Microsoft puts Internet Explorer 11 under the spotlight

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,256   +192
Staff member

Much has been said about Windows 8.1 in the media since it was publically revealed and subsequently made available for download in the form of a preview version released at Microsoft’s Build conference last month. Through it all, one of the major improvements – Internet Explorer 11 – hasn’t received much attention.

Microsoft recently published a blog post on this very subject designed to highlight some of the browser's key features. Chief among them is the ability to open up to 100 tabs per window, overcoming the previous limitation of 10 tabs at once.

One might expect some slowdown from having so many tabs open at once, but Microsoft says that isn’t the case. Tabs that haven’t been recently used will essentially be unloaded, thus freeing up valuable system resources for other tasks. This also means that with a mobile device, multiple tabs won’t drain your battery as quickly as they might with another browser.

Another new addition to Internet Explorer 11 is the ability to anticipate where you might want to go next on the web. When a user demonstrates intent to navigate, like tapping on the address bar or creating a new tab, IE11 will instantly present a list of frequently visited sites. Typing in a few characters in the address bar will result in relevant, rich suggestions and auto-completion to speed up navigation.

These are just a couple of the features that Microsoft decided to highlight in IE11. I haven’t had the opportunity to try Windows 8.1 just yet but I must admit the browsing experience does look much improved. Have you had the chance to try IE11 yet, and if so, what do you think?

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IE11 is currently, by FAR, the fastest and most efficient of the Windows browsers. Compared to chrome, it loads faster, scrolls smoother and uses less resources. Chrome, on the other hand, atleast for me, on my Core 2 Duo system with 2gb RAM, is really slow. Take the Google+ page for example, it lags so much on chrome that its almost unusable. But its buttery smooth on IE!

The lack of features like bookmarks sync with android keeps me from switching to chrome.
 
Oh sure... show it in ModernUI. But I don't want ModernUI. I AM A DESKTOP USER, NOT A TABLET USER!

Oh well, eventually Microsoft will get this but by the time they do it'll be too late. Long live Windows 7!
 
IE11 is currently, by FAR, the fastest and most efficient of the Windows browsers. Compared to chrome, it loads faster, scrolls smoother and uses less resources. Chrome, on the other hand, atleast for me, on my Core 2 Duo system with 2gb RAM, is really slow. Take the Google+ page for example, it lags so much on chrome that its almost unusable. But its buttery smooth on IE!

The lack of features like bookmarks sync with android keeps me from switching to chrome.

You took the sarcasm a little too far. It started out decent tho. B+ for the effort!
 
IE11 is currently, by FAR, the fastest and most efficient of the Windows browsers. Compared to chrome, it loads faster, scrolls smoother and uses less resources. Chrome, on the other hand, atleast for me, on my Core 2 Duo system with 2gb RAM, is really slow. Take the Google+ page for example, it lags so much on chrome that its almost unusable. But its buttery smooth on IE!

The lack of features like bookmarks sync with android keeps me from switching to chrome.

You took the sarcasm a little too far. It started out decent tho. B+ for the effort!

there was no sarcasm, for real, IE performs much better. Recently, Chrome has been piss poor on older hardware...Desktop as welll as mobile
 
Never had problems with Chrome so I'll stick to it. Don't know how "piss poor" Punkid think it is, it works pretty fast for me on i3. Ofcourse, I will try IE11 when I have the chance.
 
I use Firefox on my desktop PC and use a Surface with IE11 for my portable computing. And I can honestly say, as much as I love Firefox, I always look forward to using IE11 when I'm working on my Surface. It's fast as hell, and seamless.

IE11 > Firefox > Chrome.

Chrome was my browser of choice until it started slowing down considerably, or freezing.
 
Are there any benchmark tests to either prove or disprove coppersloane's opinions on IE11? I cannot comment on IE 11 but previous generations of IE have not been particularly fast. Infact they tended to be virtually unusable at times.
 
I dumped all the alternative browsers, including the Firefox as of lately, sticking only to IE and Chrome. I use IE for all corporate tasks where Chrome doesn't work at all, and I use Chrome for everything else.
 
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