Internet Explorer 9 – 2 steps forward, 1 step back

Microsoft is trying to revive the Internet Explorer for quite some time, after the success of the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. Even if it represented a major evolution IE8 did not stand up to expectations reason for which Microsoft accelerated the development of the new software and has launched a beta version of the Internet Explorer 9 a few months ago.

Generally things look much better, but Microsoft has remained last at 2 aspects: browser install is extremely slow, and even more painful, after you install it you need to reboot your system.

If you can ignore these 2 inconvenient things you will discover a radically changed browser with a much cleaner and breathable interface. The speed at which pages load has been improved as well.

You still have to restart after installing IE9

Interface: simpler and more inefficient

Microsoft copied Google Chrome’s tactic, and this can easily be seen. We only have one toolbar with a limited number of semitransparent buttons that theoretically help. I say they help theoretically because practically things are not that great. I was personally disturbed by 3 things:

• Tabs and the Address Bar battle it out on one row. If you are used to opening up many tabs the effect will really be horror like or, in the best of cases, not esthetical and inefficient. The good thing is the Address Bar also acts as a search box. The new facility has been suggestively named Onebox.
• The degree of page load is not stated. When you click a ling you get the information that IE9 is processing your command but you cannot figure out how much the browser loaded out of the page or if the loading simply stopped at some point.
• The menu is incomplete. IE9 hides the options Microsoft considered less used (remember Office 2003?). Surprisingly among them you can find the Favorites function, where you saved your favorite places from the internet.

...but user interface is slightly better

Download manager

Internet Explorer 9 needed to reach its 9^th version to have a decent download manager. Do not think about something innovative. Just think about the functions you can find on Firefox or Chrome for years: progress bar and the possibility to temporary stop your download are now presented in a much more elegant manner compared to previous versions.

Finally the Download Manager looks professional

Security alerts

Until the IE8 including it the Microsoft browser bombarded us with alert messages even on the simplest actions remembering you that “This file may harm your computer” even if you were downloading a file from a very legitimate source. In opposition IE9 is characterized by discretion.

The option menu

If you want to modify settings and options you will find the classical Internet Options. Its interface has remained Spartan and crowded. There is a long (actually extremely long) list of options in which you either have to press different buttons or tick boxes.

Conclusions

At first sight the Internet Explorer 9 represents a certain evolution from previous versions. However Microsoft is far from the functionality of products such as Firefox or Chrome, which adapted much better to users’ requests. All we can hope for is that the official IE9 version will be better. Read our previous Internet Explorer 9 Preview here.

Update: Internet Explorer 9 is official. You can download it from Microsoft’s official website.