by Playfuls Staff |
29th May 2006
Redmond-based Microsoft has big hopes concerning the future edition of one of its flagship products, Internet Explorer 7. According to the company Internet Explorer 7 will be more adaptable to user's needs and a lot more secure.[more]
Microsoft's group program manager for Internet Explorer, Tony Chor, who outlined the new features of the browser at a Webstock web design conference recently, said most importantly the new version improves the browser's security, one of the most contentious issues involving users of IE6. He said while it is "architecturally more sound", it will use colors in the address bar to indicate the safety of sites. Green will denote safe sites, red for known phishing sites and yellow for suspected ones. Chor said this feature has prevented 50,000 phishing attacks since the second beta version was released in late April.
The previous version of IE, launched in 2001, has been the target of many Internet attacks, be it viruses, exploits, worms, etc. causing huge damages to both home users and corporate segment. IE7 is currently in its second beta version and the final version is due to be released in the second half of this year. IE7 borrowed some features from other browsers, such as Firefox and Opera, including tabbed browsing, but takes many of these a step further. Internet Explorer 7 boasts a cleaner look, eliminating buttons on the previous version that weren't often used, such as "discuss". Menus are hidden by default, giving more space to the webpage. A search box sits to the right of the address bar - MSN is the default but this is easily changed. "Browsing is the number one activity people do with their PCs," Mr Chor says. "And most people start their Web browsing session by searching."
Microsoft has announced that the version of IE that will be integrated in Windows Vista shall bear the named “Internet Explorer 7+”. The IE blog wrote: "With the release of Windows Vista Beta 2, I want to announce that we will be naming the version of IE7 in Windows Vista “Internet Explorer 7+”. While all versions of IE7 are built from the same code base, there are some important differences in IE7+, most significantly the addition of Windows Vista-only features like Protected Mode, Parental Controls, and improved Network Diagnostics. These features take advantage of big changes in Windows Vista and weren’t practical to bring downlevel. The IE7+ naming gives us an easy way to refer to this version. (“The version of IE7 in Vista” doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily)".
In Vista, the browser will run in "protected mode", writing only to a temporary cache. Mr Chor says this will stop attacks that use the browsers' default administrator privileges to install spyware. Microsoft has also written a platform separate to the browser to support RSS news feeds, so these can be read on the desktop or in Outlook. It's also quite easy to add new feeds - if there's one on the site, the RSS icon will light up and clicking on it will add the feed to the list. Version 7 also has an intelligent printing function that automatically scales webpages to the right width, eliminating the bugbear of printers - cutting off the right-hand side of some webpages during printing.
