With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft gets to show off some of its best work to an audience that is increasingly indifferent and hard to please, and in some cases downright hostile and dismissive. It is not an enviable task.
By any objective standard, Microsoft
has succeeded at the task it set out to do: build a fast, standards-compliant browser with a clean, modern design that integrates well with Windows 7. But is that enough to preserve its shrinking lead in an increasingly competitive field of browsers? Can it convince defectors to end their experiments with Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox and return to the fold? Can it excite web developers and kick up its own tempo to keep up with younger, faster competitors? We’re about to find out.
Today in San Francisco, Microsoft is scheduled to officially unveil the release candidate for IE9. Years ago, I probably would have waited until the final shipping code to do a formal review. In the new, engineering-driven Microsoft, the RC label means exactly that: this is ready-to-ship code, out for one final spin to smoke out those pesky bugs that hide so well from automated testers. It’s ready to review. (To answer your question preemptively: No, Microsoft isn’t offering any hints on when the final release will be ready.)
Gallery Tour: What’s new, what’s changed in Internet Explorer 9
IE9 FAQ: How to download, install, uninstall, and tweak the IE9 RC
I’ve been running an escrow version of the IE9 RC for several weeks, on a variety of desktop and notebook PCs, and earlier this week upgraded to the final RC bits. It is a solid, polished package, and I have no trouble recommending it to anyone running Windows 7 or Windows Vista. (Sorry, XP users. This is yet another reason to upgrade your OS.)
You will find echoes of other modern browsers throughout IE9. But this is no clone or copycat, and in fact it has a few features that other browser developers would be wise to copy. IE9 has its own distinct personality and visual style, especially when compared side by side with archrival Google Chrome.
The basic design of IE9 should come as no surprise if you’re one of the 23 million or so people who downloaded and installed the IE9 beta between its September 15 release and now. I’ve already looked at that build in great detail; if you haven’t seen my Internet Explorer 9 beta review: Microsoft reinvents the browser , I highly recommend that you go back and read it, just so you can get up to speed.
I won’t repeat my observations from the beta review here. Instead, I want to focus on some of the new features that have been added post-beta. Pinned Sites can now include multiple tabs, for example. There’s a new, very impressive Tracking Protection feature that gives users the upper hand (at least for now) in the ongoing skirmish with advertisers and marketers over online privacy. And if you’ve avoided IE because it lacks a way to block Flash-enabled sites, pay attention: the RC adds a new feature called ActiveX filtering that could easily be called FlashBlock Plus.
Ultimately, this long-awaited IE upgrade is a conservative and populist product. Much of its design is data-driven, based on input from the two biggest sectors of Microsoft’s enormous Windows-using base: managed corporate networks and nontechnical, mom-and-pop PC buyers. That focus creates an inherent bias to make things simpler, with fewer options. The resulting product might be a little too simple for browser elitists or those who prefer lots of tweaking options.
If you gave up on IE years ago because it was slow or buggy or insecure, it’s worth taking a second look at IE9, now that the beta label has been removed. (The installation is pretty low-risk: It’s easy to uninstall, and you can continue using your current browser as the default while you test.)
Performance in this build of IE9 is noticeably improved over the beta and better than any IE version I’ve ever seen. As usual, I’ll leave it to those with better lab setups to perform the detailed benchmarks, but in my experience, IE9 can keep pace with the fastest modern browsers. It no longer deserves to be called a slowpoke. Using the GPU for some page rendering tasks makes an especially big difference in performance.
Many of the most significant changes in IE9 are future-oriented, with solid support for HTML5, CSS3, and other emerging standards. Those changes are a big deal to developers, but it might be months or years before you see those technologies in widespread use. Meanwhile, IE9 does a decent job of coping with compatibility issues for current web pages that were designed for earlier IE versions.
In the rest of this review, I’ll look more closely at the IE9 user experience, at privacy and security features, and at how well it handles the crucial sticking points of performance and compatibility.
