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What is Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer is a robust upgrade to Microsoft's popular Internet Explorer 6 web browser. Microsoft introduces several innovative features to make the browser more secure and fun to use. Web developers get a performance boost as well.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, and it was their first browser optimized to work with Windows XP. Awareness of possible internet security issues was growing at the time, and Microsoft stepped up to the plate.

Microsoft Shows Users Some Love

IE 7 sports a new RSS reader, an automatic search box, a phishing filter to protect users against scams, and better control over ActiveX web components. The browser also benefits from new search providers, in addition to the traditional MSN search. Users can also ensure that add-ins are safe based on the contents of the gold information bar at the top of the screen. Internet Explorer 7 also includes tabbed browsing, a feature often requested by users. Finally, users can delete their browsing history with one step, as opposed to the multi-step process required by IE 6.

Developers Get Some Goodies, Too.

Internet Explorer 7 took some steps to further implement HTML 4.1, but it is not fully standards compliant. IE 7 is able to handle nested items properly, supports the "abbr" tag, and supports the alpha channel for transparency in PNG image files. IE 7 also provides better support for zip and deflate compression methods to reduce data transfer size with web servers. Finally, Internet Explorer 7 offers increased support for CSS 2, including child properties.

The Dark Side

With these new features, Internet Explorer might initially seem the browser of choice. That might have been a valid conclusion in 2006 and 2007. Today,however, there are several reasons to choose another browser.

First, Microsoft no longer supports Internet Explorer. That means any security holes found in the browser will not be patched. Secondly, Internet Explorer 7 was written in a time of less sophisticated hackers and security breaches. Its weaknesses are known to today's hacking community, and hackers will use any flaw to their advantage.

Finally, Internet Explorer 7 doesn't have full support for HTML 4.1 or HTML 5. It doesn't know how to handle many of the new HTML tags, making some sites look and behave poorly.

Easy Solutions

Internet Explorer was a great browser in its day, but its time has passed. So what can a savvy internet user do at this point?

If the computer is running Windows XP, try upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 or Firefox. If the computer is running Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8, try upgrading to Internet Explorer 11. Firefox and Google Chrome would work as well.

Pros

• -Tabbed browsing
• -Phishing filter
• -Easy browser history deletion
• -Nice RSS reader

Cons

• -No longer supported by Microsoft
• -Weak security protection by today's standards
• -Poor implementation of current HTML and CSS standards