IE7

Ars Technica’s report on the latest beta of Internet Explorer 7 makes for an interesting read. It appears that the best that Microsoft can do is replicate features that have been available on other web browsers for years:

• Tabbed browsing (pretty much every browser except IE);
• Graphical representations of the content of open tabs (OmniWeb, Firefox with the Showcase or foXpose extensions);
• RSS feed support (OmniWeb, Firefox, Opera, Safari - just about everyone but IE, come to think of it);
• Tab Groups allowing you to open several pages at once (ditto);
• Better printing support (heh);
• An anti-phishing filter (particularly useful when your browser is the number one vector for malware on home PCs).

It’s a classic illustration of what happens when a convicted monopolist gets off lightly: Microsoft don’t need to actually make a better browser when they can rely on their operating system’s market share to keep them at 90% market share, so they don’t bother.

Remember, folks: IE Sucks.

(I apologise in advance that comments don’t work on that last entry, and that the page formatting is fairly screwed up. Note to self: figure out how to import those Movable Type weblog entries into WordPress, or at least remove the markup from the static pages so that people don’t waste their time trying to post comments. And fix the CSS so it matches the current theme.)