The folks at InternetWeek have posted their latest review of the Windows Vista Beta. Most of the review, sadly, basically says "this is interesting, but they haven't turned it on yet so it's too soon to tell." Thanks guys. I know you've got publishing deadlines and all, but if you don't have much to say, why not wait before publishing the review?

More interesting to me was the review of Internet Explorer 7. Again, Microsoft seems to be using the new OS as an opportunity to add new UI experiences, rather than just tweak the ones we have. Such is the case with QuickTabs, which will show you a thumbnail view of all your open tabs on one screen, so you can click on one of them & expand it to full screen based on the thumbnail. Usability will obviously be judged when we've got it in our grubby little hands, but the concept (and the screen shot) are cool so far.

I also like the idea of being able to open up a set of tabs, and then bookmark the whole thing (so that later, you can retrieve all those pages at once). The reviewer has a problem with the UI for this, but I guess that's what betas are for. Even with a clunky UI, I can easily see myself using this feature - depending on what I'm working on, I often find myself with the same three or four websites open at once. To be able to open them all with one (or even a few) clicks would be super-convenient.