It's The Security, Stupid

The sheer amount of security holes and obvious flaws in previous versions of Internet Explorer are a major part of the reason why so many people in the know have migrated to other browsers of late. Apart from the fact that their lack of popularity (on the whole) makes other browsers less likely to suffer malicious attacks specifically aimed at them; the fact that browsers like Opera and Firefox don't have the likes of ActiveX enabled as standard makes them inherently difficult to exploit in the old obvious ways.

Microsoft has figured this out and IE7 has ActiveX controls disabled in most scenarios. You can be prompted to activate them when they're available, which is a much better option than clicking a link and finding your machine on a swift road to rebuild as IE allowed ActiveX controls to kick in by default.

A number of the new security features, such as Protected Mode which runs the browser in a special privileged access mode regardless of the privileges available on a machine to prevent malware from gaining admin privileges, will only be available with Windows Vista. Such functions should be a major bonus to the security of IE7 if Microsoft delivers as promised. More tangible at this stage is the Anti-Phishing filter.

Phishing has become an unfortunately common word these days. Users are doped into giving out their banking and credit card details, among other vital data we should all keep to ourselves, and the practice has been costing quite a bit of late. The filter in IE7, which users are prompted to turn on during the install, uses algorithms to determine if a site is genuine. For example if your banks website has been attacked and spoofed by an identical looking phishing site, set out to trap your details, then IE7 promises figure this out and warn you.

One browser to rule them all

At this stage IE7 is shaping up to be a much better browser all-round than its predecessors. The integration of tabbed browsing and RSS feeds will probably see these features propelled to new heights as IE's giant market share are introduced to their delights. Of course this means that we geeks will have to find something else to prove that we're on the cutting edge, but the likes of Firefox will probably be very capable with extensions.

Early adopters and geeks probably won't be going to IE7 when it's released. This is partly because it just wouldn't be fashionable and it is partly because these two browsers, and the multitude of smaller browsers quietly being developed, will remain at the cutting edge.

Opera's Thomas Ford summed it up when he told me "IE7 is Microsoft's attempt to catch up with the market. They're adding features found in other browsers, such as tabbed browsing and anti-phishing technology." He is right to say that IE7 is catch-up work, but I don't agree with his assertion that "Users who want to stay in step with the evolution of the Web consistently choose Opera." Sure, many users are willing to stay with niche browsers and all their cool new innovations. But the reason that Microsoft has remained at over the 80% market share is because Joe User is not prepared to go that far out on a limb to change browser.

It may be true that Microsoft is simply playing catch-up, but even with the likes of Firefox and Opera, with their excellent RSS support, tabbed browsing a security features, have been gaining momentum and heaped upon with praise the market share they have gained has mainly been in the early adopter crowd.

All Microsoft has to do is play catch-up in order to satisfy the more casual users who will be happy to have all of this stuff late and integrated into their operating system. The likes of Firefox and Opera have prompted IE to evolve, but browsers in general will only ever properly evolve when the market leader comes onboard.

In all IE7 is shaping up nicely, to the extent that if we had got this a year or so ago the upstarts would probably have been stifled. Though I suppose it is a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg - the new browsers have essentially prompted what we now have in IE7.

Microsoft is promising a consumer beta fairly soon, as this current beta is not for the faint of technical heart. Should you so desire it you can download the beta here.