Internet Explorer (Otherwise known as IE) has been upgraded to version 7.0. This newest version of IE works great with System Access right now! Aside from fixing bugs, and bolstering the browser's security, IE makes it easier for you to keep track of news and information through what are called RSS feeds. In edition, IE can now be contained within one window, which minimizes the need to alt tab as often. Finally IE protects your against websites that try to phish for information by impersonating legitimate websites.
RSS Feeds
In case you are not familiar with RSS Feeds, RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is an open standard for publishing and subscribing to text and other content such as podcasts over the Internet. Most blogs utilize RSS so that readers can access their content via their Web site or an RSS client. However, many traditional Web sites are now using RSS as well, because its push-based technology attracts users who do not want to manually look for new content. So when you find a page with an RSS feed you will here a sound, and at that point you can press Alt+J to list all of the RSS feeds that IE detected on the current page. When you press enter on the feed that sounds interesting to you, press Enter. IE will bring up a preview of the RSS content and if you like it, you can activate the subscribe link to add that feed into the RSS feeds area of the favorites center. When you want to see your feeds at a later time, just press Control+J, and your RSS Feeds will be presented to you in a list, press enter on the feed you want to read. To read an article within the feed simply press enter on the link that represents the piece of information that you want, and IE will wisk you there.
Tabs
In previous IE versions, IE is what is known as a Single Document Interface (SDI) application in the Windows world. This means that each IE window can contain just a single document (typically a Web page in IE's case). If you wish to open a second or third Web page with IE, you need to open a new IE window by either using the CTRL + N keyboard shortcut, or activating a link. Each IE window--and thus, each Web page--gets its own button on the task bar. In addition, if you open too many IE windows, they are grouped by the Windows taskbar. It becomes unmanageable very quickly requiring you to alt tab many times to cycle through the open IE windows.
Now, for example, you can now open and close new tabs with shortcut keyboard commands (CTRL+T and CTRL+W, respectively). You can press the Apps key while you are on links and choose to open them in new tabs. Most crucially, you can switch between open tabs using the CTRL+TAB keyboard shortcut, which is a nice take on the normal ALT+TAB shortcut used to switch between running Applications. Again, all of these tabs are within IE, so you only have one window to deal with. If you wish to get a quick list of all open tabs, just press Control+Shift+Q. The tabs will be presented in a handy list box, allowing you to arrow up or down through the list, and press enter on the tab that you want to flip to.
Anti-phishing filter
When websites try to trick you into giving out personal information about yourself, IE can detect these attempts and notify you of these with warnings. The filter reacts to suspicious sites in one of two ways. If you visit a Web site that meets certain suspicious criteria, the phishing filter will trigger a yellow warning and warn you that the site looks suspicious. If you hit a Web site that is known to be malicious, however, you get a red warning and are blocked from visiting the site. Naturally, you can still visit that site if you know it is OK.
More Information about IE7
This is just a brief get your feet wet introduction of some of the features in IE7. If you would like to read more, press F1 from within IE7. We highly advise you to read the Internet Explorer 7: Quick Reference Sheet. This contains most, if not all of the keyboard commands that IE has to offer. This is well worth the read, and will help you be more efficient while browsing the net.