Now Available: Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2

Internet Explorer 7 is not yet a final product, but it is now publicly available as a beta 2. You can download the beta from the Microsoft site.

In this newest beta there are a number of changes and such. The following are a few:

  • Interface is streamlined to give more areas for displaying pages.
  • Printing fixed to scale so you don’t clip documents.
  • Search is consolidated into a main toolbar in stead of requiring an extra toolbar.
  • RSS feeds are automatically detected and illuminated .
  • Tabs (finally) added!
  • Addition of Quick Tabs to show all open tabs and Tab Groups to organize and open tabs.
  • Page-level zooming.
  • ActiveX controls are disabled by default.
  • HTTPOnly cookies can no longer be overwritten by script.
  • telnet is no longer supported
  • While Gopher support was turned off by default in IE 6, it has been removed at the WinINET level in this version.
  • DHTML scriptlets are disabled by default.
  • The status bar text can no longer be easily set using window.status and window.defaultStatus methods.
  • Easier clean up – from a single window, you can delete all cached pages, passwords, form data, cookies, and history.
  • Better security
  • Addition of a Phishing filter
  • Improved AJAX support
  • Addition of transparency support for PNG images.
  • Improvements in CSS compatability. CSS 2.1 is now better supported.

You can find a larger list of added features at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/about/default.mspx

Internet Explorer 7 is being to the public as a beta. The first beta happened over a year ago, and a beta 2 “preview” has been out for several months. At this time, the product is expected to be layout complete and the focus is on cleaning up the product for full release. That release is expected sometime in the second half of this year.

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