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IE7's do no evil approach
Looks like Microsoft got it right with its IE7 browser that was made available as a public beta today.
The first time a user launches the application, he is presented with a welcome screen asking him about three settings: phishing, language and quality feedback. The first and last one send information back to Microsoft, and therefore are switched off by default. So even if you're too lazy busy to read the page, you'll still get the most privacy conscious settings available.
Microsoft also deserves credit for making Yahoo and not MSN Search the default search engine. But for some reason you need to manually add Google to the search options before you can make it the default engine. And I wouldn’t be surprised that the MSN becomes the default engine as soon Microsoft marketing gets involved.
Lastly, the second page you visit (the one after the configuration screen) has an html error (error box displayed below). It's on Microsoft.com. Oops.
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Update 5:49 pm.
I had to uninstall the application because it failed to work with our webbased content management system (CMS).
That brings forward the most important set-back about this application: you can't run IE6 next to IE7: one will overwrite the other. And since IE7 is in beta, that sucks because you'll effectively lose you stable browser if you want to test the unstable one.
Yet another related problem was that the CMS kept acting up even after I uninstalled IE7. Only after clearing out the chache and browser history would it function properly.
Privacy by default (click image for larger version)
But the html on the ie7 tour page still needs some work. (click image for larger version)
Tags: internet explorer, ie7, microsoft
January 31, 2006 at 08:14 PM | Permalink
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Comments
When I installed the IE7 beta, I got Google as the default search engine. I suspect that the browser is picking up on youtr existing OS-defined default search engine. If you had previously installed the Yahoo! searchbar, then Yahoo! was probably your default. No matter, like Firefox, IE7 lets you download a slew of search plug-ins.
Posted-by: jake | 1 Feb 2006 01:43:48
Yes, this article is completely incorrect.
Posted-by: Charles | 1 Feb 2006 20:26:42
Yes, this article is completely incorrect.
Posted-by: Charles | 1 Feb 2006 20:27:20
RE: Jake.
I've never installed the Yahoo Search Toolbar and MSN is set as the default search engine for Internet Explorer 6 - I never changed it because I use Firefox for 99.9 pct of my browsing (the 0.1 pct being sites that don't work in Firefox).
Looks like Microsoft uses random settings for the default search engine to test the search box plugins?
Posted-by: SV Sleuth | 7 Feb 2006 01:27:33
I don't know what the criteria for setting the default search bar is, then. Perhaps there's a registry setting? It's also quite possible that when installing Yahoo! Messegner or even a third party tool such as Acrobat Reader a registry entry got set for Yahoo!
Posted-by: Jake | 14 Feb 2006 03:45:16
Making yahoo as the default search engine is commendable after we had seen what msn search was like in the last few years ..
Posted-by: squire | 11 Mar 2006 20:11:17
Spanish
