The new IE7

Internet Explorer 7 is coming out before this week ends and there are some improvements from the previous version.

Aside from the tabbed browsing, It also boasts of having RSS feed directly from the browser, a search box in the corner which of course has Windows Live as main search provider and the improvement in security focusing more on fraudulent websites and online phishing scams.

But I read a review on Techcrunch. They have 10 things that they wish were different in how IE7 functions:

Useful RSS viewing

The option to click through one feed at a time falls far short of the potential that RSS offers and as things stand the feed view in IE 7 is just a way to look at one page at a time, perhaps with truncated entries and without page design. The option to automatically download enclosures is the only part of RSS that this implementation succeeds at.

One click RSS subscription

Believe it or not, when the browser detects a feed on a page you still have to view that feed and then chose to subscribe with another click. I fantasize about a day when I’ll be able to view all the feeds from the domain I’m at, but for now at least make it easy to quickly subscribe to.

Tagging and Online Access to Favorites

Tagging is useful. It’s how one item can be classified and thus discovered in multiple ways. Folders may be the preferred way to organize favorites or feeds for most people, but the option to view by tags would be very helpful. Likewise, online access to my favorites and feeds while away from my computer is something that everyone would appreciate. Watch some one’s eyes light up when you tell them that what we call social bookmarking lets them access their bookmarks from any computer.

Drag and Drop Organization

If you’re going to give me folders, at least make it easy for me to move items around in them. Most other online feed readers support this now.

Multimedia in the Feed Reader

Bloglines and some other feed readers now support viewing of video files inside their UI. IE 7 strips files like embedded videos from the feed reader view.

Social Annotation

IE has such market dominance that it only makes sense to let all those users communicate with each other about the pages they visit if they so chose. Take a page from StubleUpon or some of the many attempts to offer a wiki sidebar tied to each URL. It would be good if IE’s market share was able to be leveraged by users and not just as a means for Microsoft to profit.

P2P

Likewise, P2P can be powerful in the browser. See the newest version of Opera, it has BitTorrent baked in. I know - that couldn’t be more unrealistic from IE, but wouldn’t it make sense? Even a DRM locked down P2P system would be smart for much faster downloads.

See the FireFox plugin from AttentionTrust.org. The ability to capture, leverage and selectively expose our online activities will some day be considered a basic civil right. I know it’s fanciful but it would be great if Microsoft made more moves in that direction sooner rather than later.

Full Cross Platform IM Compatibility

Windows Live Messenger announced IM compatibility with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice in July. There are a limited number of other cross platform compatibilities that various IM providers have announced. The IM in IE7 doesn’t appear to even work with Yahoo! Why couldn’t they have just ended this charade and built or bought a cross platform IM program? Is that too much to ask?

Standards Compliance

IE 7 is reported to be the most standards compliant version of the browser yet, but it would be great if the bully attitude was dropped and full WC3 compliance was at least aimed for. Instead the web gets a warning that IE7 is coming and that everyone had better test their applications to see if they will work in the new browser. Standards create a common space in which to innovate, it’s that simple.

To read the full article, just visit Techcrunch - Ten Things I wish IE 7 was about to Deliver