Internet Explorer 7 - now for everyone
May 14th, 2008 Posted in software, windows, internet
by Andy Turner
Coastal Computers & Design
Late last year Microsoft recanted and removed the WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) test requirement for people wanting to download their latest internet browser. As there are many (probably millions) of WindowsXP users who are running non-genuine versions of the most popular operating system on the planet and now that Vista has been released, I guess their reasoning was that it is far more secure than the previous Internet Explorer so they may as well make it available to all.
Many commentators believe that it’s more likely that the very strong competition from Mozilla Firefox, Opera and other very good browsers is more likely to be behind the move. Whichever the reason, just point your web browser to this page at the Microsoft site, choose your operating system version and download a copy now if you are in that situation. I’d strongly suggest that you do the usual backups!
Features of the new browser include a built-in phishing filter, tabbed browsing, shrink-to-fit printing, built-in and easily customisable search box (change the default to Google of course), CSS improvements, expendable via add-ons, and is apparently the only browser with native support Extended Validation SSL Certificates that help prevent online fraud.
I’m still a big Firefox fan, afterall they were first off the rank with tabbed browsing (which I couldn’t live without now) and it just basically works - unfortunately, whenever I do web site design work I have to test my work in all the major browsers and if there’s one that often gives me grief it’s IE7. Whether IE7 conforms more closely to ‘web standards’ (whatever they really are) or whether it’s just been set up to be a pain in the you-know-what if it encounters code it doesn’t quite know what to do with, I’m not sure.
Either way, we’re stuck with the various flavours and brands and probably always will be!
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