From: Peter McDonell
Some notes about installing and using IE7 from our intrepid embedded reporter – Peter McDonell
Having loaded IE7, looked at it, prodded and pushed it around, worked through its menu alternatives, I have now unloaded it.
Fortunately, when it loads it puts an entry (Windows Internet Explorer 7) in the “Add/Remove Programs” area, and uninstalls back to IE6.
I was less than happy about several aspects of it and may re-install at a later date. I’ll keep an eye on the various comments made about it, and look for fixes for stuff I don’t like.
In particular I didn’t like the process to add a new Favourite to the Favourites menu. I had a problem with opening new IE windows when clicking on a link in Outlook Express (had to copy paste to the address bar instead). This may not be a problem in all installations but it was for me. I also found some forum comment to suggest I wasn’t the only one with that complaint.
I found a duplication I couldn’t overcome with the Google search toolbar appearing twice – as a default and as loaded by me. I couldn’t easily open an htm file from within my PC and other stuff like that. While it has come out of beta testing it still seems to me like a late beta and not the finished product. It was available as a beta version for some time but I don’t load beta programs so hadn’t tried it until a few days ago. It is supposed to be more secure than the current IE6 but not as configurable, in my view.
Microsoft intend pushing updates to IE7 in future Windows Updates (all 14 MB of it, it seems), hence the attached IE7Blocker toolkit should you want to control your own destiny. I think the update “push” starts next month. Inside the zip file is a link to a Microsoft page which tells you more about that.
- The file IEBlockerhelp.htm file in the zip archive also describes its use.
More about IE7, and download locations, here It is about 14 MB of download.
If you do decide to install IE7 the “IE7 menubar tweak” may prove useful if you, like me, don’t like the default menu bar layout. That tweak also has an uninstall reg file included. read the included text file.
