Shrink-to-Fit Printing
As part of Microsoft’s efforts to simplify the common tasks that users perform every day, beta 1 will include enhanced functionality that makes it easier to print out a Web page. Today, a large number of Web pages do not print out correctly — for instance, the content at the left or right margin is cut off.
By default, the browser will shrink a Web page’s text just enough to ensure that the entire page prints properly, so users will no longer need to cut and paste to a text-editing program.
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Internet Explorer 7 RSS Feed Support
Web publishers use RSS to create and distribute news feeds that include links, headlines and summaries. With an RSS reader, a user can subscribe to many feeds and read new entries all in one place, without visiting individual Web sites.
Internet Explorer 7 will include deep support for RSS feeds. Beta 1 supports feed discovery and subscription, and upcoming releases will include additional features to further enrich the RSS experience.
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CSS improvements. CSS is a widely used standard for creating Web pages. Internet Explorer 7 is prioritizing compliance to CSS standards by first implementing the features that developers have said are most important to them. As a result, in Internet Explorer 7 beta 1 Microsoft has addressed some of the major inconsistencies that can cause Web developers problems producing rich, interactive Web pages. The work Microsoft has done includes fixing some positioning and layout issues related to the way Internet Explorer 6 handles <div> tags. (More information about these bugs can be found online at
http://www.positioniseverything.net/.../peekaboo.html and
http://www.positioniseverything.net/...uillotine.html.) The final release of Internet Explorer 7 will focus on improving the developer experience by reducing the time needed for developing and testing on different browsers.
Transparent PNG support. Web developers have been asking for support for alpha channel transparent PNGs. A PNG is a typographical file format that includes an indication of exactly how transparent a picture should be, through a measurement called the alpha channel. With an alpha channel, designers can use special effects that were not previously supported. For instance, they can create images on a Web page that have shadows but do not obscure the background image behind them.