Unh, uhn. Don't GO THERE, girlfriend. You won't like it. Stay away from Internet Explorer 7 like it was the plague. Because it is. Tabbed browsing? Hah. You'll be the one pickin' up the tab, I can promise you that. Easy-to-access-RSS feeds? Yeah, right. As in Reboot, Sweat, Swear. Easily read fonts? Sweetheart, how clearly can you see when you're crying?
Look, I know this is a political blog, and some of you will question my writing this diary. But hey ...DailyKos is a computer blog. We're computer people. Some computer news affects us. And I wouldn't be a friend of this site and the fine people I've met here, unless I warned you: IE 7 is a frikkin nightmare.
I don't ask much out of life. I don't ask much of the world -- at least, not for myself. I live a small life, on a very limited income, no vacation trips (ever), no restaurants (ever), new clothes from thrift stores -- and eBay. But at least I have the internet. Through the internet, I have DailyKos, the New York Times (at least, the parts not blocked by the firewall), I have The Hermitage Museum, I have emails to friends I never actually get to see, and the family I rarely get the chance to visit.
Mind you, I have dial-up service. I live in an area so sparsely populated that ISPs choose not to offer broadband at all. So I have to be patient with my computer when I'm online at the best of times. It takes forever to load a page. A DKos diary with more than 200 or so comments is already balky, and a diary where people post pictures is a downright marathon. Forget YouTube and video files -- for the most part, that ain't gonna happen unless I have a couple of hours to spare downloading a 10-minute file (I kid you not).
But as I say, I have the internet, and I love the internet. It's a lifeline. All I ask is that my pages load within a reasonable number of minutes, that my browser stay open, and that my programs work.
So why Bill Gates can't manage my humble needs is a mystery to me. Because let me tell you right now: Internet Explorer 7 doesn't do any of these things. It now takes longer than ever to load a page. It crashes, or stalls, or hangs up -- or threatens to do so -- every single time you close a page. I mean: Every. Single. Time. You close a page and the whole desktop blinks and sputters like it's got a neurological disease. If it does crash, it kindly offers to send an error report -- and then, that crashes, too. I'm in my Task Manager dozens of times a day, now, just trying to "end program" for some stuck thing or another.
Worst of all, at year end my McAfee security suite needs to be renewed -- and guess which major security suite doesn't support IE 7? Because ...well ...why would Microsoft deign to coordinate its product with other major products?
IE 7 is a beta. It doesn't say so on the first or even the second page of the download (because, of course, Microsoft is too concerned with making you re-re-recertify that you're running genuine Windows than do something like explain what the frik they're recommending that you download.) But the beta is not intended for the normal, run-of-the-mill computer owner. It's intended for reviewers and such like, people who know enough -- and have the resources -- to deal with serious issues spawned (and I use that word advisedly) by this abortion.
And Microsoft certainly doesn't tell you what a bug-ridden, godforsaken, vicious little virus of a browser IE 7 is -- you don't find that out until 24 hours later, when you Google "Internet/Explorer/7 problems" or "IE7 buggy" -- and then, of course, you find the comments. By the hundreds.
Here: don't take my word for it. Try the reviews at CNET. On their scale of 1-to-10, IE 7 hasn't even gotten a five. What a piece of junk this code is!
I know I'll prolly get a few people who'll tout Mozilla -- and not try to sound too much like Dana Carvey dancing the Superior Dance while they're at it. But they'll have one thing right:
This browser is from Satan -- and it might even be the other way around!