By God IE7 is a mess. I did not blog about it yet, so here it goes.
Too many different button types.
By default, the menubar is gone. This makes IE7 not fit in with the rest of Windows. That sucks.
When you do enable the menubar, it sits underneath the location bar! What would happen if the steering wheel suddenly was placed above the front window? Err…
IE7 itself uses a completely different theme and icon set compared to the rest of Windows XP. It stands out like an eyesore. Bad.
They place the replacement for the menubar, a series of icons of which some are icon+label, and some just icon (at will, seemingly, luckily it can be altered), at the right of the tab bar? Why? What problem does it solve?
When you disable tabbed browsing (I hate tabbed browsing), the icon bar mentioned above moves to the left (sanity!), but now the unnatural order of location/menu/iconbar looks even weirder…
This is a UI disaster. IE6 may have been a bad browser security-wise, at least it made sense UI wise. This IE7 thing is simply a mess. UI-wise. I’ll never be able to use this weird unnatural layout, as it simply makes no sense. The most important part of your window (other than the actual content, which is more important than any other thing) needs to be located as much to the center as possible, and now, the most important parts in my browser experience (location bar and bookmarks bar) are located the furthest away from the center of the window! Argh!
you hate tabbed browsing? right :S
Comment by kwanbis — October 18, 2006 @ 10:29 pm
Use Firefox, and for full web experience, use Linux
Comment by kdo — October 18, 2006 @ 10:29 pm
It fits right into Vista, and alot of the new Microsoft apps also do not support the traditional menu bar.
Comment by jg1 — October 18, 2006 @ 10:37 pm
Linux makes a full web experience? Yeah, if you like non-standard buggy, inconsistent, and downright ugly “experiences”.
Comment by Hahahaha — October 18, 2006 @ 10:45 pm
…. and you have to validate your copy of Windows to install it.
That will stop a LOT of people from installing it ;-)
Comment by Anonymous1 — October 18, 2006 @ 10:48 pm
Hey, question, I found this blog originally because of your “What sucks about DEs” series on OSnews. Are you ever going to continue them? Windows Explorer was supposed to be up next, but never happened. I just thought maybe IE could be added as well. I may not agree with you on politics, but I really enjoy your computer related articles.
Comment by John S. — October 18, 2006 @ 10:52 pm
Have you tried it under Vista .. maybe that will put it into propective
Comment by Shawn — October 18, 2006 @ 11:46 pm
Everyone in this house uses Firefox 99% of the time, only occasionally do we need to use IE for some web sites… anywho… when will we be able to use Safari on a PC??? or can we and I just don’t know about it yet?
Comment by starfleet — October 19, 2006 @ 12:08 am
Yikes man. What Linux distro are you running? Linux web browsers don’t stick to standards? As in microsoft does a much better job, like with css just to give one example?
And buggy? Sure, but nobody claims Linux distros are perfect. Nobody sane is out there claiming Linux web browsers are perfect. But then again are users going to get trojans and whatnot just by browsing the web under Linux? This seems to happen quite a lot under windows with just regular user accounts. I suppose it could be that I’m just not as good at locking down plain old windows user accounts as I think I am. And actually that’s probably true now that I think about it, but that’s mainly because Windows defaults are so horrible, combined with the fact that Linux is so much easier to understand as compared to the black box that is Windows. Or heck, just chalk it up to market share or whatever if you want, but the fact remains that the Linux machines I take care of tend to remain pristine when compared to the Windows machines..
Inconsistant? Sure, I might give you that. Not that a particular Linux distro can’t be consistant if configured to be so, as when you stick to a particular distro and apps that happen to come with a particular desktop environment such as KDE. At any rate, you throw on winamp, nero, firefox, itunes, google earth, spyware blaster, microsoft office, and ad aware, and etc etc and your windows desktop is going to be anything but consistant. Heck, just sticking to pure microsoft applications you’ll still find some inconsistancies.
And then you say ugly, with the multitude of Linux distros out there do I really even need to comment on that nonsense?
Comment by Mathman — October 19, 2006 @ 12:12 am
Picking up on your comments about tabs and firefox…
Despite me not agreeing with you, I completely respect your opinion (it’s yours, you can do with it as you please), however the animated gif this page is sporting under the links on the right of your page is very childish and unprofessional.
Comment by Pete — October 19, 2006 @ 12:16 am
For all intents and purposes IE is a Vista app and not noting this makes the comments about the menu bar somewhat irrelevant and misinformed. The main reason it even works with XP is security and FireFox.
I don’t love the interface but I also have little use for the traditonal File>Edit etc. business which should have been jettisoned long ago. Also, not to mention any of it strengths is suspect. It has, by far, the best printing control of any other browser I have used both in the UI and in the results. Actually not getting tabbed browsing is REALLy suspect!
Comment by Pastco — October 19, 2006 @ 1:52 am
2Hahaha
Sorry, but your comments looks stupid.. No sense..
Linux IS for complete web experience, I agree with Mathman, I just don’t want to spend time answering to your comments, cause I see that you never saw any linux distro, just blaming like a kid :)
Comment by Phoenix49 — October 19, 2006 @ 3:21 am
What you have moaned and bitched about isn’t usability but personal opinion based on nothing more than, “oh, its not what I’m used to”.
Comment by kaiwai — October 19, 2006 @ 5:15 am
Linux Ugly - thats so yesterday!
Even my wife has switched to using Linux - one of the major reasons - She now finds XP too UGLY and hard to use. All too often XP breaks logical progression - take the start menu - Why on god’s green earth would some one decide to arange programs by the maker rather than by what they do.
I see that IE 7 is just following MS logic - doesn’t make sence to anyone else so lets do it. In reality I won’t get much chance to use it anyway - the only version of Windows I have left working is Win2K. Another great Idea - forced upgrades - The new stuff will not work on older systems. But I am not upgrading so for new software I guess I will have to stick to the OSS.
Comment by rsp — October 19, 2006 @ 5:35 am
Works for me!
The way I see it, microsoft have reduced clutter at the top to allow for more space for the actual view - which is exactly as it should be.
The forward and back buttons are in the same place as any other decent browser, as is the address.
Tabbed browsing is an absolute godsend - I think your the first person I’ve ever heard who has complained about this feature!
Yes, everyones entitled to their opinion and mine is to not agree with yours.
I’m more concerned about CSS support …
Comment by bb_matt — October 19, 2006 @ 6:54 am
Hell with the position of those bars. My problem is that you can’t change them ! Friggin’ stupid lameness. My god how angry it made me. In the first betas I thought ok, it’s an early beta, they’ll fix it. No, they didn’t. Then again, why should I care, the rare occasions I have to use IE don’t matter that much so it could look like any wierd abomination they’d would want it to look. On the other hand, for those blaming other browser for their lack of standards conformance… you simply don’t know what you’re talking about so go educate yourselves. All you get with IE7 is that you’ll need to learn new css and formatting tricks to make it behave like normal browsers should do, and that’s more wasted time and anger. And let’s not even talk about css2+, dom2, still activex xmlhttpreq, whatever.
Comment by l3v1 — October 19, 2006 @ 7:18 am
Your rant is absolutely pathetic. It is a GREAT idea to move the location bar to the top as it’s easiest to reach with the mouse, for those that use the mouse. It also saves on screen real estate, which is quite precious, if you remove unnecessary toolbars–something Firefox can’t do.
Finally, who cares if the style of IE7 is different to your XP? Big deal! It’s a separate application. Why don’t you judge the browser by some more relevant characteristics?
For the record, I am a full time Firefox user, but at least have an open mind to try something new and different!
Jonathan
Comment by Jonathan — October 19, 2006 @ 8:17 am
Because it should look like a native app and themable by the system? Even MS doesn’t care about different UIs and the missing accessibility and usability this brings…
Comment by Benjamin Lebsanft — October 19, 2006 @ 8:21 am
As much as I like Firefox overall, as much do I hate its memory leaks. It’s a mess.
IE7 looks like it’s a major improvement over IE6, especially when it comes to CSS. Great to see IE7 finally can handle PNG’s accordingly it seems.
Dunno, might switch back to IE with IE7 now. Or I better check out Opera or some other browser. Didn’t like Opera in the past.
Btw, I think tabs are the best thing since sliced bread, I am a mass tab user by heart. I can’t understand how someone can hate tabs. It’s like hating the CTRL+C/CTRL+V combo.
Comment by dreas — October 19, 2006 @ 8:37 am
What you have moaned and bitched about isn’t usability but personal opinion based on nothing more than, “oh, its not what I’m used to”.
Ah, the common excuse for people having trouble with fcuked up UIs.
It is common sense to have the important parts of your window located as much to the center (window content, the webpage in this case) as possible, since that way looking at and using those parts requires the smallest eye and mousemovement. In IE7, they completely disregard this obvious and simple thing, only for the sake of “being different”, because there is no other sane rationale to be found in this new UI.
A new UI is only good if it doesn’t require adaption. Take the Ribbon for instance in Office 2007; completely different, new, and fresh; yet it requires NO adaption at all, it is usable from the first second, and it requires no extra getting used to or whatever. THAT constitutes a good new UI.
Comment by Administrator — October 19, 2006 @ 9:21 am
How on earth can you hate tabbed browsing? What could IE7 possibly offer over IE6 if you don’t like tabbed browsing?
Comment by James McBane — October 19, 2006 @ 10:06 am
When you comment on the UI I may question your opinion, but when you say you hate tabbed browsing I have to question your sanity …
Comment by Phil — October 19, 2006 @ 11:57 am
If you have notes on why tabs are bad, put it as a link to your right hand icon.
Personally, I don’t understand why tabs are bad.
Right now, I’m using 4 browser windows with from 10-30 tabs each. When I close the browser, the tabs are saved. Load it up again, and everything is in place. Killing off groups of tabs is easy, too, so when I’m done researching an issue I just close the window.
It’s not manageable to do anything like that using single windows and a task bar.
Comment by Andy — October 19, 2006 @ 1:01 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more outside of the tabbed browsing. Microsoft CLEARLY has hired a top notch team of 13 year-olds to design the new UI–they just forgot to add the pink ponies background.
Comment by Anonymous Coward — October 19, 2006 @ 1:09 pm
you hate tabbed browsing? It would be nice to know your reasons becuase I’ve never understood ‘those people’ ;)
1) You like every link opening up in a new window? (insanity)
So then I’ll assume you like sticking everything and only conentrating on a single window? Honestly, it makes me 300x more productive at time-wasting, so I dunno how you can live without them. Have been using it for years on Opera and it really made too much sense years ago, and still does now, IMO.
Comment by joe — October 19, 2006 @ 1:53 pm
I hate tabbed browsing also. I understand a lot of people like it and I’m cool with that, everyone has a right to their opinion. As for why ‘us people’ don’t like it I’m not sure I speak for anyone else but really it offers NOTHING to me that a simple open new window in background option wouldn’t also offer. However using tabs instead of multiple instances negates the ability to view two or more windows at once. Sure you can ALSO have multiple windows WITH tabs but then what’s the point of the tab again? It is nice to be able to click on a link and have it open in the background, but again that could just as easily be done with instances instead of tabs without losing the ability to view pages side by side or multiple pages tiled, etc. I guess if you work on lower resolutions this isn’t much of a deal but on a high res desktop like mine tabs are just an annoyance. I have plenty of room for other windows and maximizing any one page just looks silly (LOTS of empty space). I’m not saying tabs never have a use but at present I do think they are highly over used.
Comment by Nick — October 19, 2006 @ 2:46 pm
Let’s save my problems with tabbed browsing for another blog post/OSNews article, ok?
Comment by Administrator — October 19, 2006 @ 3:23 pm
The UI is indeed a disaster.
Vista shmista. Normal folks want to see that menubar.
My clients have ALL — e.g. 100% — asked me to roll their machines back to IE6. NOT A SINGLE ONE of them likes the new UI.
Peter Principle must’ve been working overtime at MS to get the proper UI folks into position to make this one so execrable.
— stan
Comment by Stanley Krute — December 26, 2006 @ 4:45 pm