Sabtu, 04 Juni 2011

Internet Explorer 9 Beta; A Barebones, Browsing Beauty


When Internet Explorer 9’s interface was finally revealed at a recent event dubbed “Beauty of the Web,” analysts noted the barebones aspect of the four previous IE9 Platform Previews. But who would have guessed the leanness was a harbinger of the browser’s actual user interface?

IE has become the most pared-down browser—but that’s not the whole story. Web pages take the center role, with new options like pinned sites. And IE9 joins the JavaScript speed team, revving up performance in other ways with graphics hardware acceleration. Finally, IE9 has become a “modern” browser (to use competitors’ term), by supporting new Web coding techniques like HTML5, CSS3, Canvas, and SVG.


With its new user interface, IE9 innovates in ways that give pre-eminence to sites and the OS rather than the browser itself. Its pinned-tabs feature gives sites parity with apps, and when you drag tabs out, the resulting window behaves like a standard Windows 7 window, including Aero Snap functionality. This emphasis on Windows 7 behavior is exactly why XP users get left in the dust; IE9 works only on Win 7 and Vista.

The default configuration of IE9’s top UI border actually takes up the least screen real estate of any major browser, leaving the most space for Web pages. To achieve this, everything is in one row below the window border—the back and forward buttons,

tabs, control buttons, and the combined address/search bar, or OneBox. IE9 has taken Chrome’s lead on combining these two functions, but IE claims its version is more protective of your privacy, by letting you turn on and off the autosuggest feature of your search engine at will.

Internet Explorer now has a download manager, finally, and it’s nonintrusive. Its window shows you the percent complete, lets you go to the download folder, run, or view all downloads. You can choose to Run, Save, or Save and Run when you download—

nice options to keep track of your installers.

When it comes to performance, IE is no longer a second-class citizen. JavaScript
performance is a key speed benchmark, one that gets a lot of ink thanks to Chrome’s still-astounding lead in this area. Previous versions of IE have lagged behind just

about all competitors, but IE9’s new Chakra JavaScript engine brings it right in the midst of the pack. Also, other aspects of page rendering have been accelerated using Graphics hardware directly accessed through DirectX’s Direct2D API. Only Firefox was able to match IE9 Beta’s performance on Microsoft’s (and Firefox’s) demos.

Competition has been good for IE. With the Internet Explorer 9 beta, Microsoft has made great strides on three fronts, speed, standards and simplicity. After over a week’s use, I found the vast majority of sites worked flawlessly. Still, it’s a beta at this point, so we’ll wait before making a decision about our next browser Editors’ Choice.

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3 komentar:

mampir sore brow, sory tlat bales komengnya

makasih lho brow dah mau mampir ....

I desire a beautiful week I say thank you for your visit with a friendly greeting A

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