Internet Explorer 9: faster, nicer, better?

looks nice

Yeah looks nice, but lets see when they finish the whole thing how it will actually work. But so far i think they are on a good track into the competing with others, i am a fan of Mozilla Firefox, i like the extras you can get, plus applications such as NoScript which is amazing.

By mobilegnet on 16 Mar 2010

Promising

>>"although there's not even an address bar or any of the basic browser buttons in the build as yet. "

Hopefully that's because the interface is receiving a re-vamp. One of the biggest turn-offs for me with IE7 and IE8 is the horribly designed interface. If they can revamp that as well as improving Javascript performance, IE9 might end up being taken more seriously when it comes out.

By Trippynet on 17 Mar 2010

you can still go to other websites by using the open button under page menu.

google and bbc pages loaded v quick on my quick look.

By baldric on 17 Mar 2010

anyone

who isn't using Chrome is silly - or hasn't tried Chrome.

By gavmeister on 17 Mar 2010

This is a technology preview...

showing off the new rendering engine. It automatically opens on the test suite.

I ran it today, with some interesting results.

On a Q6600, 4GB RAM, Radeon 5450 and Windows 7 64-bit, I got the following results:

IE8 can't run all tests, some are greyed out.

Firefox can run all tests, but fails to do a couple properly (noticeably falling balls, where the balls fall to the bottom of the box, then disappear, in IE9, they fall out of the box and off the bottom of the page).
IE9 completed all tests, as to be expected.

What was really interesting were the speed tests:

The rotating images test made 4fps in IE8, IE9 and Firefox both managed over 60fps.

HOWEVER:

Firefox was still jerky at this speed and the images had noticeable jaggies. It used 1 core and maxed it out.

IE9 animated smoothly and the jaggies disappeared, in addition, it only used about 8% CPU on one core!

On the falling balls test, the balls fell a little jerkily in Firefox, but fell smoothly (and further) in IE9.

Interestingly, Firefox again fully loaded a single core, IE9 used about 20% on each of 3 cores.

The switch to using DirectX to do the rendering and offload the work to the GPU, as opposed to doing it all with the main processor, as all browsers have done until now, seems to give IE9 real benefits over Firefox.

IE8 runs the test like an asthmatic dachshund with its legs cut off.

Firefox runs them like a rottweiler (full of muscle and gets to the end).

IE9 runs them like a svelt greyhound.

If they can improve its standards support between now and release, it will be a real contender and it certainly shows Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera up in terms of multimedia performance.

It has a long way to go, before it hits the market, which gives the other browser developers time to start using DirectX and OpenGL to offload the graphics and video work to the graphics card, in order to reduce processor usage.

THIS is something that Flash needs to also implement quickly, if it is to stay relevant. It is already a dreadful processor hog, compared to proper video streaming technologies, if IE9 can do as good a job with HTML5 video elements as it does with graphics rendering and animation, Flash will have a difficult time justifying itself in the future.

By big_D on 17 Mar 2010

@gavmeister

I've tried Chrome, it isn't bad, but until it gets an equivalent to NoScript, it won't become my standard browser.

I'll stay with Firefox for now, apart from on a few trusted sites.

But this technology preview is certainly a wake-up call to the rest of the industry.

By big_D on 17 Mar 2010

Isn't Flash hardware accelerated now?

By TimoGunt on 17 Mar 2010

@TimoGunt

I think the beta is, but the current released version isn't (GPU accelerated that is). When it does, of course, it should give a decent speed boost to the Ion platform.

By qwertyqwerty87 on 18 Mar 2010

Re Chrome

"anyone who isn't using Chrome is silly - or hasn't tried Chrome." I'm neither but I don't use it much now as so many webs ites I want to use don't work properly on it. Not Google's fault maybe and perhaps it is better technology, but look at Betamax vs VHS.

By pbhudds on 18 Mar 2010

I've tried chrome but it's not for me at the moment. Doesn't do what Firefox does plus I'm trying to distance myself from Google.

By TimoGunt on 18 Mar 2010

@Big_D

Thank you very much for your post and time spent on testing.

By stasi47 on 18 Mar 2010

IE

In IE9, will Microsoft correct that very annoying 'bug' where, when you are saving a new Favorite, you are NOT directed to the last Favorites folder you saved in? This is particularly frustrating when saving a long series of Favorites to the same folder. The feature to save automatically to the same folder was available correctly in previous releases of IE, put some how got lost in IE8. Microsoft say that this is deliberate, but they would say that, wouldn't they!
Regards
Dennis Seradi

By r0adrunner on 18 Mar 2010

security issues

I think the biggest problem MS will face will be convincing people that IE is a secure platform. With several high profile IE browser hijacks (like the China incident earlier this year) there is a lot of mistrust in the IE brand. MS will have to work hard to improve their image.

By mykeblack on 18 Mar 2010

Forget the techno...

Forget all this techno mumbo jumbo.. Just making it possible to detach the Back & Forward buttons from the inconvenient LH corner would be a giant leap!! (Or am I the only person on the planet that finds this a stupid place to put them??)

By hungryheart on 18 Mar 2010

Won't work on XP

I tried loading IE9 on mt XP machine and was told it's for Vista and Win 7. Haven't MS heard of backwards compatibility? At least my Firefox, Chrome and Flock work fine.

By Madhamish on 18 Mar 2010

Three little words

Security

Security

Security


As the world's most widely used browser, it's obvious Microsoft's Big Brother efforts have done OK for IE.

But that's made it still the world's most widely targeted browser.

And I'm no more persuaded that Microsoft will be able to solve that problem in IE10 than it has before.

Thanks but no thanks, Internet Explorer.

By globerad on 18 Mar 2010

@Madhamish

Windows XP is a discontinued product and now only receives security updates to its components. IE 9 is a new version of IE, no just a security update, so it won't be rolled out to XP.

Mozilla are doing the same with Firefox, 3.0 gets the .19 update at the end of this month, but that's it, no more support, even security, you have to move to 3.6 and any enhancements go into the new version. That is a much worse situation than XP. ;-)

@globerad - and what about all the flaws in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera? Both Firefox 3.6 and Opera 10.5 had unpatched flaws upon release which had security researchers recommending people don't use them until they were patched!

By big_D on 19 Mar 2010

rip off again.........

Have a look??? Nice gesture but unless you are using Vista + PS2 or Windoze 7 its a no go.

Steve

By poppy_g on 31 Mar 2010