Internet Explorer 7 lost me completely today. I received a note on a Yahoo email list that my blog site “breaks” in IE7 when the user expands the text size one click, CTRL-+.
It’s true. Here’s the result:

Notice the text overflow onto the background, and the expanded size of the images.

Essentially, Microsoft blew it.

The CTRL-+ invokes a zoom command, expanding images, layout, as well as text.  The entire web page explodes.  This is a nice feature, but useless for CSS layouts that set a background image using CSS.  Essentially, Microsoft gave IE7 the capability to expand all content, zoom in on everything except background images.  Why would they stop there?  And why link a zoom command to the CTRL-+ and CTRL– shortcut key commands?  Most people are accustomed to those shortcuts being used to expand text size, not expand the entire page.

The IE team apparently has a sense of humor.  On 10/24/06, the day Firefox 2 was released, the staff at Mozilla headquarters in Mountain View, CA, received a cake:

That’s funny.  But what really takes the cake is that IE still doesn’t measure up to Firefox.

I’ll be honest.  I jumped into the computer world on OS/2, a super OS for its day.  IBM dropped the ball, several times.  Windows 3.1 was good for one thing: Solitaire, and then only if no other applications were running.  Windows XP, however, is much more solid.  I hardly remember the Blue Screen of Death (knock on silicon).  And I’ll give a generous nod to Microsoft Office 2003.  But MS should really stick to perfecting the operating system.  Leave browsers for those who know how to build them.

Like the people at Firefox.