Making IE7 more palatable

I switched to Firefox about 8 months ago.  That was after using Firefox and IE6 together for a month or two to determine if I liked Firefox.  I haven't used IE6 much since then.

A few weeks ago, IE7 came down through the Windows Update.  I wasn't really interested in it since I hadn't used IE in months (except for the few times I had client related work that required IE).  But I hated that little "shield" icon in the taskbar so I bit the bullet and upgraded to IE7.

It only took an hour or so for me close it and bid it goodbye.  There's nothing in IE7 that wow'd me (like the tabbed browsing in Firefox did).  And there was one particular thing that annoyed the hell out of me -- the address bar is locked down!  Why?!

For eons (well, maybe not a true eon -- but a really long time), I've been using Windows applications that have the traditional dropdown menu bar right under the window caption.  Call me crazy but sticking something else there just messed me up.  It was unnatural and I didn't like it.  But I was really surprised to find I couldn't move the address bar!  I dug around the menus a bit but nothing jumped out at me.  I could move the other toolbars around (Menu bar, Links, Status Bar), but the toolbar was locked firmly in place.

Today, I decided I'd spend a few minutes googling to see if there was any way to move the address bar.  What I found was a registry hack from one of the IE7 developers, Tony Schreiner.  This didn't unlock the address bar, but it at least put the menu bar back on top.

Now maybe I can spend a little time and see if there's anything worthwhile in IE7.