I downloaded an installed the October CTP of Window's Vista. With the installation complete the first thing I wanted to see was the new build of Internet Explorer 7. I had heard there would be some interesting new features since IE 7 was announced early this year and I've been egging to see them in action.

The main difference between this build and Beta 1 is obvious as soon as you launch IE. It now has elements of Vista's Aero theme.

One of the big "features" of Vista is it's handling of RSS feeds. RSS feeds are now managed by the OS and not just by the browsers. Vista provides APIs to manage and access RSS feeds. When you visit a site that has an RSS feed the RSS logo lights up in the top right hand corner. This behaviour is the same as Firefox but I think the icon is more obvious. You can click the RSS icon and it will bring you to the actual XML RSS feed however, unlike Firefox it's very nicely formatted and not just raw XML. However the only think I feel is missing is an subscribe link. In Firefox clicking the RSS link gives you the subscribe option. In IE 7 however you have to add it to your favourites. It adds it to the feeds part. I hope they add a similar short cut to IE 7.

The search pane is identical to that provided in Firefox. You can select various engines but it's not as populated as Firefox. You can manage the available engines but you can't add new ones. I think that would be a nice feature. I have a feeling that these links might be automatically updated by IE but that's just speculation.

Printing looks looks a lot better. The print option now actually fits the HTML to the page so no more half printed pages.

And I've saved the best for last! Firefox and Opera have had tabbed browsing for quite a while now and this was one of IE's biggest critisisms. Microsoft released the MSN toolbar which retro-fitted tabbed browsing into IE 6 but it was only a temporary measure. Microsoft took tabbed browsing, integrated it into IE7 and made it better. They created Quick Tabs! This is a fantastic feature that I can see being introducted into future versions of Opera and Firefox. When you have more than one tab open a new icon appears to the left of the address bar. Clicking it presents you with a thumbnail view of all the open tabs. You then click on a thumbnail and it brings you to the correct tab.

Another new feature is the Phishing filter that was introduced in IE 7 Beta 1. The phishing filter works in two ways. Firstly, Microsoft will keep a database of suspected Phishing URLs and secondly it looks at the format of URLs for known Phishing methods. You can run a check on each URL manually if you think it's unusual or you just want to confirm the validity of a URL. Alternatively you can switch on an auto-checking feature. This will then submit every URL to Microsoft for validation. More information can be found at the IE Blog.

Lastly I'd like to comment on the look of IE 7. I think it looks very well with the Aero theme. The tabs have this spooky blue translucency to them. This will probably change as the Vista "Experience" evolves over the next couple of months. I've added a gallery at http://developers.ie/blogs/tmcguinness/gallery/161.aspx

IE 7 will be available for XP SP2 later this year and it will be probably be bundled with Vista when it gets released next year.