What's new in IE7

I've just downloaded and installed the cautiously named, IE 7 beta 2 preview and just wanted to get down some basic 'first impressions'.

You can read my ramblings about it or just go straight to the download and see for yourself Download IE 7 beta preview.

First Impressions

As soon as I'd installed IE 7 and it opened up, I thought I'd mistakenly clicked on Opera - closer inspection proved me wrong but IE 7 's new interface and design looks good.

For a start it's definitely cleaner than previous version and all the icons have that 'brand new' sheen to them, I like that.

The second thing that caught my attention was a little magnifying glass in the bottom right corner, IE 7 has a zoom feature which can even be accessed by using Ctrl and + or - which increases (or decreases) the zoom in increments of 10% - nice.

A familiar RSS feed button now adorns the toolbar, which illuminates if a feed is available, beneath the standard address bar along with the Home, Print, Page and Tools icons.

Tabbed Browsing

Okay, so it's not new to most people but it's good to see that MS have caught up, the right click menu provides the 'open in tab' option (as in Firefox) but there are a couple of nice touches in Tools > Internet Options > General area. Pop ups can now automatically be opened in a new Tab, instead of right in front of you face and the Search box allows the option of opening the results in a Tab (by pressing Alt and Enter) rather than interrupting the page you are currently viewing.

CSS support

I haven't done much testing in this area yet as it has been said that MS hasn't got around to implementing many of the planned CSS support features it promised - yet?

However, :hover now works on all items, I tested it, it works, I'm happy. At least the MS fan club can now enjoy some of the little features that Firefox users have been enjoying for a while now, we just need for Opera to catch up - C'mon.

So far it doesn't support :before or :after, hopefully it will be implemented :before the full release.

Well that's my quick review, I'll be playing a bit more and if I find any other goodies (or baddies), I'll post them up here.