Internet Explorer & Outlook Express

After abandoning Internet Explorer development for years, Microsoft earlier this year reconstituted the Internet Explorer development team, presumably after witnessing the success of Mozilla's Firefox browser.

Windows Vista will feature the Internet Explorer 7 browser, which is currently also being tested and developed for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003.

As with most of Windows Vista, Internet Explorer isn't close to the final product that we should see in Windows Vista by the time it ships, but some interesting features are already available. For one, Internet Explorer finally has support for tabbed browsing! Tabbed browsing is a feature that most users love, and probably the single greatest reason why so many users defected to using other browsers (notably Mozilla's Firefox). Microsoft's implementation of tabs looks to be well thought out. Next to the rightmost tab, there's a button that functions to open a new blank tab when clicked, and tabs can be opened and closed using the keyboard commands CTRL+T and CTRL+W respectively (Figure). For users who don't like tabbed browsing, it can be switched off from Internet Explorer's Advanced Options (Figure).

Like the search box at the top of Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer has a search box at the top of its window. The default search engine is MSN Search (what else?), but you can choose from several search engines for the default search. Right now the following engines are included: AOL search, Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo! Search (Figure). According to Microsoft users will be able to add their own favorite search engine in a future release.

Internet Explorer 7 also includes support for RSS feeds, and there's a "feed discovery" button on the toolbar. When you navigate to a Web site that includes an RSS-based subscription, the Feeds toolbar button lights up red (Figure), although this is easy to miss. There is an option under Internet Options > Content > Feeds discovery which also lets you assign a sound effect to the discovery of feeds. You can click the button to see the RSS feed rendered right in Internet Explorer, without the need for a 3rd party feed-reader (Figure). At the top of the feed, you'll also see an Add to Favorites button, which adds the feed to Internet Explorer's favorites list.

Internet Explorer 7's printing feature is also being overhauled. It finally includes an option to "Shrink to fit" (Figure), so that a Web page fits completely onto a printed page, a feature common in most browsers today.

Another new feature that Internet Explorer 7 will have is a Phishing Filter. Phishing is usually defined as the act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an legitimate business (for example a bank or Internet Service Provider) in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as credit card-, social security-, and bank account-numbers. These Web sites are bogus and set up only to steal the user's information.

According to Microsoft, the average "life span" of a Phishing Web site is around 5 days (meaning that it takes authorities usually around 5 days to discover and disconnect these sites). In 5 days, a lot of users can fall victim to these sites, and managed security vendor MessageLabs logged over nine million Phishing attacks in May, over three times the number in April.

So Microsoft enlisted the help of WholeSecurity, a maker of computer security programs in Austin, Texas, to help Internet Explorer 7 identify websites designed to trick people into disclosing personal data to identity thieves.

The Phishing filter is not in Beta 1 of Windows Vista's Internet Explorer, but is currently being tested in the Beta 1 of Internet Explorer for Windows XP SP2, and will be included in the Beta 2 version of Windows Vista.

Another nice little addition is the Delete Browsing History menu item on the Tools menu of Internet Explorer (Figure). This lets you delete all your Web browsing history (cookies, history, web form data and passwords, and temporary files) with just a single click.

I also found the addition of a link to Internet Explorer (No Add-ons) in the Windows Vista Start menu (under Accessories > System Tools). This launches Internet Explorer with all add-ons (such as ActiveX controls and toolbars) turned off (Figure). Presumably this "version" of Internet Explorer can be used if your system has been compromised, and Internet Explorer is prevented from running normally.

Microsoft also intends to update Outlook Express. And while Beta 1 of Windows Vista still includes the version 6 of Outlook Express, one change is noticeable right away: the addition of a Junk E-mail folder, so Outlook Express will finally get some of the much needed junk email filtering from its bigger brother Microsoft Outlook (Figure).

Another small "nugget" I found is for some of the email "purists" out there: Outlook Express will (finally some would say!) include a setting that let you put your reply to the bottom of a message (Figure).

There is obviously much more to write about, and one thing that I will have a closer look at is the new User Account Protection features, also known as "running as least privileged user", but I'll try to cover some other aspects of the new OS going forward. You have to remember though that much of what's in Beta 1 today will change, and Microsoft expects that Beta 2 will be more "feature complete", so that would be the time to specifically look more closely at some of the interface features of Windows Vista.

Conclusions

Overall this first Beta of Windows Vista looks and feels very nice. As I've stated a few times now though, this is hardly the final look we can expect to see, so keep in mind that things will change.

The thing that did surprise me most was the performance of Windows Vista on the same hardware that I've been running Windows XP on for some years now. It is generally not the case that early betas are tuned for performance, but this beta seems to be running faster then Windows XP does on the same hardware. All the more surprising if you consider all the extra graphic effects built into the GUI.

It took Microsoft a long time to get here (Beta 1), but at least the next Windows operating system is showing some promising signs! It should get interesting by the time Beta 2 comes along!

Give your comments on this article.          E-mail This Page

Previous Page