The new Internet Explorer 9 interface is minimalistic, actually as minimalistic as it can get. Only a few UI elements remain in default view, including the back and forward buttons, the address bar, some controls at the end of the address bar,tabs and three tiny buttons that offer access to the homepage, favorites and tools. All elements have been packed into one bar.

That leaves more screen estate for the websites than ever before, especially since the status bar is also hidden by default.

internet explorer 9

A right-click on elements in the main Internet Explorer 9 toolbar displays a menu with options to display the favorites and command bar as well as the status bar. IE9 in this regard is not as customizable as other web browsers. Many users will dislike that it is not possible to move the tabs from the main toolbar to another bar. The size of each tab changes dynamically so that 27 fit on a 1920×1280 monitor in fullscreen. After that scrolling controls are displayed to scroll through the tabs.

This honestly is not the best solution. We would have hoped for more controls so that the user can pick the location of the tabs in the browser.

ie9 tabs scrolling

Internet Explorer is furthermore not displaying the title of the active web page. There is lots of room in the title bar, and there should not really be any reasons why the title cannot be displayed there.

Microsoft has found a better solution for displaying link urls on mouse over. The link url is displayed in the lower left corner of the screen. That’s a location on the active website, a clever solution and definitely better than having a status bar displayed all the time.

The address form now incorporates search as well. One interesting option that has been added by the development team is the ability to switch search engines directly in the form.

ie9 search

Here it is also possible to activate search suggestions directly in the popup that is displayed once the first character is entered into the address form. They appear there next to favorite, history and add-on matches.

New tab pages now display the most popular sites and the recently closed tabs. This page looks similar to that of the Google Chrome browser.

internet explorer 9 new tab

Most browser controls, other than navigating forward and back, stopping and reloading a website, accessing the favorites and loading the homepage are available via the single Tools button at the right end of the main toolbar. And even there, not all options are available that users may have grown accustomed to.

ie9 tools

A tap on the Alt key on the other hand displays the full File menu in the browser. Good to know but nowhere prominently explained.

Another nice change is the option to drag websites to the Windows taskbar to pin them there. It works fine in Windows 7. We had no option to test it in other operating systems, but it seems unlikely that this option is available in Vista as well.

What does it mean to pin a website to the taskbar? The website basically as as a shortcut to that website, with full jumplist support, which is the main difference to placing website shortcuts on the computer desktop.

The feature sounds pretty good on paper, it does have a serious disadvantage though: Add-ons are all disabled if a website is launched from the pinned location on the taskbar. Another disadvantage is the fact that they are all loaded in their own browser window. Chance is, not many users will use this new feature, considering that plain desktop shortcuts are way superior to it.

Downloads and probably other notifications as well are no longer displayed as a popup notification window, but on the page they have been triggered on. That’s a big change to the way all other browsers handle those notifications.

ie9 downloads

Another interesting addition is the developer mode, which can be triggered by pressing F12. This looks similar to Firebug on Firefox. It offers options to capture the network traffic to analyse a site’s loading time, as well as script, HTML and CSS debugging.

Design Verdict

The minimalistic design will appeal to many users. Users who configure their browser to offer the maximum screen estate for the web pages that are displayed in it will like it a lot.

The major problem that we see is that there is not really much to customize, for users who prefer a tabbar for instance, or users who want to see the page titles in the window title of Internet Explorer 9.

ie9 developer mode

Internet Explorer 9 Speed and Accessibility

The Internet Explorer team has done a great job. The speed and performance seems similar to that of the preview builds, and outshines Internet Explorer 8 by a mile, or even more than that.

Internet Explorer now does not feel like that slow browser that comes preinstalled with Windows, it feels like a real contender speed wise. Chrome and Opera may be a few milliseconds faster in rendering but this is not drastic enough to justify the usage of those browsers alone.

It seems that they have taken a good look around in the browser market and analyzed the crown jewels of the other browsers integrating them into the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta. This begins when starting Internet Explorer 8 for the first time. It asks you if you want to import bookmarks from either Firefox or Opera into the Microsoft browser. Something unthinkable in the past, at least at such a prominent position and location in the browser.

Bookmark import is fluent and Internet Explorer 8 does not seem to have a problem importing Firefox 3 bookmarks. That’s good. Internet Explorer 8 features an add-on browser similar to that of Firefox with the exception that you cannot search for add-ons in the menu itself. It does list all the installed toolbars, plugins and add-ons though which is great for getting a quick overview and disabling them.

Memory Footprint:

The memory footprint of Internet Explorer 8 is surprisingly low, using only half of the computer memory and virtual memory that Firefox 3 uses under similar circumstances.

Internet Explorer 8 Address Bar:

The new address bar which incorporates auto suggestions, the history, bookmarks and feeds looks clean and tidy which I personally like better than the display all mixed that Firefox 3 uses. The only negative aspect are the light colors that are used, it is hard to read for the eyes. Could be related to the Windows colors that I’m using on my system though.

Find On Page:

Another handy feature is the advanced find on page option that displays the number of occurrences of a term on a website. That’s handy if you are scrolling through a source code or large website and want to find a specific item. This enhanced feature is also highlighting all finds on the page at once which is great for a quick overview and orientation.

Tab Groups:

Internet Explorer will color tabs with a similar color if a user opens a link from an existing tab making it easy to distinguish websites and information.

Undo Close Tabs / Restore Sessions:

Internet Explorer comes with features to reopen tabs that have been closed by the user.

Enhanced Search:

The search box is now showing real time suggestions including images plus it includes the user’s favorites and browsing history.

Accelerators:

Accelerators are functions to use services of other websites on the current page. It reminds me a bit of Ubiquity with the difference that Accelerators are individual services that have to be activated. Accelerators are installed like add-ons and provide access to popular services like Stumbleupon, Facebook or Google Maps.

Web Slices:

Web Slices are items that can be placed in the Internet Explorer Favorites Bar who update themselves automatically. This can be news related, new items on eBay or Amazon, weather information or practically anything that is updated regularly.

Security:

Security has taken a major step in the right direction. Internet Explorer 8 comes with a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) filter, Domain highlighting, Per-site and Per-user ActiveX and Data execution prevention.

InPrivate Browsing was introduced which allows to surf the web without storing data about that session in the browser.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 shows lots of promise. The version is feature complete which means that there will be no additional features in the release candidates and final release version of Internet Explorer 8.

The Internet Explorer development team focused on three themes according to the announcement: Everyday browsing, safety and the plattform with everyday browsing probably getting the biggest boost in this beta.

Microsoft is providing a navigation bar that is doing more than just opening urls or showing pages that have been visited before. The navigation bar resembles that of Firefox’s location bar with suggestions, feeds, history and favorites thrown into the mix. The Smart Address Bar as it is called now looks cleaner that that of Firefox because it breaks down the different data locations nicely.

The Internet Explorer developers introduced colored tabs, so called tab groups, depending on the type of site and source that has been accessed and way to restore closed tabs and entire sessions.

Internet Explorer Activities have been renamed to Accelerators and Beta 2 sees a few new additions to the concept. Lastly you get a visual search when entering a search term in the default search bar in the header area.

Some features in the everyday browsing category are interesting. I like the clean look of the smart address bar and the colored tabs.

The team is also stating that they have speed up Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 performance wise but I was not able to test that yet extensively.

A lot of smaller changes have been introduced in Internet Explorer 8 as well that make the web experience a tad easier. Take Find on Page for example. When you search on a page Internet Explorer is showing you the number of hits it found on that page. A very nice handy feature.

A lot has been done in the security sector as well. InPrivate Browsing ensures that no data is written and stored on the local PC while browsing Internet sites. In addition to that InPrivate Blocking makes it possible to block third party web content that track or aggregate online behavior.

The development team has put lots of though into this version and I can say that I have not been so excited about a new version of Internet Explorer in a long time. Firefox users can add most of the features with add-ons but it is definitely a step in the right direction for users who are using Internet Explorer. Well done Microsoft.