Recently, Microsoft launched a public beta of their upcoming Internet Explorer 9 for everybody to test. Internet Explorer has had a long and bumpy history, and although it initially had the market on lock, stock and barrel, newcomers such as Firefox, Safari, and Chrome have since increasingly marginalized it.
Internet Explorer has been well publicized for having flaws: lackluster performance, security issues, second-rate features, and more. When Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 7, it showed that the company was serious again about the web. Then Internet Explorer 9 followed, which showed an improvement that definitely put them back into the browser war.
But still the browser suffered from a lack of quality. The performance side of the browser fell behind other browsers such as Google Chrome, especially when executing JavaScript – a major shortcoming when many of us now spend more time on JavaScript intensive websites such as Facebook. Also, the browser failed to meet web standards such as CSS3 and HTML5, which made it easier for competitors to get an upper hand.
But now Microsoft is getting ready to release Internet Explorer 9, making it available as a public beta for testing. So far, I really like what I see.
When you first load up IE9, the first thing you notice is that there is far less of it, as the browser has been simplified. Microsoft has clearly taken notes from Google Chrome and their success, where the desire was to remove as much of the “browser chrome” as possible, such as menus, toolbars, etc. IE9 changes have made it sleek, stylish and minimalist. They have simplified it so much that there are no menus and only three icons: home, favorites and settings. The minimalist browser lets you get right to the point of browsing the web, nothing else. The only thing that popped out while I was using the browser is the back button; does it have to be that big?
IE9 default search engine is Bing, which works really well and a lot of people may stick with it. Just as Google Chrome, IE9 also has a single address bar/ search bar and, when you start to type, auto complete will give a list of suggestions for you.
When you’re typing into the address/search bar, Bing can find images relevant to the search term and include those in its suggestions. This is a quicker way to get what you want than having to go hunt down and use a search engine.
We all have a site that we visit frequently – it might even be your own site. So, with that in mind, IE9 has made it easy for you to drag the tab for the site onto the task-bar, giving you one-click access at anytime. It’s features like these that are going to bring back users to IE9. This feature allows anyone to access their favorite site by simply clicking on it, making it as simple as launching a program.
The new interface has some well thought-out little touches, too. For example, clicking on a site within your history, which is now kept with favorites, not only takes you to that site but also closes the history sidebar automatically, saving you the extra click.
The performance doesn’t even compare to the IE in the past, which makes it radically better. Internet Explorer used to be at the bottom of my list as far as rating browsers, but now I would put it close to the top. IE9 is quick, whether it’s rendering flat pages or JavaScript applications. The speed increase is definitely noticeable, and if you have the appropriate hardware, IE9 can be faster still, as it uses hardware acceleration features whenever they’re available.
Finally, IE now has support for HTML5 and CSS3, an area where they had really lagged behind the other browsers, much to the annoyance of the world’s website developers who’ve been waiting to see these standards across all browsers. Here at Chico Web Design, we know what a pain it was to develop for IE in the past, having to hack and spend more time on making it look the same throughout browsers. But Microsoft’s support for both HTML5 and CSS3 has been a big jump from non-existent to very good, although in some areas it still lags behind other browsers, such as Safari. Regardless, it is a really good start for being the beta version, and it leaves room for improvement.
Although we’ve only scratched the surface of the changes that were made to IE9, it’s clear that this a substantially better browser than all of its predecessors. IE6 may have secured the market, but it was technically poor. IE7 and IE8 were basically Microsoft working to catch up, and so, finally, with IE9 beta they are close to getting there. This new browser is unquestionably a good, solid, fast, standards-compliant browser. If IE is your browser of choice, upgrading to IE9 should be a no-brainer. And if you used to use Internet Explorer, and have switched to another browser, this would be the time to give Internet Explorer a second chance.