Want Info on IE7 Beta1?

Download the technical overview doc here.

Key features:

• Anti-phishing (enhancements to the security status bar to alert users to issues with site certs, maintains a list of known phising sites and warns the user, etc);
• 1-click cleanup of browser history;
• Tabbed browsing! (sigh). Number 1 requested feature. Personally, I think it's overrated. The IE team had to make a lot of changes to the IE codebase to add this; I'm sure I'll learn to love it;
• Toolbar search. Integrated, extensible searching built into the toolbar;
• Improved printing;
• A "Cleaner, Sleeker UI" - they've monkied around with the toolbars; the Back /Forward buttons now sit to the left of the address bar; the stop and refresh buttons have been combined and now sit where the little green "Go" button used to be (i.e., to the right of the address bar); next comes the tabbed browsing tabstrip, finally, the menu (that used to be right at the top) & the toolbar with smaller buttons to maximise screen real estate. Frankly, it looks a little odd... and I've heard that not all the UI enhancements are in beta1... we must wait for beta2 (incidentally, this is also true of Win Vista itself, so I guess they're still working on Aero Glass & we have to wait a little longer to see it);
• RSS Support - discovery & subscription, & more features slated for beta2;
• Not much on developer features, but apparently there's better CSS & transparent png support;

Finally, a lowdown of how all those project codenames have changed:

• "Longhorn" - Windows Vista (apparently MS want us to pronounce this "veesta", but sod that) - actually, I quite like the name, but don't confuse it with Vista Windows, or, er... Vista Windows;
• "Avalon" - Windows Presentation Foundation (yawn);
• "Indigo" - Windows Communication Foundation (yawn, yawn, yawn);
• Direct3D 10 - Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0 (WGF2);
• "ClickOnce" - they were going to give this a swanky new name... trouble is, they couldn't think of anything swankier than "ClickOnce", so that's what it will be called.