Internet Explorer 7 Release

I’ve been running the IE7 beta on both my work and home PCs for quite a while now with no problems. So when my home PC offered to download and install the release version I was happy to allow it to do so. What a mistake that proved to be.

One of the very first things that I did was to listen to a programme on Radio 4 using the Listen Again feature. This brings up a pop-up screen from which you can adjust the volume, change the programme etc. This was all fine until I closed the pop-up window. When I did so the main window holding all the open tabs also closed.

Initially I thought that this was just a coincidence, however, when I went to look at my work email via Outlook Web Access exactly the same thing happened – when I closed a message that I had been reading in a pop-up window the main window closed too.

So as it stands today IE7 is useless and looking at the comments on the official newsgroup I am not the only one having problems. Question is why this has turned up now when it has worked without any problems in the beta and can MS fix the problems quickly.

In the meantime I would recommend that anyone thinking about going for the official IE7 release think about it very carefully before doing so. It will come down automatically through Windows update but you can block this. Details on how to do this can be found here. I would suggest that it is worth waiting for a few updates before committing.

I have now downloaded Firefox 2.0 and am using that to see how I get on. I know the purists out there will say that I should have done this long ago quoting “more secure”, “quicker”, “break the evil MS domination” blah, blah, blah but sometimes life is too short. Also, my view is that it is because of MS dominance that people single it out for attacks and therefore it simply seems less secure. Discuss.