The first thing that any user of Internet Explorer 7 will notice is how it looks. While previous browser upgrades (from 4 to 5 and 5 to 6) have seen the addition of new features, there has been little to distinguish between versions visually.
Internet Explorer 7 dispenses with the usual menu system, opting instead for a more streamlined toolbar. This can be confusing to start with and will take some users a while to get used to. The new look is in line with Windows Vista and the recent Live Messenger.
Internet Explorer has long be ridiculed for its lack of support for tabbed browsing, especially when most of its competitors have it as standard. Thankfully, this feature has finally made it into version 7, and has been implemented very well. Opening links on pages in a new tab requires a right click, but a new blank tab can be opened at any time by clicking the blank tab in the toolbar.
A great inclusion is the Quick Tabs option. Situated to the left of the tabbed browsing section of the toolbar, this button displays thumbnail images of all web pages currently open. This is a handy tool when working with a large number of tabs, particularly when tab titles have shrunk to an illegible level.
Open tabs can also be accessed from the drop-down Tabs List menu. A group of tabs can even be bookmarked as a single unit, making it quick and easy to access several websites in the future.
The new ‘Favorites Center’ is a great improvement on the old Favorites menu and sidebar. The Center can be docked at the left of the screen or just accessed when required, and from here, bookmarked sites can be visited.
Clicking a bookmark will open the link in the current tab, but click on the blue arrow which appears next to every entry and links can be opened in a new tab. In our opinion, this is something Internet Explorer 7 handles more effectively than Firefox. RSS feeds are also handled by the Favorites Center and provide an excellent alternative to a dedicated RSS reader.
A new search box in the toolbar makes it possible to conduct web searched without having to visit a search engine first. Several search engines can be added to the list of providers to cater for different types of searches – ranging from big names such as Google, to site searches for the likes of Amazon – and these can be accessed from a drop-down menu.
One search provider in the list must be configured as the default, and if no other search engine is selected from the list, this one will be used to conduct searches.
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