Internet Explorer 9 beta now available, brings radical overhaul

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Microsoft's had a tough decade in the browser space, plummeting from a daunting 90%+ market share in 2003 to a still commanding, but decaying ~60% that is largely comprised of corporations and clueless home users. The company hopes to halt that rapid descent and once again become a relevant player with Internet Explorer 9, which entered public beta today and can be downloaded below.

IE9 touts a revamped interface that is very obviously inspired by the competition. It's the latest -- and perhaps the last -- major browser to realize a little goes a long way. The UI has been torn down to the bare essentials: a combined address and search bar, as well as forward, backward, home, favorites, and tools buttons. The dated menu bar is hidden (you can access it by tapping alt).

Features include the ability to pin sites directly to Windows 7's taskbar for quick access (just drag a tab to the taskbar), and a new download manager that checks for malware and lets you pause or restart downloads. There's also an add-on performance advisor to let you know when extensions are slowing down your browser, a speed dial-esque "new tab" page and plenty more.

Much of what IE9 has to offer isn't tangible at first glance, but manifests in terms of performance and compatibility. Hardware acceleration harnesses the power of your GPU to load graphics-heavy pages, and the browser is more compliant with HTML5, CSS3, and SVG2 standards. Even simple things like tearing tabs between windows feels snappy -- more so than Firefox 4.

We know most of you will be hesitant to give IE a shot after using Firefox, Chrome, or Opera, but after playing around with IE9 for a couple hours I can honestly report that it's a whole new experience. Is it the best? Maybe not, but it deserves 15 minutes of your time, that's for sure. You can grab a copy in our download section...

Download: Windows Vista 32-bit | Windows Vista 64-bit | Windows 7 32-bit | Windows 7 64-bit

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/40283-internet-explorer-9-beta-now-available-brings-radical-overhaul.html

 

[Guest]

Great...crashes on startup...guess it has a hard time loading my home page...google.com...way to go Microsoft, another award winning browsing experience

 

[Julio Franco]

Compared to older IE versions it seems super snappy, kind of feels like Chrome but it's still beta and it just crashed for me as well. On the upside, rather than showing the annoying loading bar after crashing, it recovered and loaded all my tabs again in about a second, not bad.

Font rendering is a bit weird but that's because of GPU acceleration, Firefox 4 beta has the exactly same behaviour because of that feature.

 

[kyosuke]

@Techspot-Writers: can we not mention Vista anymore just XP and Windows 7.

As it is now Vista is the middle child that will forever be ignored, neglected and will turn goth or emo. Where XP is the oldest who married somebody Microsoft didn't approve of so they "disowned" XP and Windows 7 is the youngest that get's all the love and attention.

 

[Guest]

Have you ever thought of just throwing the baby out with the bath water?

 

[fwilliams]

Even if it is almost as good as the other browsers now, the other browsers are continuously getting better. IE9 will start and stay where the others are now and will be out of date in 6 months.

 

[Guest]

Just downloaded and installed IE9. I love it. Goodbye Firefox.

 

[Guest]

Dont tell me there isn't a version for XP of this?

 

[anguis]

no XP support? will never use IE9 because of that. not going to swap between browsers when im on a different OS (laptop has XP, desktop triboots with XP, 7, and linux). No linux support on IE9 either. Firefox remains supreme.
Not to mention, fwilliams is exactly right. Firefox will just continually 1up IE.

 

[St1ckM4n]

I like having no space for tabs. That's the most ingenious thought-process ever...

 

[Guest]

Ok. The simplicty is amazing, I like it much more than Chrome. But what about the tabs right next to the address bar? That's just plain stupid. Come on MS, you can do better than that.

Firefox and Chrome still remain king and prince, respectively.

 

[St1ckM4n]

In addition, there's still a lot of wasted space above the address bar and tabs. Could put the buttons into a single one, and move to the left, making the vertical size even smaller.

 

[Per Hansson]

If it will not be released for XP I wont be surprised, Windows 2000 never got IE7, even tho it was not EOL at the time it was released

As for this beta release, does it install side by side with IE8 or does it overwrite it?

 

[daz80]

How can i fix the Text / Font? Its kinda blurry..

 

[Guest]

If they cannot bother with XP users, will not bother with this crashware and value the alternatives even more since they do not take users for granted.

 

[Guest]

Anyone know how i uninstall IE9? Gave it a try and i seem to have the buggiest version on the internet. After i installed it, my All CPU Meter gadget no longer works. I just have a black box.
My PC keeps freezing up and IE9 doesnt appear as a program in CCleaner or All Programs in Control panel.

Thanks

 

[Phraun]

It was fairly snappy, and I was amiable to using it-- until I tried to download the 64-bit flash preview release, at which point IE9 stated that my security settings would not allow the download... Even though they're dropped into the ground with protected mode disabled. At that point, I re-opened Chrome.

Also, who was the genius that decided to put the tabs and URL dialog on the same bar?

 

[windmill007]

Add-Ons?

Does this version allow Ad On's? Without Adblock you might as well open your door and say come on in viruses. How anyone can stand to view the web without adblock anyways is beyond me. When will Microsoft get that? ADD-ONs Addons!!

 

[LightHeart]

I don't like it and have uninstalled it. To uninstall: Control Panel - Uninstall a program - View Installed Updates - Find IE 9 and uninstall.

It crashed several times, some pages would not open at all, no space for the many tabs I use, only slightly faster than FF 3.6.9., bad UI with no option to change. I will check out the released version whenever that happens to see if they fixed it.

 

[Guest]

Good bye Firefox, I miss you. (Switched to IE9)

 

[Axiarus]

People are still using that outdated crap that is Windows XP? Wow...

 

[Guest]

Who else think the guys than say "bye firefox hello IE9" have to do something with MS?

Another thing, look in google and you will see people saying you can force the instalation on xp. The only reason I care for Slowexplorer is because on my work people dont know other thing, and is the only browser than allow setting a defaul zoom.

 

[Guest]

Xp outdated crap?, my God. The only thing I miss of 7 on the work is one thing, the transparect windows, other than that, name one damn thing missing in the outdated cra:S

Other than that xp is a full fetaured bullet .

 

[Guest]

XP is outdated. I know some people are into retro stuff but most people go with the new things. It's called evolution. On the same idea, I'm sure there are people still playing Warcraft 2 instead of Warcraft 3, you get the idea.

As for the guy who swhitched to IE9: your choice, dude(tte). Reminder it's a beta. Still I love it better than my Firefox - Iron is far better than FFX btw, and no privacy issues as in Chrome (I see peeps don't even mention Opera).

And one more thing: it's a BETA. Not the final product so don't be misleaded. Some features DO NOT WORK.

 

[DarkCobra]

OK, tried it . . . Yawn. Sure it's faster because it's EMPTY! Does crash on quite a few sites but I attribute that to the beta status. All-in-all, I'm afraid MS simply came too late to the dance as usual. No way am I switching from FF to this thing. I think the next major update to Chrome will blow this away fairly easily but FF will remain my browser of choice for the rich add-on experience.