IE 7 Beta 2 is available to public

For those of you so inclined, IE7 Beta 2 is out.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/ie7/ie7betaredirect.mspx

Seems to load as a program faster than Firefox. A lot. Does tabbed browsing and also allows you to look at all your tabbed pages in a thumbnail view. Pretty nice.

It’s about time they got on the Tabbed browsing bandwagon.

When I clicked on the title, I expected to see an astronomical photo. Instead, it is about a download that I don’t understand. Downloading software makes me nervous. I never know if I am ansering the questions correctly, and if I answer incorrectly, whether my computer will stop working forever, or will just sit there and flash with a C prompt cursor.

I actually looked to se if Denny started the thread and was confused to see Dale’s name.

Does IE still download a lot of tracking cookies? I switched to Firefox because IE was allowing a bunch of junk to be downloaded–junk that tended to slow things down. Also Firefox’s pop-up blocker actually works. For some strange reason, IE’s pop-up blocker kept getting turned off. (Perhaps, IE’s pop-up blocker was being polite and asking the pop-up if it wanted to be turned off.)

I’ve been using IE 7 for the 24 hours or so (not counting the time I spent sleeping and working and stuff) and I like it fine. Not sure about cookies. As much as I’ve been happy with Firefox, it does take a LONG time to load as a program and IE7 has been, at least so far, much faster in that regard.

It’s way early. We’ll see.

…and how much of IE was loaded at boot?

Okay, for half a day while playing around with IE7 beta I had the same problem that I was having with the old Explorer – if I clicked on a link it would shut down THIS window and open a new one with the new link. If I right clicked it would ask me if I wanted to start a new tab, and would behave nicely (except its another step I didn’t want to do).

Then Tyghre mentioned that he no longer has his mail button/tool on the toolbar. In trying to find that option (I’m still unsuccessful) I noticed that suddenly I’m getting multiple explorer windows without any contortions. Wish it would tab instead, but I’m not about to argue with success…its nice not having my current window going bye-bye.

Anyway…anyone know how to get a mail button on the explorer toolbar?

Computer Challenged,
Tyg

..and I guess someone here could tell me the differences between Microsoft’s “beta” and “final”-releases?

I’ve been using Microsoft products for quite long - and I can’t really tell. Most of their products seem unfinished and rushed - a bit like the food you have learned to expect from various fast food-chains.

Conspiracy? Let’s wait untill Microsoft releases McVista.

IE 7 beta bug reports flow in
Joris Evers
CNET News.com
February 02, 2006, 09:45 GMT

Unsurprisingly, the testing release of the next version of Internet Explorer is riddled with bugs >

Best wishes,
Jerry

I know what you mean, Doug. Let’s wait until all the brave people have tried this version first. I think “beta” means it could still have some problems, so since we don’t know how to answer the questions we could have even more problems. They will make it more user-friendly if people have trouble downloading it. Then types like us can try it. Just my two cents.

Same as Denny. IE pre-loads itself at boot time, and stays in memory all the time, so it LOOKS like it loads faster, but the fact is that it’s always loaded and wasting memory when you’re not using it.

Anyway, if this doesn’t bother you, the you should be very careful with the sites you visit, because together with Outlook (all versions) IE is one of the biggests doors to viruses in your computer.
Firefox and Opera are a lot safer for browsing, same as Thunderbird, Sylpheed, and many others for e-mail.