The 9th law, of course, being that genuine and warranted criticism of Micrsoft products will always elicit accusations such as “Dopers will hate on a Microsoft product for no good reason.”
Personally, i agree with the OP about the aesthetics of IE7. It could be that those aesthetic issues can be mitigated via customization of the toolbars, etc., and if that produced a product that was noticeably more functional than the browsers i’m using now, i’d be happy to make the switch back to MS. But i have two browsers on my computer right now that will do everything that IE7 promises, and more. Opera is stable and excellent, and i haven’t had any crashing problems with Firefox since 1.5.0.x was released.
I admit that i might have a certain amount of animosity towards Microsoft products for certain specific things. For example, i don’t like the fact that IE can’t be uninstalled on a Windows computer. I also think that Word, while very useful, is also awfully designed in many ways. I don’t like the way they sneak things like Windows Genuine Advantage onto your computer without disclosing exactly what it does. And, per slortar’s comment, above, i am annoyed by Microsoft’s persistent, petulant and selfish refusal to properly implement CSS in their browser.
On the other hand, i think Windows XP is a usable and stable operating system, one that i like quite a lot and am happy to pay for and use.
I’ve been waiting for the “real” release and I will download IE7 when I have the time to. I really like the tabbed browsing of Firefox, and the latest release of Yahoo Toolbar added a tabbed browsing feature for IE. Not perfect but not bad and better than nothing. I read a review of Office 2007 and the reviewer noted that he particularly hated the “ribbon” thingy, whatever they call it. After getting accustomed to it, however, it’s now his favorite feature. My point being, I’ll download it and install it, try it out for a while. I’ll get used to it and everything’ll be all swell.
No, I didn’t. Thanks for sharing - it’s one of the few features of WinXP that I’ve genuinely disliked. Now that I knew to look for a way to turn it off, it wasn’t hard to find; the thought never crossed my mind that one could.
I tried IE7 Beta, and was underwhelmed. I’m sticking to Firefox. And yes, tabbed browsing rules.
The deciding factors for me were:
Firefox tabs are better. The close tab thing is in a set location so you don’t have to fiddle around to find the thing. The IE7 ones you have to wait for them to even appear before you can close the tab.
Firefox is faster.
The font enlarge on Firefox works by enlarging the font, the one in IE zooms the entire page. The IE solution, while novel, doesn’t really accomplish much and just means I have to deal with two scrollbars.
I can access the File, View, Options, etc. bar in Firefox. Inexplicably, these are hidden in IE7.
There’s a Refresh button in Firefox. Inexplicably, IE7 removed the ability to easily refresh pages.
Overall, nothing is better, but a lot is worse. Maybe it blocks more popups, but I don’t visit popup friendly webpages so…
Adding in a quickstart bar and putting everything you run 90% of the time in it is also wonderful (if you haven’t.) The only annoying bit being when things try to add themselves to your quickstart.
Windows Explorer
Firefox
Thunderbird
iTunes
World of Warcraft
I rarely have to go through Start.
And I never got why they always hide Windows Explorer. All that results in is everyone using “My Computer” and going the long way around to their files… sigh
Try the F5 key, a marvelous little key I use all the time.
As far as Windows Explorer try the Windows Key with the E to open explorer.
Windows D reveals the desktop, like the shortcut in Quick Launch.
Windows F brings up Find
Ctrl+X = Cut
Ctrl+C = Copy
Ctrl+V = Paste
Ctrl+Z = Undo
Ctrl+A = Select All
Ctrl+Esc or the Windows Key brings up the start menu.
Tab Mix Plus. Its Session Manager allows users to save multiple different browsing sessions as well as restore tabs after crashes (either with or without user confirmation). IMHO, an absolutley essential extension.
Does anybody know if IE7 includes mouse gestures? That feature is another deal-breaker for me. Or how about plugins or extensions like Firefox?
Ha! I just had read that installing it was screwing around with a bunch of legitimate versions of XP. I put off installing Service Pack 2 for the same reason (I think it was on this board that I read various nightmare scenarios about how SP2 was causing people to wipe their hard drives in fury and start from scratch), but eventually relented.
Nope, but (and prepare to love me) have you heard of this? Oh yes, mouse gestures in any windows app. And you can disable it on a per-application basis (or do finer customisation) so it won’t interfere with Opera or FF mouse gestures. The only problem is that I miss it enormously when using a computer without it.
They sort of merged Windows Explorer with My Computer in XP. In any My Comp window, there’s a “Folders” button that opens or closes a left-hand, explorer type sidebar, with collapsable folders and all those Explorer features. The only thing the “Windows Explorer” icon opens is a My Computer window with the “Folders” button already clicked (which if you then click of, you go back to a My Comp window anyway).
In reality, “Explorer” no longer exists as an independent app for file organization, it’s just a feature of My Computer now.
I love how the status bar during the installation doesn’t go from 0% to finish, it just scrolls and scrolls and marquees or whatever, with no indication of your progress. It took nearly 30 minutes to install the damn thing, thrashing my HD like a rented mule the whole time, and at no point did I know if it was nearing the end.
The interface is ugly and worthless. I want it gone.
Really, I can’t say much more. I see improved features but at the cost of usability. I’m staying with the Fox.
I didn’t mention mouse gestures because i’ve gotten so used to them in Firefox and Opera that i can’t imagine using a browser without them anymore.
Dead Badger, that looks excellent. I often try and use mouse gestures when i’m using Windows Explorer, just through force of habit, and then get frustrated when it doesn’t work. I’ll have to give StrokeIt a go.
In addition to what others said. Tabbed browsing comes into it own when combined with mouse gestures. You just do everything with the mouse, move between pages, back, forward, close, open etc.
It took me a little while to get it set up appropriately with my various apps, the main issue being that the default Opera-style “close” gesture is set to CTRL-F4, i.e. it closes MDI windows (which is what it does in Opera). But this means that it won’t close explorer or IE windows. However, you can just define a new “app” for all your SDI programs, reassign the “down-right” gesture to ALT-F4 for those programs only, and just add all your SDI programs to that one “app” (using the nifty drag’n’drop tool they provide). That sounds like gobbledegook, but it will (hopefully) make sense once you’ve played around with it.
Really, this is pretty much the best program I’ve discovered all year; it only takes up about 160K of memory as well, which is frankly obscene given how useful it is.
That one annoys me on a daily basis; sometimes several times a day. Part of my job is IT support and I will often have to talk people through copying or moving files about on their system. I tell them to open Windows Explorer (“Open Windows Explorer,” I say, “Just hold down the Windows key and press E”). I then instruct them to expand one of the items in the left hand pane of the Windows Explorer window, and it all goes quiet. After a few seconds, I say “When I told you top open Windows Explorer, you double-clicked on ‘My Computer’, didn’t you?”, and the answer is always yes.
Well, it’s gotta be better than the CSS support in IE5/IE6, if for no other reason than it’s damn near impossible to get worse (and the only browser to manage that feat is the now-dead IE5 for MacOS).
