Have you  ever needed to test a site for IE 6 but didn’t feel like booting up a clunky PC or waiting for browsershots to work? Well this is where IE NetRenderer comes in. It’s kind of like browsershots, but it only deals with IE 5.5 – IE 8. It loads almost instantly, with no waiting time. Here’s what the blog looks like in IE 5.5:

And in IE 6?

Surprisingly, IE 5.5 messes it up less than IE 6. Anyways, happy sunday to you all. 

Yesterday, Microsoft released the public beta of Windows 7. I was able to obtain a copy, and installed it. My copy of Windows 7 is installed through Parallels on my MacBook Pro. Due to it being virtualized, some hardware didn’t work too well. I was unable to connect to the internet, use Aero, or play music. However, I was able to do everything else in Windows 7. I took some screenshots, which you can see below:

The new boot screen. Instead of a useful progress bar, Microsoft opted to put in a glowing Windows logo.

The Windows 7 info box. I was unable to get an experience rating due to a lack of drivers. I couldn’t activate either, due to a lack of internet. Clearly, I’m not going to be using Windows 7 as a main system.

The general desktop, along with my Mac OS X desktop.

Windows 7 has gadgets…

…and Mac OS X has widgets. Lately, they’ve been looking very similar.

The Media Player is all white and shiny.

The Control Panel’s new default view.

Wordpad looks like a mini-version of Word 2007. Same ribbon UI, but it can’t save to .doc format. Maybe it’s meant to be a Word 2007 demo?

Notepad has remained virtually unchanged, which is a relief.

Command Line remains the same.

The new Windows Explorer. It has some Vista elements, though.

The new MS Paint has anti-aliasing, and various brushes. Note the ribbon UI.

The menu in MS Paint.

The Start Menu, which is almost the same as Vista’s. Although when an item is highlighted, the text on it becomes quite hard to read.

The start button, which has remained the same as Vista’s…

…until you hover over it. Now in addition to lighting up, it glows. Thanks a lot Microsoft, you knew just what we wanted-  pretty glows!
Sarcasm, by the way

The annoying little watermark on the bottom right. Also note the shiny “View Desktop” button at far right.

The Character Map has remained virtually unchanged since XP. Time for an update?

The Internet Explorer 8 beta. I was not able to test its subpar rendering as I had no internet in Windows 7.

Windows 7 adds a lot in terms of eye candy. Glows and shines run wild in 7. But will it perform better than Vista? Only time will tell.