IE9 Beta Available

[Mike F]

Internet Explorer 9 Beta is now available.

It's made significant improvements over IE8, mainly by copying Chrome from what I can see. After using it for all of 10 minutes. . . .

Things I like so far:

• much smaller, Chrome-like UI;
• loads much faster than IE8, though still a tad slower than Chrome;
• the quick peek feature when you mouse-over the icon on the taskbar in Windows 7 displays all open tabs, not just the currently selected one;
• sticky, click to open bookmarks menu and sub-folders rather than mouse-over ones like Chrome;

Don't like:

• Right-click menu still has too much crap on it;
• Popular Sites tiles when you open new tab don't show screen grabs of the site;
• No option to close a tab without activating it;
• No option to directly open a link or bookmark in shame-hiding InPrivate Browsing window

Edits:

• Images seem to benefit from hardware acceleration;
• Flash video looks like crap (at least on Charlie Rose);

[ricosuave]

http://windows.microsoft.com/ie9?os=...&browser=other

[FanIn80]

I wonder if Google gave Microsoft permission to stick their logo on Chrome.

Edit: Also...

[Mike F]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

I wonder if Google gave Microsoft permission to stick their logo on Chrome.

Superficially that's accurate. No idea about what's under the hood.

Also. . . .

I have no idea what the Acid 3 test is a metric of, but when I ran it with IE9 --

[MickMcGeough]

I looooooove me some IE9. Finally MS has put some work into a good JS engine and standard rendering.

[FanIn80]

I guess that Acid3 screenshot I posted was from an earlier beta release. Putting that aside, 95/100 in a world where every other major browser is 100/100 isn't really something to write home about.

Although I am encouraged that MS is finally acknowledging that standards do exist, and that they aren't the ones they've been trying to get the world to use for the last 10 years.

Anyway, initial side-by-side comparisons to Firefox 3.6.10 on my machine are less than impressive.

[yads]

Firefox 4.0 beta 2 is only at 97. Chrome is at 100.

[Mike F]

It's a beta release with months of development still ahead -- I don't think they're writing home about anything.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

I guess that Acid3 screenshot I posted was from an earlier beta release. Putting that aside, 95/100 in a world where every other major browser is 100/100 isn't really something to write home about.

IE9 beta 1 scores higher than Firefox's newest stable release in Acid3, it's JS engine smokes FireFox's, and it is probably going to have better hardware acceleration than any other browser.

And it's from Microsoft. The company whose name every web designer has cursed for years is getting something right. Play it coy if you want, I'm writing home and everybody else I know about it.

[FanIn80]

You're really that excited about MS finally catching up to where everyone else has already been for the last 5 years?

I think they have to do more than that in order to get back any kind of credibility.

[d_phaneuf]

I like it in the 5 minutes I have been using, still not good enough at this point to make me switch over from Chrome

[Roast Beef]

Keep moving those goalposts FanIn80.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by Roast Beef

Keep moving those goalposts FanIn80.

Keep making obscure posts that have nothing to do with anything being discussed, random person with a bolded name.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

You're really that excited about MS finally catching up to where everyone else has already been for the last 5 years?

Excited doesn't even do it justice.

I probably can't accurately illustrate in words what it's like to have spent a significant portion of my professional life battling the legions of rendering bugs in the various releases of Trident, so suffice it to say that you'd "get it" if you'd spent much time designing websites.

Microsoft's been dropping turds on us for years, and while I don't have any intention of using IE9 for browsing, I couldn't be happier that their newest turd appears to be an easily-flushable nugget as opposed to their standard "morning-after-rye-and-red-meat" upper decker.