IE7 and HTTP

Why doesn’t IE7 assume I want to use HTTP as my communications protocol? IE6 seemed to be able to, FF, Opera and Safari seems to be able to. For pete’s sake, you’re a web browser! What other bloody protocol do you normally use? If I were ever to type anything in the address bar, and I didn’t specify http://, ftp://, file:// etc., the chances are that, in actual fact, I really, actually, meant, http://, surely?