Home › News › Microsoft
Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate
The new RC build includes a Tracking Protection feature, which gives users the option to control what third-party site content can track them when they’re online, as well as a new ActiveX filtering option, which allows users to turn on/off ActiveX plug-ins. Best of all, Microsoft has addressed what was arguably the biggest complaint with the new version (the company has gone through over 17,000 pieces of feedback): if you want your tabs on a separate line from the address box, there's now an option to turn that on from the right click menu at the top of the browser.
At the same time, IE9 RC is significantly faster than the beta version. Furthermore, many site rendering issues have been fixed, although we can't say that it's working perfectly. Last but not least, the new build includes hundreds of bug fixes.
Microsoft released the IE9 beta five months ago. The software giant also took the opportunity to announce that the beta surpassed 25 million downloads, making it the most downloaded beta release of Internet Explorer ever. Redmond is likely to release the final version of IE9 at its Mix11 event (April 12 to April 14, 2011).
"IE9 RC supports additional emerging Web standards including CSS3 2D Transforms, HTML5 Geolocation and a set of HTML5 semantic elements," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "We've added support for the HTML5 canvas globalCompositeOperation property and improved the performance of canvas’s CanvasPixelArray. We've updated IE9 RC to reflect changes to the DOM events and added accessibility to the HTML5 audio and video controls. These additions reflect our pattern of implementing site ready HTML5 while ensuring developers can experiment with new and emerging specifications through our HTML5 Labs. As these specifications become stable, you can expect we will implement them in IE as we have throughout the development of IE9."
Related Stories
User Comments (38)
Post a comment|
treetops
on February 10, 2011 10:50 AM |
Let me guess 20 million hackers downloaded it lol. Why don't they just buy firefox and hire there team. |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 11:03 AM |
I'm rather fond of Chrome's tabs being at the very top of the window. IE9 manages to use a similar layout to Chrome but doesn't place the tabs at the very top, making the top of the screen look quite wasteful just with a load of blank aero-ness. Does google have a patent on having tabs at the top of the screen or something? |
|
Jibberish18
on February 10, 2011 11:09 AM |
Guest said: Does google have a patent on having tabs at the top of the screen or something? I don't believe so as Firefox 4 Beta and Opera 11 both let you do it. They just don't do it by default if I'm correct. |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 11:16 AM |
No love for Windows XP, excellent. And for people than will question xp, you can go back to your ultra high advance tech world on 7. |
|
yowanvista
on February 10, 2011 11:23 AM |
Guest said: No love for Windows XP, excellent. And for people than will question xp, you can go back to your ultra high advance tech world on 7. Why would you use a decade-old OS. IE9 requires advanced(WDDM...) features not included in XP |
|
SSaywell
on February 10, 2011 11:23 AM |
I used to use Firefox and always used to betas as my main broswer (i like the live life on the edge) but when IE9 beta came out i thought i would give it a try and loved it. The tabs on the same row as the address bar annoyed me at first but with the RC when i put them to there own line it didn't feel right so they are back to default. This broswer is a lot better, hopfully MS won't have to long in between updates so that it keeps up with the rest |
|
treeski
on February 10, 2011 12:52 PM |
I just downloaded the RC so I haven't really messed around with it. Does anyone else notice that the Techspot tab icon doesn't load in IE9? I don't think it did for the beta versions of IE9 either. |
|
madboyv1
on February 10, 2011 1:14 PM |
treetops said: Why don't they just buy firefox and hire there team. EU would have a HUGE fit on how Microsoft monopolizes EVERYTHING without giving people choices, among other things... OH EU... *rolleyes* |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 1:36 PM |
Why would use use an outdated OS based on DOS? |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 1:59 PM |
No XP support. Yet another irrelevant browser release from Microsoft. Chrome, Opera, Firefox and Safari, all of which kick IE's proverbial bu_tt, have no problem supporting XP. Amazing that the creator of this OS can't manage to support it. More typical MS hi-jinx trying to push people to buy into their over-priced under-featured upgrades. It's this approach to business that is slowly but surely driving the MS juggernaut into the ground. They could get away with it when they were the only game in town but those days are long over. |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 2:22 PM |
I totally agree. Anyone have a link to where I can get a copy of firefox for DOS? |
|
Wagan8r
on February 10, 2011 3:02 PM |
Guest said: No XP support. Yet another irrelevant browser release from Microsoft. Chrome, Opera, Firefox and Safari, all of which kick IE's proverbial bu_tt, have no problem supporting XP. Amazing that the creator of this OS can't manage to support it. More typical MS hi-jinx trying to push people to buy into their over-priced under-featured upgrades. It's this approach to business that is slowly but surely driving the MS juggernaut into the ground. They could get away with it when they were the only game in town but those days are long over. I hate people who think that XP is the be-all-end-all of OSs. It is almost 10 YEARS OLD. Will you also complain how there is no Windows 2000, ME, 98, or 95 support? Why don't you look at Apple and complain that the latest versions of iTunes and Safari requires Mac OS X v10.5 with no support for OS X v10.0 (released same year as XP)? Quit crying, grow up, and stop wasting space with your literary diarrhea. |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 3:06 PM |
"Why would use use an outdated OS based on DOS?" FYI: XP is based on the NT kernel, not DOS. Do some research. |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 3:49 PM |
Wang writes "I hate people who think that XP is the be-all-end-all of OSs. It is almost 10 YEARS OLD." I hate people who think that we should be rewarding Microsoft with our hard earned money for producing such minuscule and meaningless improvements to their OS with over 10 years to work on it. In some respects, they have even managed to make it worse. Apple at least: a) adds innovation to their upgrades b) releases one fully professional "Ultimate" version c) doesn't treat its users like criminals with product activation nonsense and headaches d) charges a reasonable price ($30) for an upgrade that offers MORE value than the ludicrous x6 price MS asks us to pay to fix Vista (aka Windows 7) Other than copying the Dock in OSX, which I can get even better functionality from third party apps for XP, and Windows 7's (and Vista's) uselessness as a professional Audio platform due to the broken multimedia service, how is it better than that 10 year old OS? |
|
mattfrompa
on February 10, 2011 3:54 PM |
Guest said: Wang writes "I hate people who think that XP is the be-all-end-all of OSs. It is almost 10 YEARS OLD." I hate people who think that we should be rewarding Microsoft with our hard earned money for producing such minuscule and meaningless improvements to their OS with over 10 years to work on it. In some respects, they have even managed to make it worse. Apple at least: a) adds innovation to their upgrades b) releases one fully professional "Ultimate" version c) doesn't treat its users like criminals with product activation nonsense and headaches d) charges a reasonable price ($30) for an upgrade that offers MORE value than the ludicrous x6 price MS asks us to pay to fix Vista (aka Windows 7) Other than copying the Dock in OSX, which I can get even better functionality from third party apps for XP, and Windows 7's (and Vista's) uselessness as a professional Audio platform due to the broken multimedia service, how is it better than that 10 year old OS? Either you need to do some more research or you are trolling quite hard. |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 4:17 PM |
Has anyone tried the tests on http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/? IE9 surpasses Chrome on almost all the tests! |
|
Mizzou
on February 10, 2011 4:19 PM |
Just got it downloaded and installed, everything came across from IE8 without a hitch and it's definitely got more snap. ... doesn't treat its users like criminals with product activation nonsense and headaches So I assume you feel that you're being treated as a criminal when you register any product you purchase ... or is that reserved exclusively for Microsoft? Virtually every third party product I've installed in recent years has a product or activation key and a registration process of some kind. Guess all these 3rd party development houses are also run by a band of theives. |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 4:49 PM |
IE9 seems faster than Chrome and definitely snappier than FF4. Looks like MS has a winner. |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 8:37 PM |
mattfrompa writes "Either you need to do some more research or you are trolling quite hard. " A very troll-like contentless response. The irony. |
|
tonylukac
on February 10, 2011 8:51 PM |
Allows you to turn off active-x. Win-win. Welcome to the new firefox, which did this 5 years ago. I'll bet it isn't the default setting. Websites will still change your files by visiting. |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 8:53 PM |
i have version "........413"? why do you say ".....412"? |
|
Guest
on February 10, 2011 8:56 PM |
Hey Mizzou, do a google search on "windows activation headache" or similar. The only people it aggravates and annoys are legitimate users. I know people who actually cracked their store bought copies to avoid the hassle and insult of WPA. And i can't imagine you're so naive as to think that the countless millions of dollars and development effort Microsoft has wasted on irritating and alienating their legitimate users with WPA (instead of improving the OS) compares in any way what-so-ever to the simple registration process used by the vast majority of applications out there. If more Windows users stopped bending over and blindly taking it up the wazoozky from MS than perhaps MS would give them some reasonable value for their dollar compared to the competition. By mindlessly defending them you only make MS and Windows weaker in the long run. |
|
Archean
on February 10, 2011 11:28 PM |
Well Guest: have you ever considered the fact that Apple charges excessively for their hardware solutions; hence the argument that they have in-built OS price into each Mac/Notebook they sell. So they charge people for 'incremental' improvements at much lower price. The difference is in the business model here. Even when windows service packs bring some new functionality, MS never charges any thing. Secondly, Apple doesn't 'invent' everything, they have copied hell lots of things from windows as well, just use any search engine and I'm sure you can find many comparisons about it. Lastly, to some extent I do see your point about MS's (and others for that matter) annoying product activation; I always believed that MS need to bring prices of their OS to more 'reasonable' level and that will surely help them in their fight against piracy, e.g. the idea of selling a Win7 HP family pack for 125$ (I don't remember where I read this price) was a brilliant one. But unfortunately they don't see things this way. |
|
Guest
on February 11, 2011 1:19 AM |
Have you seen Mozilla Firefox Beta 11? It's pretty darn good. |
|
hitech0101
on February 11, 2011 3:38 AM |
wagan8r said: Guest said: No XP support. Yet another irrelevant browser release from Microsoft. Chrome, Opera, Firefox and Safari, all of which kick IE's proverbial bu_tt, have no problem supporting XP. Amazing that the creator of this OS can't manage to support it. More typical MS hi-jinx trying to push people to buy into their over-priced under-featured upgrades. It's this approach to business that is slowly but surely driving the MS juggernaut into the ground. They could get away with it when they were the only game in town but those days are long over. I hate people who think that XP is the be-all-end-all of OSs. It is almost 10 YEARS OLD. Will you also complain how there is no Windows 2000, ME, 98, or 95 support? Why don't you look at Apple and complain that the latest versions of iTunes and Safari requires Mac OS X v10.5 with no support for OS X v10.0 (released same year as XP)? Quit crying, grow up, and stop wasting space with your literary diarrhea. I do not hate people blinded by MS.First of all the OS is 10 years old but still millions use it.All offices/educational institutions here still run on xp then again if say upgrade then first they buy all machines that can afford to run win7 then you buy win7 & then you have to buy all the software again for win7 then a couple years later a new OS then the whole thing starts again so simply why bother to upgrade just wait till everything that runs on xp is obsolete then we upgrade what is wrong here, just because MS releases OS doesn't mean we have to buy it but when when they stop releasing stuff for the old OS its like forcing people to upgrade which MS is very good at. Then again you have linux which is free but cannot be operated by anyone especially those guyz who are first time PC users. MS just wants to make money thats all I don't see any significant or drastic improvement like from win98 to winxp that makes people really wanna upgrade, you can say technical stuff but still people just don't care.I never paid for any lousy MS stuff & i never will. |
.Most Popular
| Trending | Featured |
-
iOS 5.1.1 untethered jailbreak tool released, supports 4S, iPad 3
-
After five days, Facebook ranks as worst IPO flop of the decade
-
Rumor: Windows 8 RC will launch June 1, will ship with Adobe Flash
-
Rumor: AMD "Piledriver" FX CPU production to begin Q3 2012
-
Is Apple's USB wall adapter really worth $29?
Editors' Laptop Picks
Subscribe to TechSpot
Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and tech breaking news.
