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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
User Comments: 40
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I just had issues programming a cradle point router using IE9. I could not save anything that was entered. Switched to Firefox and could save just fine. Beware
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Do you not Know What Beta Means!
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Chrome kicks its butt in every way. I gave up at ie6 - there is absolutely no good reason to go with an MS browser anymore. NONE. well, unless you like pain that is.
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tengeta said:
Just like anything that takes too long to catch up, I just don't care anymore. Thanks I guess, even though the public PC's I use will probably never have it installed.
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mattfrompa said:
I would like to say i wish there was more space for tabs, but then I found after using it that I don't reallly open enough that it really bothers me.
Wait....I'm using IE AND Flash....no crashes yet. wtf is going on here?
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mattfrompa said:
Try out the Flash vs Silverlight: FPS Meter & Stress Test. My starting FPS was about 40 frames higher with IE9 Beta vs Firefox 3.6.10 or IE 8. I really hope Microsoft is able to iron out enough of the wrinkles before final release, because it's looking fairly impressive.
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There are huge flaws in IE9: not only the UI is really bad, Flash also runs very slow at sites having a complicated structure (low FPS), anti-aliasing looks horrible (and they call it ClearType, while it is really different from how that looks), opacity animations don't work, no @font-face support so no webfonts. It's just another bad release from Microsoft. I don't understand how people can love it. Chrome still wins, by far.
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Tried it, like the interface okay (almost on a par with Firefox 4) but it crashed on a complex site and the 64-bit Flash add-on is flaky - slow, bad at low FPS, all things others have noted. It feels like the beta it is. I'll keep trying it to see how it comes together but it has a long way to go before it could take over from either Firefox 3 or the beta Firefox 4.
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A lot of novice people still use XP because it's familiar to them. My grandparents have a hard time with Windows 7 because of all the changes. They've picked up since then a little bit, but I know that switching over OS's is like trying to leap over a canyon.
As for IE9, it makes logical sense to skip XP support because Microsoft is trying to phase out XP. I guarantee you there are still Windows 98 people out there, and I still have a computer with Windows 95 on it.
Though, in the business sense, if you want market share, you're going to have to introduce "legacy XP" code.
I use all three browsers on occasion. IE 8, Firefox, and Chrome. IE 8 can save .mht archives of web pages (the firefox plug-ins sometimes don't work like they're supposed to). Firefox has uber awsome addons to block scripts, java, and ads, and Chrome is a rock solid reliable machine.
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rofl. yeah i hear ya. XP has soooo many vulnerabilities and problems, as an IT professional who works on multiple systems daily, it is my most hated operating system to work on. honestly, i'm not all for microsoft either (and i loathe apple) but windows 7 is honestly a great OS, IE 6 was crap, 7 was crap, 8 was crap, all very open to vulnerabilities, IE 9 is great so far!! extremely fast and the ability to use the pc's graphics card to render images on the screen greatly reduces the load on the cpu thus allowing most pages to load very quickly. firefox is a great browser, but it has many vulnerabilities as well...only a few less than IE8. only google's chrome browser has fewer vulnerabilties. as always, you can't please everyone.
on a side note
before you bash a program for whatever reason, keep in mind that those of us who work on, design, set up, repair, etc computers often find that most crashes, slow performance, shut-downs, or problems come from problems with the pc where the user has messed up the operating system, installed a conflicting program, NOT installed a program correctly, has missing required files or updates, or has infected their system with numerous spyware/adware/malware or viruses.
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XP grandma operating system. lol
lol, beta programas cashing because of the user fault.
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Ask any large (or even a lot of small) companies and they'll tell you why they are still on XP.
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Microsoft is SOOO lost when it comes to securing (or designing anything) for that matter, they'd really have to Earn my respect and support at this point. I don't expect that to happen...ever. (- MCSE, CISSP, GCFW...)
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did you download it from en.softonic.com/s/internet-explorer-9. I heard that other sites have had problems I not sure if this is true or not.
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Not all users of internet explorer are clueless thanks matthew
I have tried lots of browsers in the past and always found internet explorer to be the best for my own personnel use.
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