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I almost downloaded the Expression Interactive Designer just to extend the streak, I really did. I read the site again, and realized, with zero frame of reference or experience, I wouldn't be able to do much of anything with it. The previous entries were firmly grounded in knowledge of similar software as well as knowledge of the "professional" demands that I would personally place on such software. To the best of my admittedly limited understanding, it seems the "Expression Interactive Designer" is something that builds flashy user interfaces.

Don't get me wrong, as a gamer I'm the ground zero target audience for flashy user interfaces. As for having any ambition to actually program one, I'll pass.

Checking around I couldn't find any other interesting toys Microsoft was giving away for free. Sure, I got Media Player 10 after a recent trip to Windows Update, but that ended up looking like the past four highly bloated versions of that software, and didn't really do anything new. There wasn't even a "what's new" section in the help file. I think the only change is the buttons are even glassier.

Again, don't get me wrong, I like glass buttons too. They are, after all, flashy.

Wait just a second, there is the IE7 Beta...

Talk about touchy subjects. Discussing hopeless attempts to topple Adobe's design monopoly is all well and good, but browsers... Now we're getting personal. It's funny, unless one is monstrously naive, you probably didn't pay for the browser you're using to read this. Design software, on the other hand, may cost you quite the prettiest of pennies. Despite this fundamental difference of economy, people are far more likely to act like they'll kill one another over choice of browsers than design suites valued in the hundreds to thousands of dollars.

I have the IE7 Beta because, in that most technical of fashions, I design websites for a living. It helps to know if all those websites will suddenly be broken when a significant portion of the population suddenly starts perusing the web via alternate means. Forewarned is forearmed, as someone famous likely said. Someone famous likely said it, but since it's an idiom, not a quotation, they don't get credit for it.

Don't kid yourself, a "significant portion" of the population will "get it." Be it when it appears by magic after a brief dalliance with Windows Update, or at that far off time in the future when Windows Vista actually arrives on store shelves, a large number of people will be viewing your website with it, your opinion of its usefulness not withstanding.

I'll admit it, Firefox became my main browser a long time ago. Once I got used to tabs, it was hard to function in an environment without them. The fact that I like pretty colors and am easily amused means the "themes" functionality is a big hit as well. I can make it look completely different every few weeks. Should I become bored of PimpZilla, Abstract PC is right around the corner to break things up a bit. There's a plethora of themes to keep even the shortest of attention spans rapt for moments on end.

Then there's the extensions. I'll try to clean this up a bit, but suffice to say, I have quite highly "panderered" my browser. Yeah, that doesn't really roll of the tongue, I agree... In any case, there is a wide assortment of completely free goodies to be found that can both amuse and add functionality to Firefox. The most useful I've found so far:

• Web Developer Toolbar : One of the oldest extensions. If you are a designer, it sits in the dictionary beside the "must have" entry. The features list is long and impressive.
• ColorZilla : At the heart, an eyedropper that picks up the hex value of whatever part of the webpage you select. Can automatically copy that value to the clipboard in a format highly friendly to Photoshop's own color picking dialog.
• MeasureIt : Ruler extension that measures width and height of the box you draw in the browser window.
• Palette Grabber : Handy little gem that creates a Photoshop palette file of whatever webpage you're currently viewing.

Those just scratch the surface of the developer tools available. There are also handy SEO related extensions that can quickly access "higher level" functions in Google and Yahoo, like backlinks and indexed page counts.

Playing with IE7 Beta after having all these wonderful tools at my dirty little fingertips was a disappointment. It works... and man, those are pretty glassy tabs. Unfortunately they take five times as long to open, and seem to cause the Google toolbar to think a pop-up needs to be squished. But it does work. None of my sites are broken in it, from the most standards compliant to the... well... least standards compliant.

And what's this..? IEaddons.com? Maybe there's hope yet for a serious amount of cool panderage. (Still not working, I know.) Well, I'll let you click away, browse, and return, moments later, dejected after finding a poor assortment of tools and addons, many of which you have to pay for.

Yes, it seems someone decided the only way take a great thing and make it better was to... make it cost money. Granted, I don't think it's Microsoft charging directly for these addons, but rather the companies offering them. Doesn't make it any more palatable. I have yet to come across an "IE Addon" that seemed like it was worth the money, or wasn't available in some other, freer form somewhere else on the Net. I'm sure there are, in fact, some that may actually be worth their price, but the lion's share don't even come close. The makers of "SERanker Pro" are obviously hoping people don't know about DigitalPoint.

Oops.

So, for the foreseeable future, I'll be sticking with Firefox. No, that doesn't lump me in with the standards zealots I've stated I disliked in the past. Heck, hardcore standards zealots probably have bones to pick with Firefox too, since even it isn't completely "standards compliant." I use Firefox because it's more useful to me than IE. If you're running FF without extensions, then maybe you won't mind IE7.

In terms of basic functionality, IE7 certainly represents a significant "catch-up" for Microsoft. For me, it's the extensions that will keep me firmly rooted in Firefox. If IEAddons.com blooms into something far more significant (and useful, and free), then maybe I'll come back full time. Hey, it is the Beta after all, and at this rate, we won't be seeing IE8 for a few decades, so it certainly has time to grow. For now, IE is just a tech tool I use to make sure my websites don't look bad when... most people look at them.