The long awaited first beta of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer version 7 has surfaced, and some screenshots with it.
The beta is only going to be officially available to MSDN subscribers (so not public), but Microsoft have released a technical overview, offering details on the new features and bug fixes. You can find that on MSDN. If you’re a goitFatty and are allergic to proprietary file formats, I’ve created a PDF alternative [1.1MB].
The features list is pretty uninspiring, but until (read: unless) I get my hands on it I shan’t comment on the standards support and so forth. That kind of thing can’t and shouldn’t be judged from armchairs.
What I am concerned about though, is nicely demonstrated in the following screenshot:
Now, in the recent screenshots from Windows Vista beta 1, Microsoft have been messing about with the File menu a lot. They’ve moved it from its familiar position immediately underneath the title-bar to a position underneath the toolbar, sandwiched above the main window content.
Personally, I think such user interface destruction is blindly stupid from the off. But to include it in the IE7 for Windows XP version too (as they seem to have) is just crazy. It screws up Microsoft’s (already rather slim) User Interface rule-book and by moving one of the most familiar pieces of UI in the history of everything, they’re going to make IE7 and Vista a lot less intuitive.
Currently, although application windows can be moved around (and the File menu with it), the position of File is always the same, relative to the title bar (which is visually very distinct). By moving it underneath any number of toolbars, tabs and address bars though, the position is no-longer fixed. Toolbars can and do change in size; 3rd party toolbars added to the application will alter the position again. Then, consider that there is far less contrast between the newly positioned File menu and the other surrounding toolbars. Since there’s no big blue title bar adjacent to it as a visual anchor, your eyes have to search for the menu every time.
It’s inconsistent with every other application on Windows and will, I expect, frustrate a lot of people. I also expect the idea to get dropped very soon – much like the crappy sidebar from the 40xx series of Longhorn builds last year.
Small though it is, it’s bewildering design decisions like this that leave me increasingly concerned for the quality of Microsoft’s software.
Ben is a 24 year old Web Developer from Cambridge and is a computing graduate of the University of Manchester.