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If, like many, you only tend to fire up Internet
Explorer to download Firefox or Chrome, then
you may want to check out what Microsoft's
elves have been slaving over to put these
browser upstarts in their place.
howcasing IE9, Microsoft talked up its support
for HTML 5 and hardware acceleration which
sees the browser doing tasks previously the
domain of Adobe Flash, while offloading
graphical chores into graphics hardware. Interactivity and zippy graphics aside, IE9 also
sports a bevy of other lesser known features
such as "Pinned Sites" and what Microsoft calls
"One Box". But the million dollar question is
whether or not IE9 and it's new feature set
have the chops to take on Chrome and Firefox? Look and feel While Internet Explorer has long sported a user
interface that even its own mum would
struggle to love, IE9 signals a change in design
direction. The clutter has been kicked to the
curb as IE9's designers focus on less interface
and more on the web. This may sound like small beer but at the end of the day, as web
pages become increasingly information rich and
complex, less is the new more in the browser
interface game. From this perspective, IE9 seems to have moved
on from its awkward teen years into a more
mature early adulthood. The fugly menu bar is
gone and its navigation buttons and address
bar now dominate proceedings. Equally nice are
the small-yet-noticeable tweaks that add a hint of sophistication - such as the backwards and
forwards buttons changing colour to match the
of the site you're browsing. Add in the Aero
glass frame and translucent windows, and IE9
is a good match for Windows 7 or Vista. It
won't work on the aging XP operating system. New features Rather than taking the same tired old chassis
and adding different coloured upholstery,
racing stripes and a shiny set of wheels,
Microsoft seems to have gone to some effort to
add genuinely useful features to IE9. It may be one of IE9's more subtle features but
Pinned Sites quickly became an indispensible
part of my surfing repertoire. Thanks to Gmail
and several other sites, I live with browser
pages open 24/7 on the PCs scattered
throughout my home and work. As the cloud continues to grab a growing slice
of our productivity, being able to pin websites
to the Windows Taskbar makes a whole lot of
sense. Once you've dragged a site to the bar, it'll
behave like a completely separate application,
complete with notifications (e.g. new email etc). Some pinned sites also support jump lists
(which are shortcuts to site specific tasks when
you right click the pinned icon on the Windows
taskbar). It mightn't sound like much, but it
goes a helluva long way towards streamlining
how you interact with the web. Also absent is the multitude of distracting text
field boxes that plagued previous versions of
Internet Explorer. The address bar is still there
but now does double duty for entering search
terms. Tab trickery has also been given a spit
and polish with tabs now able to be snapped out from the browser and misbehaving tabs
able to be closed without killing the entire
application. Equally nice is the new Tab Page which shows
sites that you've visited. Last but by no means
least, Microsoft has finally heard the pleas of
many a geek and added an actual real to
goodness Download Manager so you can now
see what files have been downloaded and the progress of downloads as they happen. Performance IE9 may be brimming with usability
improvements, but power users have a near
insatiable need for speed, so has Microsoft
added a bigger donkey under IE9's hood? There's been a lot of talk about IE9's HTML5
support and hardware acceleration as well as a
new faster JavaScript engine, plus support for
fancy pants web technologies like CSS3 and
SVG2, but is IE9 really that much faster? Having spent the better part of a week with
IE9, my answer to this is a positive yes. After
having had several badly-behaved Firefox add-
ons bring it to its knees in the past, IE9's "Add-
on Performance Advisor" was a godsend. The first time I fired up IE9, I was greeted with
a pop-up asking if I'd like to speed up
browsing by disabling slower add-ons. The
resulting snappiness was a welcome addition. Perhaps the most noticeable performance boost
with IE9 during my testing wasn't browser
start up or page render times (although these
felt plenty fast), but how responsive it felt in
use. Hitting the stop button on earlier IE
versions felt like trying to stop a runaway bus, especially when lots of tabs were open. With
IE9 things felt more like taking a spin in a Lotus
Elise.
To IE9 or Not to IE9? Until recently IE was primarily seen by geeks in
the know as a vehicle for downloading Firefox
or Chrome, but the will IE9 see this change?
Thanks to a significantly improved interface
design, some genuinely useful features and
usability improvements (one of which is definitely speed) Internet Explorer 9 is primed
to give both Firefox and Chrome a real run for
their money.
|
|
|
|
If, like many, you only tend to fire up Internet
Explorer to download Firefox or Chrome, then
you may want to check out what Microsoft's
elves have been slaving over to put these
browser upstarts in their place.
howcasing IE9, Microsoft talked up its support
for HTML 5 and hardware acceleration which
sees the browser doing tasks previously the
domain of Adobe Flash, while offloading
graphical chores into graphics hardware. Interactivity and zippy graphics aside, IE9 also
sports a bevy of other lesser known features
such as "Pinned Sites" and what Microsoft calls
"One Box". But the million dollar question is
whether or not IE9 and it's new feature set
have the chops to take on Chrome and Firefox? Look and feel While Internet Explorer has long sported a user
interface that even its own mum would
struggle to love, IE9 signals a change in design
direction. The clutter has been kicked to the
curb as IE9's designers focus on less interface
and more on the web. This may sound like small beer but at the end of the day, as web
pages become increasingly information rich and
complex, less is the new more in the browser
interface game. From this perspective, IE9 seems to have moved
on from its awkward teen years into a more
mature early adulthood. The fugly menu bar is
gone and its navigation buttons and address
bar now dominate proceedings. Equally nice are
the small-yet-noticeable tweaks that add a hint of sophistication - such as the backwards and
forwards buttons changing colour to match the
of the site you're browsing. Add in the Aero
glass frame and translucent windows, and IE9
is a good match for Windows 7 or Vista. It
won't work on the aging XP operating system. New features Rather than taking the same tired old chassis
and adding different coloured upholstery,
racing stripes and a shiny set of wheels,
Microsoft seems to have gone to some effort to
add genuinely useful features to IE9. It may be one of IE9's more subtle features but
Pinned Sites quickly became an indispensible
part of my surfing repertoire. Thanks to Gmail
and several other sites, I live with browser
pages open 24/7 on the PCs scattered
throughout my home and work. As the cloud continues to grab a growing slice
of our productivity, being able to pin websites
to the Windows Taskbar makes a whole lot of
sense. Once you've dragged a site to the bar, it'll
behave like a completely separate application,
complete with notifications (e.g. new email etc). Some pinned sites also support jump lists
(which are shortcuts to site specific tasks when
you right click the pinned icon on the Windows
taskbar). It mightn't sound like much, but it
goes a helluva long way towards streamlining
how you interact with the web. Also absent is the multitude of distracting text
field boxes that plagued previous versions of
Internet Explorer. The address bar is still there
but now does double duty for entering search
terms. Tab trickery has also been given a spit
and polish with tabs now able to be snapped out from the browser and misbehaving tabs
able to be closed without killing the entire
application. Equally nice is the new Tab Page which shows
sites that you've visited. Last but by no means
least, Microsoft has finally heard the pleas of
many a geek and added an actual real to
goodness Download Manager so you can now
see what files have been downloaded and the progress of downloads as they happen. Performance IE9 may be brimming with usability
improvements, but power users have a near
insatiable need for speed, so has Microsoft
added a bigger donkey under IE9's hood? There's been a lot of talk about IE9's HTML5
support and hardware acceleration as well as a
new faster JavaScript engine, plus support for
fancy pants web technologies like CSS3 and
SVG2, but is IE9 really that much faster? Having spent the better part of a week with
IE9, my answer to this is a positive yes. After
having had several badly-behaved Firefox add-
ons bring it to its knees in the past, IE9's "Add-
on Performance Advisor" was a godsend. The first time I fired up IE9, I was greeted with
a pop-up asking if I'd like to speed up
browsing by disabling slower add-ons. The
resulting snappiness was a welcome addition. Perhaps the most noticeable performance boost
with IE9 during my testing wasn't browser
start up or page render times (although these
felt plenty fast), but how responsive it felt in
use. Hitting the stop button on earlier IE
versions felt like trying to stop a runaway bus, especially when lots of tabs were open. With
IE9 things felt more like taking a spin in a Lotus
Elise.
To IE9 or Not to IE9? Until recently IE was primarily seen by geeks in
the know as a vehicle for downloading Firefox
or Chrome, but the will IE9 see this change?
Thanks to a significantly improved interface
design, some genuinely useful features and
usability improvements (one of which is definitely speed) Internet Explorer 9 is primed
to give both Firefox and Chrome a real run for
their money.
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