IE9 - Review

I was suring around that darned interweb on my beloved Chrome browser, when I thought I might give IE9 a try. After all, this was the new IE9 that has been optimized for HTML5, CSS3, and hardware acceleration, right?

The basics that IE9 gets right:

• UI:
  
  • Finally. Microsoft is getting with the program. The IE9 UI is lean and mean - a la Chrome or Firefox. I know this isn't some revolutionary advance in UI design, but it's still nice to see.
  • One of several cues borrowed from other browsers is that that address bar now does double duty for search and address.
• Speed Demon:
  
  • IE9 still scores slower than Chrome, Opera, and Safari on the benchmarks, but not by much. We're talking about 100 milliseconds behind the #1, Chrome. The days of using sluggish performance as an excuse not to use IE are over. Firefox and Chrome are baking in hardware acceleration into the next versions, so that gap may widen again. But for now, 110 ms isn't enough to make me look past IE9 as a candidate for my everyday browser.
  • Add in Management - IE9 has an add-in manager that includes such information as the estimated time each add-in addsto the start time of the browser. And yes MS add-ins are listed.
• Tab Management:
  
  • When you have more than one active tab, if you select the top-right "X" button for the browser, IE9 actually asks if you would prefer to close the current active tab, or close all tabs. Nice, right?
  • Also, taking a page from Chrome IE9 has the ability to easily pull off a tab into it's own browser session. I found myself doing this a lot when I wanted to compare tabs side by side using the "snap" feature.
  • Another feature "borrowed" from Chrome - When opening a new tab, recently visited sites appear. Additionally, the frequency of visits to the sight are represented by a volume bar. The longer the bar, the more visits to that url.
• Pinning url's from a Tab to the Taskbar:
  
  • I've always been a fan of the taskbar in Windows 7. It may not look as cool as the dock on Mac's, but I find it to be every bit as functional and a bit less cluttered. This is a matter of taste though.
    
  • Another neat trick when pinning to the taskbar is that the icon on the taskbar is "branded" like the site. When opened, the browser gets "branded" with the sites colors, including the forward and back buttons. This is not something that changes the game, but in a day and age where more and more websites are becoming like applications, it is nice to know that Redmond appears to be paying to both the big and small details.
    
  • One other unique possibility is the fact that the pinned sited can take advantage of Windows 7 "Jumplist" feature. That holds promise for such features as baking in right-click navigation into a site pinned to the taskbar. Hopefully this won't go the way of "slices".
  
  
  

Overall, IE9 represents a huge leap forward for Microsoft. They have addressed many of the issues with IE that have prompted so many users to switch browsers. It will be interesting to see how (read:if) this integrates with Windows Phone 7. Will they integrate such features as "IE9 to phone" like Google with their Chrome to Phone? Hint hint: Both would be awesome. Microsoft has shown that they can listen to feedback and has created some great products recently (Kin debacle aside). Let's hope they continue this trend. In the meantime, I'm going to keep IE9 on my laptop.