Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Dumping Internet Explorer 7

I have been using Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) pretty much since it came out on my development VM. Today, it's no longer the default browser for a pretty simple reason. CTRL-clicking the back button does not open the previous history chain in a new tab. Why does this matter? I use it all the time doing research, Google for something, click on a result, then realize I want to go back to Google while staying with the current link, in Firefox CTRL-clicking on back does this, it's great. Not having this in IE7 is now a deal-breaker. Firefox 2 really doesn't have any features over Firefox 1.x that I care about, so it has been a disappointing release. IE7 has been pretty much fine, with the biggest con up till this point being the weird UI layout, I pretty much hate but adapted to it. The other great Firefox feature IE still doesn't have is the inline Find within the page, its excellent. That said, I still do most of my research in Safari.