These are new options in ie7
The Beta 2 Version of Internet Explorer 7 continues the ongoing Internet Explorer commitment to provide enhanced security and privacy, increased compatibility with industry standards, additional browser features, and improved usability for platform developers.
Building on the broad success of Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 focuses on three key areas:
Dynamic Security Protection:Internet Explorer 7 takes security to a new level with new functionality that helps thwart malicious software, as well as protect users against data theft from fraudulent Web sites. Additionally, Internet Explorer 7 gives users full control over adding functionality to their browsing experiences, allowing for safe and easy add-on functionality while avoiding inadvertent downloads of unwanted software.
Everyday Tasks Made Easier and Faster:Internet Explorer 7 was redesigned with new and enhanced capabilities, making it even more productive for today's savvy Internet users. Internet Explorer 7 focuses on making the tasks people do every day such as searching, browsing multiple sites, and printing easier and faster. The toolbar search box contains MSN Search; you can modify the search bar to include AOL search, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo Search.
Improved Platform for Web Development and Manageability:Enhancements to the Internet Explorer 7 display engine allow Web developers to create attractive and functional Web sites more easily, while maintaining the ability to browse existing Web content. The new Really Simple Syndication (RSS) platform support also allows other applications to integrate with the browsing experience. Additionally, Internet Explorer 7 makes it easier for network administrators to centrally deploy and manage Internet Explorer for large numbers of users.
Developer (SDK)
Here is a summary of the major changes in Internet Explorer 7 of particular interest to the Internet Explorer Developer Community. The Information Index for Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, located in the IE Developer Center , provides topical links to the total Internet Explorer 7 documentation set.
RSS FeedsInternet Explorer 7 RSS feeds help you access information quickly and directly on the Web, using automatic discovery of new feeds on Web pages, basic Web feed reading ability and basic support for saving Web feeds as favorites. Developers and IT administrators can use the Web feeds API to manipulate the set of feeds to which users are subscribed (Common Feed List). See Windows RSS Platform .
Microsoft Phishing FilterInternet Explorer 7 includes functionality to help protect users against phishing attacks from hostile sites. A complete Phishing Filter, including the ability for system administrators to set group policy for the entire network, is on available on Internet Explorer 7 for all platforms.
Ultimately, developers of well-behaved Web sites can benefit greatly from the Phishing Filter, because it minimizes the negative effects of phishing sites on the reputation of the Internet, and users will come to trust legitimate Web sites because of the added control they have over their environment.
Protected ModeInternet Explorer 7 Protected Mode, which runs only on Microsoft Windows Vista, is part of the continuing emphasis on improved browser security in Internet Explorer. Protected Mode helps reduce the severity of threats to both Internet Explorer and extensions running in Internet Explorer by eliminating the ability to silently install malicious code through software vulnerabilities. It takes advantage of the Microsoft Windows Vista Integrity mechanism and User Interface Privilege Isolation (UIPI) to block interaction from Internet Explorer with higher integrity applications system resources.
Protected Mode also includes compatibility features that allow most extensions to continue running unaffected and provide impacted extensions with feasible implementation options.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)Internet Explorer 7/Transport Layer Security (TLS) makes it easier to determine whether Web transactions are secured by SSL or TLS. A security report icon now appears to the right of the address bar when you view a page using a Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS) connection. Clicking this icon displays a report describing the certificate used to encrypt the connection and the certifying authority that issued the certificate. The security report also provides links to more detailed information.
Microsoft ActiveX Opt-InInternet Explorer 7 disables all ActiveX controls which were not used in Internet Explorer 6. When users encounter an ActiveX control for the first time, they will see a gold bar asking if they want to use the control. Users can then choose to allow or prevent running the control.
By default, the ActiveX Opt-in does not apply to Intranet and Trusted Site zones. New controls on those zones, along with a list of preapproved controls, also run without prompting.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) UpdatesInternet Explorer 7 features improved CSS, Level 2 (CSS2) support for Selectors (first-child, adjacent, attribute and child selectors) and Fixed Positioning. In addition, the :hover pseudo-class now functions on all CSS elements, and background attachment works as well. Internet Explorer 7 also includes fixes for many issues with CSS. The Internet Explorer 7 team concentrated on changes of most concern to developers, as gathered from community Web sites and from feedback in the IE blog. For example, we fixed the majority of bugs reported on the Position is Everything Web site. (You can follow the link to see specific bug details.)
Portable Network Graphics (PNG)Internet Explorer 7 adds support for Alpha Channel Transparency to PNG so that Web designers can implement innovative and complex overlaid graphical designs.
XMLHTTP Native SupportInternet Explorer 7 implements a version of XMLHTTP that is a native scriptable object instead of an object. Users can now have ActiveX controls switched off and still maintain a client-side connection with a server so that dynamic transactions using Extensible Markup Language (XML) data can continue to run in the background. This allows new dynamically retrieved data to be inserted into a current, otherwise static, HTML page.
Internationalized Domain Name (IDN)Internet Explorer 7 includes complete support for RFC-3490 on Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) in all browser functions. This support is implemented in a way that ensures a consistent level of browser security across languages.
Tabbed BrowsingInternet Explorer 7 adds the ability to set up tabs as a way to organize and manage groups of Web pages. Users can set up, open, and preserve a tab, an individual page, or a combination of both.
Internet Explorer 7 has also combined your Favorites, History, and Web Feeds into one simple menu. Users can dock this menu and use the new open in tabs control to open a folder of Favorites in Tabs.
HTML 4.0.1 SupportInternet Explorer 7 recognizes the ABBR tag from HTML 4.0.1. The tag supports all of the elements that other tags support and can be styled with CSS. Internet Explorer also supports nested objects. If an OBJECT is nested within another OBJECT, only the outermost OBJECT that can be instantiated is rendered. In Internet Explorer 6 all objects are rendered and the next opening OBJECT is considered a closure for the previous one. For more information, see the HTML 4.01 Specification
Select ElementThe Select control in Internet Explorer 7 is now a windowless control. This change enables z-order and zoom to work correctly. The HTML and Document Object Model (DOM) for Select remain the same.
Web developers and end users continue to interact with Select as before. However, because Select is no longer a windowed control, applications that rely on getting an HWND from Select to use with Microsoft Win32application programming interfaces (APIs) need to be modified to use the DOM.
Compatibility in Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2
This section describes some possible compatibility challenges in Internet Explorer 7 and specifies functionality available to help developers deal with incompatibilities. See the Information Index for Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, located in the IE Developer Center , for details on these topics.
Application Compatibility LoggingApplication Compatibility logging allows Internet Explorer 7 IT Professionals and Developers to discover incompatibilities between Internet Explorer 7 and older versions of Internet Explorer running on Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). It works with Windows Application Compatibility , implemented in Internet Explorer 6.
User Agent StringThe version token in the user agent string for Internet Explorer 7 is set for MSIE 7.0 for all beta releases. Web developers should check to make sure their Web sites can access the new User Agent String value. If you encounter problems accessing a Web site after you install Internet Explorer 7, check the site's use of UA strings early in troubleshooting.
Notification of Clipboard Access from ScriptsInternet Explorer 7 notifies users, by default, if scripts in the Internet, Trusted, or Restricted Sites Zones attempt to read or write to the user's clipboard.
ScriptletsInternet Explorer 7 disables Dynamic HTML (DHTML) scriptlets, by default. (Scriptlets were deprecated in Internet Explorer 5). They can be reenabled by system administrators, changing URLActions with the Internet Control Panel (INetCPl.) The INetCPL text should read "Allow Scriptlets." If your programs rely on scriptlets, we recommend that you use DHTML behaviors which are more efficient. Disabling scriptlets was part of our continued work to ensure that unsupported technology is deemphasized in Internet Explorer.
Status Bar UpdateInternet Explorer 7 limits the ability of Web pages to use scripts to write information in the status bar. This ability is restricted by default in the Internet zone and is subject to user-configurable settings in security zones. This is part of the work to ensure that users are not misled by Web pages. Calls to window status will silently fail in cases where updates are not allowed.