UI: They've simplified the user-interface quite a bit. You can see tehre are only 2 buttons on top, back and forward. Then come the obvious Firefox resemblances. First off, they added tabs, FINALLY IE users will be able to discover the power of tabs. Most shortcuts work (Ctrl-T for new tab, Ctrl-W to close) but there are some nice features that the Tab Mix Plus extension adds in Firefox that you just can't live without. Now understand, that as I compare Firefox with IE7 I will be including my installed Firefox extensions into the mix. Why? "That's not fair" you say. Well...shutup :P A good Firefox user should know that one of the key advantages TO Firefox is the fact that there are hundreds of extensions out there to use and make your web-browsing experience better. Now I've noticed that IE7 has some "add-ons". Whether or not this is the equivalent to extensions is unknown to me, but if it is, good for IE users.
Another thing IE7 has done is standardize more things. FINALLY 24-bit PNGs with alpha channels are displayed properly. There is supposedly better support for some web standards, however, as you can see above, they got a long way to go. The page is suppose to look like this. You cann see that Firefox does a lot better, but still isn't quite there. I believe there are only 2 browsers that can properly display that page. Apple's Safari browser, and KDE's Konqueror. There is also a little feature for RSS feeds. I really liked the way the feeds were displayed. I don't believe Firefox has that good of an implementation with them, as in Firefox all it really does is update a folder in your favorites. However, I personally don't care about either browser's RSS capabilities, because I think it's pointless. RSS feeds are like a virtual newspaper. They send headlines of various articles, and then you choose which ones you want to read. Now, for instance, I have a feed for OSnews.com. I normally don't visit that site on my browser, but I read its feeds everyday. However, I use em in Thunderbird which also has RSS capabilities. The thing I love about Thudnerbird is that you get each feed like an e-mail. You read the title (or subject), click on it and it comes up on a pane below. If I want to read more, I open the article in MY BROWSER. Now, what's the point of reading a feed in your browser, when you can just VISIT THE FRICKIN SITE?
Anyway, I appluade IE7 on its features, I gave the pop-up blocker (which was implemented in earlier IE6) on a test run to see how it compared to Firefox's.
As you can see, IE7 did BETTER than Firefox, scoring 20/100 points higher. Now that's great as pop-ups (as we all know) are very annoying. BUT there's a little problem. Popups are NOT the only annoying thing on webpages. As you can clearly see above, there was this large Yahoo text ad smack in the middle off the results. That is, there was one in IE7. You see, many Firefox users use a little tool called Adblock.
Adblock is an AMAZING extension for Firefox that blocks a messload of ads and banners on many sites. If it doesn't block one by its deafult filter options (which are very powerful) you can always right click any image and add it to the list! Even Flash animations will have a small tab on the corner incase you want to block em. And if an image is blocked on accident, you can whitelist it/or the site it's on so that you can see it! :D Hopefully someone will port an Adblock-like add-on for IE, as it makes browsing mroe enjoyable when you don't have nagging flashing banners all over a site.
All in all, IE7 is pretty good. From IE6 it's a BIG step forward in the right direction. However, for users who have used Firefox properly it's still no match. To Firefox there is nothing new or extravagantly special about IE7. Even then, I'm glad IE7 will come out, and hopefully more people will use it then the older crap version they are currently using.
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