Getting beta all the time

The Age

Thursday February 3, 2011

Anthony Caruana

Does Internet Explorer 9 measure up to other web browsers? Anthony Caruana investigates. IN THE late 1990s, Microsoft blew away all comers to completely dominate the web-browser market. Sure, it was a market in which software was being given away and the victory wasn't without controversy ��� Microsoft is still dealing with the consequences of anti-trust lawsuits ��� but several great alternatives mean that Microsoft no longer has things all its own way.The latest iteration of Internet Explorer, or IE, is the ninth version. It's a substantial update with a revised look and feel. It looks more modern, with less clutter on the screen providing more space for web content.One of the measures outlined by Microsoft is the amount of space taken by the application's title bar, menus, toolbars and page tabs. IE9 gives less to these components than any other browser. If you like the menus and toolbars, you can turn them back on.Mimicking Google's Chrome browser, there's just one input area on the IE9 screen. If you know the address of a site, you can type it straight in. However, the same input area is used for entering web searches. You can choose to use any search engine you like.In the past, website developers had to design things around some of IE's idiosyncrasies. It's for that reason that so many companies have bypassed other versions of IE and stayed with IE6 for nine years ��� an eternity in computing time. However, part of the attraction of IE9 is that Microsoft is adopting a more rigorous approach to adherence to web standards, including HTML5 and CSS3.We've been using IE9, which has been in a beta pre-release for several months, as our main Windows browser. For the most part, it has worked perfectly. Rarely, we found sites that didn't work perfectly. Microsoft has a contingency plan in place with Compatibility Mode. This allows IE9 to render web pages as if it's an older version of IE.Other browsers, such as Opera, Firefox, Safari and Chrome, have boasted that they're much faster than previous versions of IE. Microsoft has addressed this criticism in several ways. First, when IE9 starts up, it monitors its own performance. If an add-on makes IE9 slower to start, a small alert appears on the screen telling you which one is slowing you down and gives an option for disabling the add-on.Web pages also render quickly. Chrome is usually cited as the fastest browser but IE9 feels just as fast. We did notice that some sites we tested looked fine but were different to other browsers. For example, graphical banners on some sites appeared in a different position compared with other browsers.Microsoft has also included a download manager into IE9. This is handy if you start to download something but need to pause it or it's interrupted. It also means you can queue up your downloads and fire them off later when you're ready. Another thing that's changed is that IE9, unlike its predecessors, doesn't pop dialogue boxes up every time you do something. Instead, a small notification bar appears at the bottom of the screen.Computers are far more powerful now and use specific hardware to accelerate graphics performance. IE9 can take advantage of this, as it uses hardware acceleration for web animation.That has two advantages. First, it makes your web-browsing experience faster. Also, it means your computer's processor isn't doing all the work, with the graphics card chipping in to do some as well. That means your computer will probably run a little faster as well.Internet Explorer 9 is a free download. It's still in beta, which means the software is still in testing. Microsoft has made the beta version available to the public to get it tested by the greatest number of people possible. The final release will come later this year.IE9 requires Windows Vista or Windows 7 ��� Windows XP is not supported.It can be downloaded from beautyoftheweb.com.

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