Review 0ddity's IE 9 Beta review

[0ddity]

At some point, we've all used IE. And most of us just as quickly discovered the excellent alternatives such as Opera, Chrome, Firefox and Safari. It seems each update to IE since 6 was an attempt to play catch up, and in the process, ignored the problems that people had with IE in the first place. It seems that has changed with the release of IE 9 Beta. I haven't used IE as a main browser since version 4.0, and I was always the first to pimp Firefox and chrome, but thats changed now.



Touted features:
-hardware accelerated page rendering
-html5 support
-streamlined interface
-pinned sites
-download manager
-address bar search
-plugin support
-new tab page

I have to say, it looks good. There is more vertical space than ever before in IE, even with the favorites bar enabled. Browsing speed seems to be at least as good as Chrome. The HTML5 demos were pretty cool, and ran well. Specifically, the pool one ran smoothly in IE, in chrome it was a little jerky, and crashed the tab after two shots. Pinned Sites is a feature I probably won't use, but seems like some people might like. Instead of opening the browser and then clicking on a favorite, you can just pin a website to your taskbar, click on it and go straight there. The download manager is adequate, I just can't believe it took this long to add one.

Spoiler

The new tab page is similar to Chrome's, and works fine. Instead of a preview of the page, there is a progress bar that shows how often you use that site.

Spoiler

The address bar search/address autocomplete is much more functional then Chromes, imo. When you start typing in a site, it autocompletes it if its a recognized address, but it also lists links in your history from the address, as well as any of your favorites in that list, and finally google (or bing) search auto-suggestions. The default search engine is bing but its easy to switch it to google with a plugin.

Spoiler

Pros:

Fast
Pretty
Functional
Useful new features

Cons:
No close tab button on unselected tabs
Installer stability issues
No theme support (yet?)

Keeping in mind that this is a beta just released to the public, it is quite polished and very usable. If you have Firefox or Chrome set up with all your favorite plugins/skins/favorites, you probably won't bother switching.

Rating:

GUI: 8/10
functionality: 7/10
Stability: 6/10

Overall: 7/10

Note:
While writing this review, I discovered there is an issue with applying bbcode to selected text, things like bold, italics, color, links, pictures etc have to be added manually. This doesn't affect my scoring.

 

[DigitalDeviant]

well I don't plan on ever supporting microsoft's IE.

 

[EpicJungle]

IE9 looks good though, but I will always stick with chrome.

 

[DeltaBurnt]

The interface and features are completely ripped straight from Firefox and Chrome. They didn't even try to hide it :\

 

[Deleted_171835]

Good review.
IE9 is awesome! I'm using it as my primary browser. Microsoft has made a lot of improvements!

 

[0ddity]

The interface and features are completely ripped straight from Firefox and Chrome. They didn't even try to hide it :\

Well Chrome and Safari are very similar in their looks and features, firefox is a bit different. But who copied whom? Did they all copy Opera (had tabs in 2000)? When using IE9, it definetly doesn't feel like I'm using Chrome or Firefox, and it's a good thing the browsers share features, it's what the users want. So if your biggest gripe is that IE 9 is giving people what they wanted, I'd say its doing pretty good. Performance in HTML5 applications is also most definetly better in IE9 then Chrome (didn't test Firefox.)

 

[Deleted User]

I downloaded IE9. After 30 minutes of use it gets bogged down and unresponisive. But overall, I think the changes are quite dramatic, and it reminds me of the newest WMP12 on Windows 7. Minimalist.

 

[0ddity]

I downloaded IE9. After 30 minutes of use it gets bogged down and unresponisive. But overall, I think the changes are quite dramatic, and it reminds me of the newest WMP12 on Windows 7. Minimalist.

Weird. I used it for 6+ hours yesterday and 2+ today so far with no issues. Maybe you aren't meeting one of the system requirements? Or maybe its just a one off bug on certain hardware/software configurations.

 

[Deleted User]

I downloaded IE9. After 30 minutes of use it gets bogged down and unresponisive. But overall, I think the changes are quite dramatic, and it reminds me of the newest WMP12 on Windows 7. Minimalist.

Weird. I used it for 6+ hours yesterday and 2+ today so far with no issues. Maybe you aren't meeting one of the system requirements? Or maybe its just a one off bug on certain hardware/software configurations.

Must be a bug. Talking 'bout bugs, is there a debugger for the IE9 Beta anywhere?

 

[0ddity]

Not that I know of.

 

[Minox]

No close tab button on unselected tabs

Just middle-click the tab, that'll do exactly what you're looking for.

 

[0ddity]

No close tab button on unselected tabs

Just middle-click the tab, that'll do exactly what you're looking for.

I'm on a laptop.

edit:

Just discovered pressing both buttons at once functions the same as a middle mouse button. This is better than right clicking on tabs to close them, but even with a mouse, I'd prefer a close button on inactive tabs.

 

[Arm73]

No close tab button on unselected tabs

Just middle-click the tab, that'll do exactly what you're looking for.

I'm on a laptop.

Buy an external USB mini mouse.

 

[0ddity]

*snip*

I have a logitec wireless mouse, but there's something wrong with my USB host controller, because the mouse works on an XP laptop, but I get a weird error message plugging it into this one.

 

[RoMee]

I was think firefox or chrome, but after IE9, I think I'll stay with IE
I might still use chrome as a secondary..not sure yet

 

[0ddity]

Few things I thought I'd add:

Full screen is still functional, and works well. For most browsers f11 is the shortcut key for fullscreen browsing. In IE9, it compacts the top bar more so than in normal browsing.

When you pin a website to your taskbar, it uses the favicon as the icon, and when you open up IE via that button, the IE navigation buttons use the dominant color from that icon, similar to how it does in the taskbar in Win7 when you mouse-over an open window.

Accelerator function:
I didn't like this at first, but I came to like it. It's a tool that pops up when you select text on a webpage, a little icon pops up, and if you click on it, it gives you options such as emailing it, searching for it, mapping it or translating it. This saves time over copy/pasting, then opening a new tab and navigating to google maps or email or a translation site.

Another con:
There is no native spell check function. There is an addon spell check function, but it doesn't work on a word-by-word basis like firefox or chrome via the context menu, you have to spell check entire textboxes. I hope they fix this before the final release.

 

[RoMee]

for some reason, my email won't work after IE9
I go to craigslist and when I click on a link to send an email, the window live email pops up and than it stops working and close..anyone else having this issue??

 

[0ddity]

If you're clicking the link, and its not working, IE must not be configured to use your email client. If you use hotmail in your browser, highlighting the email and using the accelerator email with hotmail works fine, opens hotmail in a new tab, and if you're already logged in, creates a new email to that address.

 

[RoMee]

I it was working fine with IE8
my email still opens but after a few sec it tells me window live mail has stop working, than it says a problem caused it to stop working
this only happend after I ugraded to IE9

 

[0ddity]

I'll install it and try it out, see if I have problems. Will report.