Rarely does any new online toy launch with features that seem better from those that were advertised in the mockups. But somehow, this next-generation dynamic quotes and company research site launched today by our parent, AOL Money & Finance, still blows me away. I've watched demos and made notes on large-format printouts of how it could be; I've listened to calls in which developers enumerated its benefits. I'm still giddy like a kid Christmas afternoon trying out her new toys, such as:

• Interactive charting. Sure, that could mean anything, but this is truly great. Hover your mouse over the chart to see the high, low, open, close and volume from the day in question, or see where earnings and dividends were announced. Compare with a competitor at the click of a mouse; add in any symbol to compare quickly (I wanted to compare two of my portfolio holdings, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX)). Clicking through to see seasonal performance shows trends (Apple often spikes at the end of November as investors anticipate holiday sales of gadgets and Macbooks and such).

It's not the endlessly customizable interface that the open-source-hungry are begging for, but Microsoft's next beta release of its next-gen browser, Internet Explorer 7, will fix problems with some popular features when it comes out some time in August. Jeremy Reimer from arstechnica notes that the design of previous releases seems "bizarre" and confirms that users won't be able to change the layout -- with "the menu bar being sandwiched between the address bar and the tab bar" -- in Beta 3 according to a recent Microsoft chat.

In a bit of rather technical mumbo-jumbo about caching behavior (why you care: it greatly increases bandwidth requirements in the Beta 2 version), developer Eric Lawrence explains some of the fixes that will be available on the IEBlog.

Last week, the developers announced the official name of the new browser would be "IE7+" or "Internet Explorer 7+" rather than tying it to the Vista moniker (as Tony says, " 'The version of IE7 in Vista' doesn't roll off the tongue as easily...")