An important new software release is coming that warrants your complete attention. Microsoft's next browser, Internet Explorer (IE) 9, is now available in a public beta version. Here's what you need to know.
IE 9 Public Beta
After years of waffling, Microsoft has finally embraced the standards-based web, and it has done so in a big way with IE 9. The software giant’s next web browser takes on the same high-level ideals as such products as Windows 7 and Windows Phone—that is, get out of the way visually so that content can take center stage. IE 9 pushes compatibility and performance boundaries while retaining the browser's deployment and management advantages.
User-Experience Changes
The public beta of IE 9, released in mid-September 2010, offers a first look at the browser's streamlined new UI. You’ll see that IE 9 is clean and minimalistic. Where IE 8 was busy with UI "chrome" (features such as the Favorites Bar and web slices that were arguably useful, but took up lots of onscreen real estate), IE 9 offers up a basic UI that takes up less space onscreen than the UI of any competing browser (let alone previous IE versions).
This is all by design. According to Microsoft, the central design mantra for IE 9 was that the browser must get out of the way, visually. People care about the sites, not the browser, I was told, in the same way that they care about applications, not the Windows OS on which they run.
Speaking of which, IE 9 gives websites many of the same capabilities as applications, especially under Windows 7. You can now pin website shortcuts to the Windows 7 taskbar (and Start Menu), just as you can application shortcuts. The effect is interesting and immediately logical, since most users access a combination of applications and websites. Putting links to both side by side is natural and intuitive.
Websites that aren't yet ready for IE 9 will display a regular static icon based on the graphic the sites already use. But websites can also be easily modified to take advantage of specific IE 9 and Windows 7 features, including Jump Lists, hover effects, and even pop-up media players (for sites like Pandora).
Sites that need to provide notifications—such as email services—can do so via a badge on the site's taskbar icon. And IE uses Aero Snap in Windows 7 to provide drag and drop "snapping" of web pages on the screen so you can view pages side-by-side just as you do with individual applications.
Like Google Chrome, when you do pin a website to the taskbar (or Start Menu), IE creates a specialized version of the IE window designed for that site. The navigational controls and other UI elements are automatically colored to match the design of the site, and the browser's home button is replaced by a site-specific home button so that the site is always "home" for that window. In short, pinned sites are treated like individual applications. It's a neat capability.
Also like Chrome, IE 9 dispenses with a separate Search box and integrates search functionality into the address bar, which is now called the One Box. This single UI element can be used to navigate to specific sites, search via the configured search engine, switch search engines, and access browser history and favorites. It won't transmit any of your keystrokes to your configured search engine on the fly unless you okay that behavior. And IE 9 will keep your searches private by default.
The notification bar that debuted back in Windows XP SP 2 has proven so popular that virtually all browser makers have copied the feature. But with IE 9, Microsoft is offering a new, even less intrusive notification bar that pops up from the bottom of the browser window.
And unlike its predecessor, it's not modal, and won't prevent you from browsing along as you ignore it. (There are a few security-oriented exceptions to this rule.)