Internet Explorer 7.0 beta 2

For those of you who tried the beta 1 release, you would agree that a lot has happened since then. The design has improved, the RSS aggregator feature has improved along with a lot of things. The tabbed browsing also works much better; in fact, they work better than they do in Firefox. For a full review of IE7 beta 2 check Paul Thurrot’s site http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/ie7_beta2.asp and download IE7 here.

So what is the news?
I think the news in IE7 is the news about the release itself. It has been more than four years since IE6 was released, and a lot have happened on the browser market since. IE7 brings little new in form of functionality. It is as though Microsoft looked at the other browsers on the market, and copied the ideas and wrapped them up in an IE experience. And this is actually a good thing. Why you ask? Because no matter what browser you use, it roughly has the same features implemented the same way. This makes the switching easier, especially for non-geeks, and that way makes the whole internet experience more seamless.

Now you can choose.
In a couple of months when IE7 is released, people want to upgrade their IE6. The interesting thing is, that this is the first IE release in a browser market with serious competitors. Think about it. When IE6 was released in 2001, the only big competitors where Netscape and Opera. Netscape was a huge clumsy program bundle and Opera had banner ads if you didn’t pay for it. These did not represent a real alternative to IE6. Now it’s a lot different as you properly know.
Now people have a choice. They can choose IE7 or Firefox/Opera. Of course, a lot of people don’t care or don’t know and will automatically get IE7 from windowsupdate. But the rest, and that’s a lot of people, will be given a choice they haven’t been forced to make before and that’s what going to be interesting. The choice is not whether or not to upgrade IE7 – we all want the newest software. The choice is whether or not you will use it as your primary browser.

Will you choose IE7?