Looks like Microsoft got it right with its IE7 browser that was made available as a public beta today.

The first time a user launches the application, he is presented with a welcome screen asking him about three settings: phishing, language and quality feedback. The first and last one send information back to Microsoft, and therefore are switched off by default. So even if you're too lazy busy to read the page, you'll still get the most privacy conscious settings available.

Microsoft also deserves credit for making Yahoo and not MSN Search the default search engine. But for some reason you need to manually add Google to the search options before you can make it the default engine. And I wouldn’t be surprised that the MSN becomes the default engine as soon Microsoft marketing gets involved.

Lastly, the second page you visit (the one after the configuration screen) has an html error (error box displayed below). It's on Microsoft.com. Oops.

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Update 5:49 pm.

I had to uninstall the application because it failed to work with our webbased content management system (CMS).

That brings forward the most important set-back about this application: you can't run IE6 next to IE7: one will overwrite the other. And since IE7 is in beta, that sucks because you'll effectively lose you stable browser if you want to test the unstable one.

Yet another related problem was that the CMS kept acting up even after I uninstalled IE7. Only after clearing out the chache and browser history would it function properly.

Privacy by default (click image for larger version)

But the html on the ie7 tour page still needs some work. (click image for larger version)

Tags: internet explorer, ie7, microsoft

31 Jan 2006