If readers had any doubt that IE7 is not going to be anything more than “Just Good Enough” to slow down the ascendancy of Firefox and other browsers read this posting.
Here is the guts of what is being said:
1. There are no plans in having “active desktop” support for Internet Explorer 7.
2. No “download manager” will be included in Internet Explorer 7. The “download manager” first appeared in early alpha builds of Windows Vista (previously known as Windows Codename Longhorn). Jason Watters had this to say – “It is not “too hard”, we just are not able to implement a download manager with the level of high quality that we want in the timeframe of this release.”
3. Internet Explorer 6 will not run alongside Internet Explorer 7
4. A Parental Control feature might be also implanted in Internet Explorer 7.
5. More customize features for tab browsing.
6. There won’t be any custom skins or styles.
7. No Mac support.
8. Web Developer tools might be included in the release of Internet Explorer 7.
9. The installation of Internet Explorer 7 will not be optional during a clean or upgrade of a Windows Vista installation.
10. Internet Explorer 7 won’t include Java.
11. Internet Explorer 7 won’t support Windows 2000.
Does this look like a bold statement of what is possible in Web browsing and development ? Does it have anything more than “me-too” tab implementation plus some phishing and child controls already available as extensions in Firefox and other browsers ? Not much at all.
Rather if you are a Windows 2000 users you will soon be out of luck – no software support starts with Microsoft and IE7 just as surely as Mac is being cutoff. No download manager nor skins and stylings means that IE7 wont even measure up to Firefox, Opera and others.
If you are a Windows 2000 or earlier user, its time to switch (and its very fast, simple and rewarding operation) to Firefox or Opera.
(c)JBSurveyer 2005