IE 7 released and…

… well… it’s the usual pile of pants. More secure? Probably. Faster? Maybe. Huge download forced on people even though they may be on dialup as it’s classed as aN “IMPORTANT” patch? Yup.

I’ve used it for roughly ten minutes and only as one survey site I go to insist on IE; it simply won’t work with another browser. Each page is a “click the options” one (it’s a survey after all) and now before every single page I have to clear a dialogue asking me if I want the next page to have access to my clipboard. I can’t find an option to turn this off, though I guess it’s somewhere in the security options that I can’t be bothered looking through.

Another thing I don’t like is the removal of the text menu options (File, Edit and so on), though they can be “popped up” by hitting the ALT key. This, apparently, is to reduce “toolbar creep” which can “take up to 1/3 of the browser window”. Yes. If you’re a compete moron who downloads every toolbar known to man and has a spyware-infested PC. And if that’s the case, having a single half-height line removed will make next to no difference anyway.

Final minor whinges are also cosmetic. The inclusion of a search box in the top right which allows you to use any search engine seems OK… only the one toolbar I *do* use is Google’s which has this function anyway. In addition to which that one box lets me search Google normally, Google News, Google Images, Google Video, GMail, etc., etc., etc. Which pretty much makes the inbuilt one redundant. And there’s no way to remove it.

The other buttons included on the toolbar for IE are for some reason places along the new “tab” bar (and I don’t like tabbed browsing either – I disable it on Firefox). Thing is, the program seems to have decided that these appear from left to right starting at a certain point, so on a non-full size window you have those annoying “more” arrows so you can’t see all of the available icons without clicking. Why not have them right-justified if there’s space due to a lack of tabs?

The only way to give feeback to MS now (that they won’t listen to) is via a newsgroup. Essentially, it’s got through the release candidate bit, the general public have it and (until someone hacks it which will inevitably happen soon enough) they’ll wash their hands of any fixes.

Thanks, but I’ll stick with Firefox. Although, even that has it’s annoyances. Most irritating one is that if you have a large text box on the screen (let’s say your Blogger template) and you use the inbuilt search (CTRL-F) function, said textbox is ignored. Gah.

Oh, and a quick question. If Google and Firefox are so much in cahoots, how come the Google toolbars always come out for IE first? I want my Bookmarks online, dammit!