IE7 is live

[francis]

Microsoft has made IE7 live - not more release candidates or beta testing. It's available for download now (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx) and I guess the Windows Update will come next month.

From comments I've seen online, the vast majority of people dislike the the positioning of buttons, especially the refresh one. Why, I wonder, with every previous version of IE and also every other browser on the market, having buttons line up on the left, did MS think it was a good idea to break the paradigm and slot it on the other side of the address bar?

[James]

It took me a long time to find the refresh button. What a silly place to put it. I've downloaded IE7 this evening - all my sites work fine and I quite like it. I also got the beta of Firefox but not much change there.

[francis]

MS are saying automatic download of IE by November 1st (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/10/19/be-ready-for-automatic-update-distribution-of-ie7-by-november-1.aspx). IE7's interface, it has to be said, isn't great.

Firefox 2 has a nice RSS thing that, when you want to subscribe to a feed, you can either use FF, your choice of locally installed app or one of a few sites, including Google's recently revamped Reader (http://www.google.com/reader/view/), which a lot of people are raving about.

Now that IE has its own built-in RSS reader, I can really see it taking off as a technology. There's no way that I could keep up with everything if I didn't have RSS. I'm definitely one of those people who, if the entire new post is available via RSS, won't bother clicking through to the site to read it there.

[James]

My laptop just downloaded IE7 via auto-update. So looks like Microsoft has started roll out right away.

[francis]

You've got to think that annoucing this today was spiteful (http://secunia.com/advisories/22477/) - they must have known about it for a while. I guess maybe they were waiting to see if it was fixed in the final version?

There's an interesting post on the MS IE blog about the install process (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/updatemanagement/windowsupdate/ie7announcement.mspx). It'll come down as part of Windows Update; the user will be prompted to install it; if they click "no", that's it - it won't install and it won't ask again/nag. Seems very strange. If the user decides they do want it, they have to go to Windows Update.

I also read that MS has released a Beta of Media Player 11 that's very iTunes-like. Couldn't find it on Update, I'll try somewhere else.

[David]

From comments I've seen online, the vast majority of people dislike the the positioning of buttons, especially the refresh one. Why, I wonder, with every previous version of IE and also every other browser on the market, having buttons line up on the left, did MS think it was a good idea to break the paradigm and slot it on the other side of the address bar?

I've been using IE7 as my main browser for a few months now and the position of the refresh button was the one thing I found most difficult to get used to. But it didn't take long and now when I'm using IE6, I'm completely lost.

[francis]

I guess there's always F5 as well. Until IE7, I assumed that that's what I used all of the time. It was only when I found myself hunting for the button that I realised otherwise.
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Later:
MS have quickly responded to the IE7 security vulnerability issue (http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/10/19/information-on-reports-of-ie-7-vulnerability.aspx). It's cool that MS has allowed its teams to blog like this as it allows better quality information to get out, and quickly. Sure, there's still a security issue, but hopefully it's taken the sting out of the "IE7 is here and it's still as borked as IE6" snarking.

[Trudi]

Heven't played with it yet as I can't run it on the Mac (hmm, sounds like a flimsy excuse to upgrade and install Boot Camp!), so I'm currently trying to persuade my resident PC owner to download it for me....

[francis]

Trudi, have you tried Parallels (http://www.parallels.com/)? Apparently it's amazing. I'm going to wait until Vista comes out and, all being well, buy a copy of that and run it via Parallels on my MacBook. That way I can ditch my Dell - I'm either going to donate it to my parents or keep it but flatten it and run Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) on it.

[Trudi]

Ah, I wish! Unfortunately I don't have an Intel-powered Mac - I got mine about a year too early. Oh, wait - another reason to upgrade! :devil: