Peter Griffin: Time will tell for Microsoft

If you're reading this column on the internet, there's an 84.7 per cent chance you will be using Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser to do so.

Despite numerous security exploits and nimble rivals coming up with better features, Internet Explorer is still the king of the browsers.

Much of that continuing dominance is down to customer inertia. After all, if you haven't been stung by an annoying web browser hijack and IE 6 opens your web pages without crashing (miracles do happen), why would you switch to a competitor?

Just about every new computer ships with copies of Internet Explorer and Windows XP pre-installed. With the vast majority of people's first experience of the net coming courtesy of Microsoft, something generally has to go wrong to make the average computer user switch to the rival's version.

But let's put that 84.7 per cent market share figure in context. This time last year it was 88.6 per cent, according to web research company Net Appliances. Three years ago it was closer to 95 per cent. People are switching to its main rival's version at an accelerating rate.

Mozilla's Firefox web browser has eaten into Microsoft's market share considerably and it's not just because Internet Explorer has developed a reputation for being less than secure.

Firefox's jump in market share in the last year from 6.7 per cent to 10 per cent is as much because of its tabbed page browsing and swifter loading than its security features.

Now, with the second beta test release of Microsoft's new browser, Internet Explorer 7, we get a better picture of what the company has in mind to meet the threat of Firefox.

You can download the 12 megabyte file from www.microsoft.com/ie and the installation process is straightforward. You'll also need to have Windows Service Pack 2 installed.

What you see when you fire up the browser isn't exactly what the finished product will look like when it's released with Microsoft's new operating system, Vista, early next year and as a standalone package later this year.

But it's pretty close - and I was initially underwhelmed. After all, it's been a long time since Internet Explorer had a decent revamp and the web has moved on. I was expecting a radical makeover.

But as I got to know the new Internet Explorer, the more I appreciated its minimalistic new look. Microsoft has deliberately tried to strip back the heavier toolbar of previous editions, allowing more of the web page to be seen. Users are encouraged to use more drop-down menus and the activity pane, which runs down the left side of the browser.

There's an address bar and a few icons that look familiar. Others are completely foreign.

The browser now incorporates two major new features that make it significantly more useful than the current version - tabbed browsing and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds.

Current versions of the browser let users open several web pages at once and list tiled pages along the bottom of the browser. Tabbed browsing lines the page titles up along the top of the browser like files in a filing cabinet, allowing the user to more easily flick between open pages. It's been a standard feature of Firefox for years and Microsoft has realised its usefulness.

The support of RSS feeds is particularly useful. A number of news sites and weblogs allow users to subscribe to RSS feeds that are automatically sent out, which means they don't have to return to the site looking for updates.

I've been a constant user of RSS aggregator Bloglines.com, but with RSS now built into Internet Explorer, my daily visits to Bloglines may be coming to an end. Instead I can list RSS feeds in the Internet Explorer activity pane.

There's also a new search engine bar that can be customised to include the user's search engines of choice. The default, of course, is Microsoft's MSN search engine, but it can be changed to search Google, Amazon, About.com and or a dozen others. The advantage is the query can be typed once and run through numerous search engines.

Just below the search engine bar are some other useful new additions, such as a preview window for printing web pages.

The Tools menu has a useful new security feature aimed at stopping web users from being duped into entering their password and financial details into bogus websites.

The anti-phishing tool checks the displayed page against a list of reported phishing sites.

Third-party add-ons will allow for customisation of IE7. The new website www.ieaddons.com features several free and premium plug-ins, like more sophisticated RSS readers and calendars that integrate straight into IE.

The new features in IE7 are probably enough to keep me using Microsoft's browser, but the real test of the software is how resistant it will be to the security exploits that have plagued its predecessors.

You can bet the hackers and phishers are already pulling the code apart, looking for ways in.