Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 - first thoughts

I downloaded a copy of the latest beta version of Internet Explorer 7 released yesterday at MIX and while I think there are some nice improvements, there appears to still be some work needed before this will ready for prime time. Jim Rapoza at eWEEK gives the new beta a brief review and has posted a nice selection screen shots showing the evolution of the user interface. A few new features have been added since the last beta like page sharing tools and a better interface for managing RSS feeds.

I had mixed luck installing the beta. It simply refused to install on a test bed Virtual PC machine running an up-to-date installation of Windows XP Pro. I had better luck installing it on my working system and the uninstall rolls back to IE 6 just as gracefully as the previous beta.

I can't recommend using this as an all-day, every-day browser unless you're comfortable rebooting and/or killing processes in the Task Manager but if you're curious about where  Microsoft is headed with their browser, you might want to take this beta for a spin.