We had a short briefing with Microsoft Philippines this afternoon discussing some of the new features of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) which just reached beta release today.
Some of the features that were introduced were already available in other browsers (especially Chrome) while others were really focused on engine performance and developers.
The new IE9 feels faster, looks cleaner and more integrated (design-wise) to Windows 7. So far, I’m a somewhat impressed with the additional bells and whistles. It’s like
Chrome +
ActiveX =
IE9. The address bar also serves as search box.
It’s got a smaller footprint too and event he installation file is just 18MB (though Firefox is only around 8MB and Flock is 13MB). I was pretty interested with the HTML5/CSS3 support and the web app approach which is something I’m planning to include in the upcoming re-design of this blog.
And just like what Chrome does, each tab of IE9 runs as a separate process so even if a windows freezes up or crashes, you can close it and the other windows will remain open and running just fine.
I think one has to try it out first to really see the improvements. IE9 requires you have Windows 7 or Vista before you can install it (they say it’s due to the GPU-acceleration support).