Not the best... (Microsoft Internet Explorer 7)

Member Name: FowlerFP

Product:	Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
Date:	23/09/08 (96 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Massive improvement on Internet Explorer 6

Disadvantages: Still not at the same level as other browsers

Microsoft Internet explorer is the newest stable release of the popular browser.Thee is currently Internet Explorer Version 8 which has been released as a beta although you should not use it as your default browser yet as it is only for testing purposes. Microsoft Internet Explorer is the most used browser around. Though mainly it is because it comes with Windows computers although people are now starting to migrate to other browsers rather then the default browser on their computer.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 is a massive improvement on the previous release of Internet Explorer which was version 6. There has been many improvement to it to bring it more in-line with all their competitors in the browser world such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apples Safari browser. In Internet Explorer 7 they added the tab feature so if you want to visit a large number of sites at the same time you don't have to have multiple windows open to view them all. Instead they are all in one browser window and you can easily flick between them without have to keep swapping windows from your system tray or by minimizing the window to view another one. Also this helps keep the system tray cleaner so it is easier to find other documents you have open so if you are at work with multiple windows open and you boss walks in it is easy to find you work so it looks like you have been working.

Also to help bring it more inline with their rivals they have worked on increasing security of the browser. Internet Explorer has a bad security record and is known for allowing viruses to easily infect your PC. One main reason is through Activex which is a Microsoft product so it doesn't affect any other browsers. This had causes alot of problems. Now in Internet Explorer 7 is allows you to disable a large majority of the Activex controls to help prevent possible vulnerable controls from being exposed to attacks from malicious websites that aim to infect your PC.

Microsoft have added a Phishing filter to warn users if a site is known for being a Phishing site. A Phishing site (pronounced fishing) is a website that pretends to be another site in order to trick people to give out their personal information such as user names and passwords. What usually happens if people send out fake emails from banks or websites like Paypal telling people to click the following link to visit the website and that they must log in and change their account details. Actually in fact the site is not real and they are able to get their log in information so therefore they can log into their real account on the real website and can have access you all you bank information. By telling you that the site is a Phishing site it prevents you from entering the information therefore prevents you from losing your money.

Internet Explorer also finally got up to date with other aspects on the web such as transparent .png images. These are images that have a clear background. The problem in previous releases of Internet Explorer they used to show with a grey background rather then a clear see through background like in Internet Explorer 7 and all the other browsers. For example in you have an image of a red circle you will see a red circle with no background so it will blend in to whatever colour the background of the website is and the patten although in previous releases it used to show a red circle but with a grey box around it what ever colour the website background is so it used to stand out and not blend in with the website.

Another major enhancement that Internet Explorer 7 has over Internet Explorer 6 is that it is far easier to clear all the stored data that your browsers store. Whenever you visit a site your browsers stores various bits of the content of that site on your computer. It stores parts of the websites such as the images and logo. This helps the site load quicker when you view the site again so that is why a site loads quicker the second time you load a page then the first. Also and more importantly is stores little files called "Cookies" These store information about your visit and help to keep you logged in on sites like this. This can cause a problem if they get stolen. Also you can be given what is called "Tracking Cookies" by some sites that do what the the name suggests and track what are doing on the site such as what pages your are viewing, how often you view them, how many pages you visit and basically spy on you and what you are doing. You browser also saves search field data (shows recently search items by you) and it can also save password and login information (if you allow it too). Internet Explorer easily allows you to clear all these from one screen and with one click of a button. This is good as you can easily get rid of any tracking cookies and saved passwords on cookies that contain login data that cold be stolen by people who want your information.

Overall Internet Explorer 7 is a massive improvement on Internet Explorer 6 although it is still quite far away from other browsers like Mozilla FireFox, Opera and Apples Safari browser. IE 7 can take a while to load some pages that are quite heavy (quite a big file size) as IE does tend to wait for the whole page to download before showing you the page or at least a lot of the page to load before showing it where as other browsers show it as it loads so if you load a website and you downloaded the logo already it will show in other browsers although Internet Explorer likes to not show the logo until the rest of the page has been downloaded. This can get slightly annoying on slow loading sites i find. Additionally Internet Explorer is still not as safe and secure as other browsers and still lacks some extra security that other browsers have. Also there is a lack of features missing that would make the browsing experience better for the users using the browser. There are quite a few issues with websites using Internet Explorer as internet explorer is a pain for website designers to code for and alot of people give up trying to make their site work properly in IE so they just leave it working properly for all the other browsers but with IE 7 you get alignment issues or a piece of code won't work like a banner rotator or something which can be very annoying for web masters if their site isn't displaying properly.

Summary: Best to use another browser like FireFox which is safer and faster...

Reliability:
Ease of use:
Installation:
Noise:
Speed:
Variety of features: