I just installed the IE 7 Beta Preview on my system at work, and thought I would write a wee blurb about it.

Installation:

Badly designed install screen and took ages to install on my 2.8ghz system.
First Impression:

• Very pretty. Kind of a toss up between Firefox and Safari for Macintosh.
• Lots of potentially confusing popups for the novice user, about turning on phishing protection, updating security settings, etc. Only time will tell if these will actually make for a more secure browser.

Pros:

• Seems to be rendering CSS better. I have not tested alpha-layer transparency for PNGs yet.
• Has the option to set to “classic menu”
• All the “Internet Options” remain pretty well the same as 6.0, so no major techsupport headaches.

Cons:

• Finding the “Tools” menu might be difficult for the novice user.
• Even when in “Classic” menu view, the address bar is located about the menu by default.
• I do not like the tabbing design, with the “new tab” button situated after the tabs.

I haven’t used it for long, so I am sure I will have more input after a bit. :)