site is a known phishing sites. This feature may turn out to be very useful to users. Nevertheless, the truth is: IE 7 does not look like it is protecting users against malicious software any better than IE 6 did.

I uninstalled the beta version and will install the final just because I wish to have the latest version of the software (which will phase out version 6 in a matter of time). I actually got sick of the new interface and the spyware threats (even being the experienced user that I am) were not helping at all.

I do not mean to bash Internet Explorer or praise FireFox but I feel that I need to give credit when credit is due and IE 7 isn’t living up to its promises.

Tags: antispyware software, aol, beta 3, beta testing, browser market, few more years, firefox, images, internet explorer beta, internet explorer updates, internet explorer works, javascript css, market internet, marketing, matter of time, Microsoft, navigator 4, netscape, security flaws, security patches, security updates, truth, uninstall, update, version 6, Windows