I installed the IE7 beta on Windows XP SP2 yesterday. First reaction? Eh…
Tabbed browsing works fine within the browser itself, except that it’s not configurable in any significant way. One huge failure: When you click an external link in Outlook, the link opens in a new window instead of in a new tab within the existing window. So you wind up with multiple windows, each containing several tabs. And the taskbar button only shows the title of the page that has the focus right now. Ugh.
There’s an anti-phishing feature that supposedly inspects sites to see if they’re fake. It set off a yellow alarm on a perfectly legitimate site last night, and so far that’s all I’ve seen.
All of my external add-ins (BlogJet, Onfolio, Google Toolbar, RoboForm, SnagIt, and the latest version of PubSub) appear to work just fine. The search box in the upper right corner allows a choice of five search engines and can’t be hidden, even if you’re already using another site’s toolbar and don’t need it. Of course, that’s how Firefox works, too.
The interface has been reworked quite a bit, with mixed results. Most notably, the menu bar is now below the address bar and the browser tabs, resulting in brief confusion. Also, the Go, Refresh, and Stop buttons share a single space at the end of the address bar now.
I’ve seen plenty of glitches and occasional performance problems. Not surprising, given this is a developer’s beta.
All in all, this beta unpolished and unfinished, none of which should be surprising. If you’re happy with IE6, don’t go looking for this beta yet; wait till a newer, more stable and complete version comes out. If you’re not happy with IE6, try Firefox or Maxthon.
I really hope that Microsoft plans to do frequent interim releases. This code needs a refresh long before Beta 2.
Ed Bott 
You mentioned the search box which can’t be removed, even though you don’t need it. You also mentioned that Firefox is the same way. I use Firefox and your sentence gave me the idea to try to remove the search box. It’s actually quite easy. Right-click somewhere on the top menu bar and select Customize. A window of menu elements will popup. Then, drag the search box you don’t want into the window of menu elements. This will remove it from your menu bar.
Thanks for the idea! Perhaps there is a similar technique in IE7.
Doesn’t work here, Nate. I can open the window of menu elements you describe, but I can’t drag the search box into it. I’ve got Firefox 1.0.4 installed. Could this feature have been added later?
I have 1.0.4 as well, and I have no problems dragging the search box onto the customise dialog.
I’ve had no problems removing the search box since 1.0 was released
Ed,
Sounds like your Firefox profile may have gone goofy. Run “firefox /p” and then create a new profile. You should be able to customize the toolbar with a clean profile.
What type of system are you running? Are you having any problems with your video card?
When I open a “New Tab” in IE7, I can see that it quickly loads a page at http://www.foxnews.com before showing the Blank Page. Has anyone else seen this? And if so, how did you get rid of it?
You can bring the menu bar back to the top with a little registry hack: link