IE7 beta2

Microsoft released the first publicly available version of IE7 recently, the beta 2 preview.

Anyone can download and try this out, but being a beta release it is not recommended for production environments.

Having tried it out briefly, my initial thoughts are that it is definitely an improvement over IE6, but I can't see myself switching from Maxthon any time soon!

There are some good features in this release:

• The printing support has been greatly improved. There is now a 'shrink to fit' option that will automatically resize the data so that it fits on the page. It is also now possible to print preview selections, and to adjust margins easily in the preview window.
• A page zoom option has been added, that zooms images as well as the text, so that the layout of the page stays exactly the same regardless of the zoom level.
• The 'Quick Tabs' option, which shows live thumbnails of all the tabs currently open to allow easy switching between them

However, I wouldn't recommend using this release as I had it crash on me quite a few times while I was trying it out.

Also, compared to Maxthon its features are quite lacking. For example, I use the following features all the time and they are missing in IE7:

• There is no way to reorder tabs (that I could find)
• It does not support mouse gestures.
• It does not support 'super drag and drop' - Dragging links to open them in a new tab.
• I couldn't see any mention of URL aliases (Being able to assign a short name that can be entered to go to specific URLs)
• There currently isn't a supported search provider for Google UK, although I'm sure this will change.
• And I'm sure I could list plenty more!!

I am looking forward to the final release though, as because Maxthon is based on IE, it will automatically gain the security improvements, and a lot of the new features such as printing and zooming.