Modularity also leads to extensibility: You can write custom code that integrates itself directly into IIS's inner workflow, making it easy to extend IIS when you need it, not when the IIS team gets around the including the feature. Modules are easy to enable and disable, so you're not limited to configuring servers just at install time -- changes can be made as needed. IIS 7 can be extended in most every area of its operation, including the user interface, which leads us into the next section.

Enhanced management

You might be familiar with the old IIS 6 Management Console interface, which really hadn't changed from IIS 5 and not all that much from IIS 4, either. However, IIS 7 basically tears that user interface away and builds an entirely new management structure on top of the product, with plenty of hooks for developers and corporate coders to extend the interface to include the custom functionality they write.

The interface was designed to be a balance of exposing previously-hidden features while still providing efficient access to common functions used by Web hosting operations who serve thousands of sites at a time.

The Tasks pane immediately greets you in any window and contains quick access to the common functions used in a certain area of IIS Manager. You can navigate around the familiar tree interface in the left pane, but as you do so, you will notice that the center pane has been completely redesigned, offering many more options exposed in a more logical manner compared with the previous version, in which you had to click around a sea of tabs to find a control you wanted to change or disable.