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Microsoft sends word that the Internet Explorer 9 Beta is now publicly available. If you haven't yet, please do check out my review of the Beta for a complete overview of the new features and functionality.
Discuss this Article 14
Paul, one question: All this looks great on Windows 7. How is it going to look/work in Vista? (Especially regarding jumplists, pinning, etc)
Installed it. Results:
1. it broke the All CPU Meter gadget
2. it gave me a message that it needs a special version of Flash that it is optimized for the beta
3. it has a tiny address bar that is hard to find
4. the tabs are on the same row as the address bar, which reduces tab space
5. using Firefox and lately Chrome I forgot that the Internet if full of ads, banners, pop-ups.
6. search suggestions work poorly (after they are turned on)
7. speed is OK, still not faster than Chrome though
8. after uninstall it gives you IE8 even if it was removed before on Windows 7
I will install it again when the final comes out.
Any idea how to "Save to deskstop" in IE9? I can pin to the startbar and then move it, but that's more work. I like to save links to URLs in the folders that hold the files. No other browser let's you do that easily and now IE9 seems to have followed suit. Sigh.
First impressions: seems slower than IE8. Took me a while to re-enable the Favorites Bar. Some sites giving it problems including this one. We'll have to see after a week or two.
Found the answer to my question: Just drap the URL from the icon on the address bar to the folder you want to save it in. Done
I like it overall, but there are a few glitches I think they wish weren't a part of the first beta...
Several of the IE9 testdrive demos having to do with taskbar pinning are broken- thumbnail overlays, thumbnail controls and jumplist categories at least. Nor is auto-detection of if the current window was launched from a pinned button, either on their testdrive site, or on my own site when using the provided JavaScript codes.
Some buginess I expected from a Beta, but you'd think they'd have the features they're showcasing working properly.
The most annoying bug in general browsing that I found is that the 3px white band between the top of the page and the bottom of the tabs sometimes expands to 50+ pixels and shows that much of the top of a previously-viewed page. Only closing the window seems to get rid of it. Even when it's just 3px, that band is kind of annoying, and is a real thorn in the side of their claims of a beautiful UI. Stuff like this is normal beta stuff though.
First things first: I'm still waiting for Windows Live Essentials to come out of beta, then I'll download it. Then probably IE 9 will come put of beta later, then I'll download that. Then Aurora (whatever it's going to be called) will be released, and I'll probably get that from MAPS.
I'm waiting for final versions before I install anything on any systems.
I'm really liking what I'm working with so far. However, I dislike the current icon that represents IE9 at the moment. I assume it's going to be changed sometime in the future?
Paul, can the tabs be moved to either top or bottom of address bar?
For me it removes any and all reasons to run another browser on Windows.
To bad they did make a Mac version.
Downloaded and installed. Now I'm playing around with it and I'm amazed at the speed. So far I'm really impressed. Displaying a page heavy with images loads lightning fast, much faster than any other browser on my system. I'll do some head to head comparisons tomorrow when I have more time. But so far, all is good with IE9!
Still lacks the ability to do side by side installs with previous versions of IE. Running a previous version of a browser in a virtual PC is a PITA to say the least.
Very nice so far I'm seeing much faster load times than IE8 and FF. It seems comparable to Chrome and much better looking.
Now bring on the add-ons.
This thing is awesome, though my quick few complaints I've already discovered a few sites that might be using the wrong rendering calls because the don't render correctly in IE9. And my two very important add-ons, simple ad-block and ie7pro no longer work. Also is there a way to recombine two ie pages back to tabs?
Okay off to explore it some more, it has caused me to finally move to the second row on my Taskbar, huh.
