Re: TECH: IE 7

On 11/14/06, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
> Does one want to install this? (It's been offered to me)
>
> I'm actually not sure I use it-- all my stuff says "MSN Explorer"
MSN Explorer is really IE under the covers.  More importantly, almost
any HTML-savvy software on Windows uses IE's rendering engine.  Which
means that by upgrading to IE7 you do run a small risk of breaking
other things.

Most annoying to me is that IE7 and IE6 don't coexist peacefully; you
can install IE7, and then remove it to get back to IE6, rinse and
repeat, but that's a royal pain, especially if you have websites you
use with any frequency that only work properly in IE <= 6 (as I do at
my workplace).

There are packages out there that let you install a "standalone"
version of one or the other IE version so that you can run both on the
same system, but whichever one is not The Official System Browser
tends to have only a subset of its full functionality.  Therefore,
some of them actually install both sets of files and then switch
things around in the registry every time you run either browser to
make that browser the official system one, but then you can't run them
both simultaneously.  Which may or may not be an issue for you.

Plus, the default look and feel is confusing.  No menus, just
unlabeled icons scattered across  a toolbar.   This is apparently what
all applications look like in Windows Vista, but I don't think it
should be the default appearance of an app when running in prior (as
in, ever released) versions of Windows.

So I'm sticking with IE 6 for now.  For my everyday browsing I use
Firefox anyway, so the tabs and standards compliance in IE7 aren't a
major draw.   Especially since I have the IE Tab extension, which lets
me switch to using IE's rendering engine inside Firefox, or IE itself
automatically opened on the current page, with a single click - or
automatically whenever I go to a given site.
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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