So here we go again with the browser wars.. Internet Explorer 9 boasts a new JavaScript engine named ‘Chakra’, HTML5 compatibility & hardware accelerated 3D-Graphics using DirectX10 and a GPU. Whilst impressive, these features have already started creeping their way into competing browsers over the last year or so. What’s even more interesting is that both Firefox and Chrome have been experimenting with these features since before IE9 was even announced.

Something to consider:

The implications of Microsoft releasing a new version of Internet Explorer are huge; the sheer number of IE users alone makes this worth considering. How many people do you know who associate the blue E with the internet  ie; if it is moved or deleted they’re completely lost? Although Windows 7 has the option of removing IE altogether, this isn’t done by OEMS, and the feature is buried deep and difficult to find. Internet Explorer 9 is going to be forced on these users through Windows Update.

Bearing this in mind, let’s get started by taking a look at the revamped UI:

Click the image to display a bigger version

Tabs

The first thing you will notice is the odd positioning of the tabs bar. I’ve taken the liberty of Opening a second tab, to demonstrate how actual little room there is for tabs, and why this is a bad thing.

During my everyday internet usage, it is certainly not uncommon for me to have 9 tabs open. For example, I read a lot of research material, and often leave tabs open to ‘work my way through’ during the day – I know many people who surf the web this way.

The screenshot below shows IE9 with 9 tabs open:

As soon as more than eight tabs are open, that orange arrow appears with the temptation of some fancy fullscreen tab-manager. In reality, tabs just scroll left and right. As far as UI features go, this is very counter-intuitive.

Additional note: note the wasted space above the tabs bar

To be fair, I cannot imagine many scenarios where your average user would be looking at more than eight tabs. However, Google Chrome has no problems displaying eleven or more tabs, due to their positioning in the above mentioned ‘wasted space’ ABOVE the address bar:

New Features

Speaking of the address bar, IE9 has finally done away with the seperate address and search boxes, replacing them with a single box that does both.

IE9 Integrates nicely with the Windows 7 taskbar, allowing you to drag and drop any website onto the taskbar to make it a ‘web application’ – a borderless website masquerading as a desktop application, launched with a single click:

Drag and drop any website to create a 'web-app'

In a blog post, Program Manager Lead Ted Johnson went into detail about what the upcoming software can do when it comes to hardware acceleration:

To view an example of Hardware Accelerated Browser features, click here.

Note the above link works on any browser, not just IE9.

Alright, so it’s not much of an example. But that’s because there really aren’t many situations yet where GPU-accelerated browsing is useful.

Following the announcement of IE9 containing Hardware accelerated features, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome also gained this ability:

Chrome 6 vs. Chromium 7 with GPU rendering

So by now you’re beginning to realise that IE9 is being pushed as a forced Windows Update, but actually doesn’t bring *anything* new to the table at all. Competing browsers stole all its good features as soon as Microsoft released the Preview download.  Slagging off IE9 is not my intention, but pointing out the so called ‘amazing new features’ is what you readers deserve.

THE VERDICT:

Internet Explorer 9 is the most solid version of Internet Explorer yet. It has really good security features, GPU-accelerated browsing is great, but only future-proofing since there are no requirements for this feature yet. Additonally, Microsoft took so long to release it that they gave their competitors plenty of time to implement the exact same features that were to make IE9 appealing. For the less technical among us, IE9 is nothing but a forced update with a pretty new skin. Memory usage is poor compared to small and lightning-fast browsers such as Google Chrome or Opera 10.6 — Microsoft will have to work hard to claw back their rapidly decreasing market share.