[guispeak] Microsoft Unveils IE 7 Beta 2 Features
- From: "Christopher McMillan" <chrismcmillan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <guispeak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 17:17:51 -0400
Microsoft Unveils IE 7 Beta 2 Features
By Gregg Keizer, TechWeb News
September 14, 2005 (1:58 PM EDT)
URL: http://www.techweb.com/wire/170703182
The Internet Explorer development team has revealed details of upcoming key
features that will land in the next beta of IE 7.
Among the features demonstrated Tuesday at a Microsoft Professional Developer
Conference presentation, then outlined on the IE team's blog, were Quick Tabs
and Page Zoom.
The former, wrote Chris Wilson, an IE 7 developer, lets users view and manage
tabs -- IE 7 sports a tabbed interface, similar to the one Firefox and Opera
have had for some time -- with a live thumbnail view of all tabs. Page Zoom,
meanwhile, allows users to zoom in on text and graphics of Web pages.
Other new features, said Wilson, will include something he dubbed "ActiveX
Opt-in," that will set most ActiveX controls (even those already installed) as
disabled by default. Users can selectively enable controls as necessary.
ActiveX controls take the blame for many of IE's security woes, with both
malicious code and spyware/adware using ActiveX, and vulnerabilities in it, to
install themselves on PCs.
Microsoft's IE team, said Wilson, is also working with Amazon.com's A9 search
development group on an update to the latter's OpenSearch standard --
OpenSearch 1.1 -- that will "allow users to easily populate their search engine
of choice" in IE 7.
Wilson also reiterated how Microsoft is stressing a protected mode for IE when
on Windows Vista (but not Windows XP), which will reduce security threats,
particularly "drive-by installs" used by malicious Web sites, by isolating the
browser from all other applications and processes, and making it impossible for
IE to write to any file without user consent.
The first betas of Internet Explorer 7 -- in two versions, one for Vista, the
other for XP -- were released the last week of July. Beta 2's release date has
not been set; Microsoft has only said it would be later this year.
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