IE7 and why it’s worth upgrading.
The new version of Internet Explorer has security enhancements and
and the most important thing for me, IE7 inproves my daily experience
with the Internet. I now get tabs, a search box, a page zoom and much
better printing control.
Tabs
My screen desk is similar to my real desk where I like to have lots of
things available at once, and have them just a paper-shuffle away. Tabs
have given me that on my screen. Instead of the bottom bar being full of
internet windows (all of which I need to stay open) there is just one…The
rest of the bottom bar can fill up with the mailbox, open mail, word
documents, application programmes and all the other stuff of day to day
work. Along the top bar of my one Internet window I can see all the
different sites I have open. They are listed as tabs at the top, or if I
forget which one is which (sometimes those page names are meaningless!) with
just a click I can choose a drop down with the full site and page names or a
thumbnail picture of each of the pages. And if I get a phone call with a
query that needs yet another site opened, adding a new page tab is much
faster than my old method of opening another Internet window.
Tabs can also be grouped together so a whole set of like sites open up with
one click of a tab group in the favourites list. I have just set up my home
tab so when I launch IE7, it automatically opens my online calendar, my time
sheet recorder, our development server and a Google page – the four sites I
need first thing every day.
The Search Box
The search box lets me choose my favourite search engine and
search directly from the open page with results displayed in the existing
page or a new one.
Page Zoom
Zoom down squishes lots into your monitor. Zoom up makes the text on a
webpage bigger, which is really handy for those of us finding the text on
websites getting very small these days.
Control over Printing
Its now much easier to print from Internet Explorer. Pages no longer
disappear off the printer – you can choose “shrink to fit” to ensure
everything is printed. Alternatively you can choose a percentage size for
the printing. The margins are live on the print preview and can be shifted.
Another nice feature is the option to print only selected text – no longer
are you forced to print everything on a webpage around your key bit of
information.
Clearer Text
Every page on the Internet, now looks better to me because the text is
much clearer. The fonts in IE and Outlook Express look different because IE7
has changed their text rendering to use Clear Type which is another method
for rendering text on LCD Monitors. It can be turned off if you have a CRT
monitor or don’t like it.
The move to IE7 has been a good experience for me…I recommend you look
into it too.
You can download IE7 from the microsoft website
www.microsoft.com
© Spiral Web Design Limited
November 2006
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