IE 7, First thoughts

I’ve been waiting for the full release of Internet Explorer for some time.  I had a preview when i installed the Vista beta (RC2) but i didn’t install the IE beta onto any of my XP machines as i dont install beta software on “production” kit.

Now i fully understand why people prefer to use other browsers (Firefox, Opera, etc) but since ALL of the users i support use Internet Explorer i always ensure we’re using the same software as our clients where possible.

So when the download was made available last week i decided to install it onto my laptop first (just in case).  I like the new tabbed interface and was especially pleased that the print features have been overhauled. The improved full screen mode was also a welcome change as the toolbar auto-hides so you can see as much of the page as your screen will let you. I haven’t managed to look at the RSS integration properly yet as i’m still using RSS Bandit but i did notice the orange icon light up as i browsed my favourite blogs. I even managed to test the anti-phising filter using some spam i received and this seems like a nice touch that will help my end-users.

The only downside for me at the moment is that when using the management pages of the Sonicwall firewall’s we use, any pop-up windows just appear as blank pages. No buttons or text. Nothing!

I tried moving the address into the different zones to see if there was a security settings prevent the code on the page from running but this didn’t make any difference. A post on the Sonicwall support forum seems to suggest that the next firmware update will fix this. For this reason i wont be updating my main PC just yet and i’m glad that i took the step of upgrading on the laptop first!