Microsoft has announced several new features for Internet Explorer 7, features that will be present in Beta 2.
On eof the biggest moves involves search, with IE supporting all manner of search engines. The IE team says they are working with Amazon to support OpenSearch in IE7, letting users populate IE with oodles of search engines. It will even parse sites without OpenSearch RSS feeds by parsing the HTML. Microsoft describes it like subscribing to your favorite search engines, just like you would to an RSS feed.
OpenSearch compatible engines already include IceRocket, the New York Times, About.com. Wikipedia, Flickr, Feedster, Creative Commons, NASA, Furl, Google search, IMDB, Findory, ESPN, Wired, ABC News, USA Today, The Washington Post, UPS Package Tracking; over 260 in total. That doesn’t mean all of those will let IE7 use their results, but they;d be stupid not to, and Microsoft is throwing a lot of weight behind the OpenSearch protocol.
Why is OpenSearch good strategically for Microsoft? Backing any sort of standard that does not belong to Google prevents Google from taking control of that standard, and give Microsoft more ability to compete and innovate opposite Google. It also means that, unlike with Firefox, Microsoft is using a standard that develops itself independent of the browser, and can thus let users add many search engines to IE without Microsoft having to code them all into the browser.
Microsoft has alos announced a QuickTabs feature, which displays live thumbnails by the tabs in the browser. This is a good feature present in AOL Explorer, and, so long as it doesn’t affect performance significantly, will only help the browser. If they aren’t already developing it, you will see Firefox copy this feature, no doubt about it.
Microsoft is also Making ActiveX opt-in, disabling all (even trusted) ActiveX plugins by default, and giving the user control over when and how they run. There will also be a web developer toolbar for both IE6 and IE7, just because it makes life easier.
(via Yahoo News)
UPDATE: Ars explains QuickTabs, and apparently they’re more analogous to Expose.
IE 7 has also gotten a bit of a face lift since its initial public beta. It now includes a feature dubbed “Quick Tabbing” which shows thumbnails of all open tabs in a tiled window and allows the user to choose a tab based off the thumbnail. While the idea is intriguing, personally I wouldn’t use it, only because I can switch through the tabs faster than I can browse thumbnails.
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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