Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 reaches public beta

By
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Software giant Microsoft is aiming to ratchet up the competition in the Web browser wars, today launching a public beta of Internet Explorer 9. Microsoft has been teasing the browser for some time with relatively featureless developer previews that have focused on performance and improving the browsers rather lackluster record for standards support. But with the public beta, Microsoft has also taken the wraps off a spate of new features designed to make using the Web faster and more social—and, of course, Microsoft-enhanced.

Internet Explorer 9 rolls out major interfaces changes to the Web browser, cramming browser tabs into the same area as the browser location bar and other changes to minimize the amount of interface on screen all the time. Microsoft has also worked to make Internet Explorer integrate carefully with Windows 7: individual sites can be pinned to Windows 7’s task bar—and sites that want to support Microsoft’s APIs can display bits of information in the task bar, such as the number of new items or unread messages. IE9 combines the search bar and location bar into a single field that also navigates through history and favorites, and a new Download Manager incorporates reputation-based security features, so installers and software from trusted vendors may not set off alerts—or at least as many alerts.

Recommended Videos

Microsoft has also spent a lot of effort bringing Internet Explorer 9’s performance up to par with the rest of the Web browser industry. Internet Explorer 9 offers hardware acceleration, using the computing capability in graphics processing units to speed the performance of Web sites. (Firefox 4 beta is the primarily other browser working on hardware acceleration; Google Chrome is planning it too.) Internet Explorer 9 also incorporates a new “Chakra” JavaScript engine, substantially improving IE’s scores in JavaScript benchmarking tests: the boost should help scripting-intensive sites and services, such as cloud-based computing applications—Google Apps and the Web-based versions of Microsoft’s Office applications come to mind. Internet Explorer 9 also makes many steps towards supporting new Web standards, including HTML5’s video, audio, and canvas tags, as well as improved support for CSS3.

Related

Internet Explorer 9 is very much a beta: there are known bugs, and Microsoft isn’t ready to put its official “released” stamp on the software yet. But the release is a sign that Microsoft continues to take the Web seriously, and isn’t willing to cede superior Web browsing experiences to the likes of Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or (heaven forfend) Apple.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Geoff Duncan
Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
In a year, we’ll finally be able to say goodbye to Internet Explorer for good
microsoft issues emergency windows patch internet explorer 6 768x768

It's official -- the end of Internet Explorer is on the horizon. Microsoft confirmed what most of us already expected in a blog post released today. The company made the announcement over a year in advance. Starting on June 15, 2022, Internet Explorer will be retired and no longer supported on most versions of Windows 10. However, the legacy of IE11 lives on in Microsoft Edge.

While the vast majority of Windows 10 versions will no longer support IE11, Microsoft said that it won't be retired from all of them. This change will affect devices running Windows 10 version 20H2 and later, on both SKUs and IoT units. This means that most people are soon going to see the official retirement of Internet Explorer.

Read more
Learn Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Excel, Python for free with Pluralsight
A man working from home.

Many of us have more free time at home than we know what to do with. Sure, you can spend those hours binge watching the latest shows but it's likely you're starting to want to do something more productive. This is the ideal time to learn a new skill. That's where a no-commitment, free month trial of Pluralsight can help, giving you plenty of great classes with absolutely no risk to you.

Whether you're looking to learn a new skill in your free time or you're in the unfortunate position of needing to change career paths after being let go or furloughed, Pluralsight has a range of great tech-oriented classes to help you achieve your full potential, as well as learn something new. It's all aimed at making these tough times a little better.

Read more
Best Microsoft Office deals: Get Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for free
Students using Microsoft Office software on their laptops outside.

While the fight of Microsoft vs Google when it comes to office apps might be never-ending, if you're the sort of person who prefers dealing with Microsoft, you'll be happy to know that there are quite a few good deals you can take advantage of. As you may know, most of Microsoft's apps have gone under one rather expensive subscription service, Microsoft 365, but you can still get older parts of the suite for relatively good prices. In fact, you can even get a free trial of Microsoft Word to test it out, although you'd still need to pay to get the full suite of tools.
Best Microsoft Office deals
Microsoft Office is a pay once, receive once service. You don't have to pay recurring monthly fees to use it, but the software also never updates. For what it's worth, the Microsoft Office packages are labelled "2021", so they're all fairly recent but also ripe for a good deal. With the exception of AI integrations, not much has really changed in the past couple of years when it comes to your basic document creation and these programs should continue to be effective for years to come. Depending on what package you get, you'll get access to different apps, based on the needs of the target audience. For example, Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 keeps it lean and cool and with Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint being the only apps included.

Here are our favorite deals for the classic Microsoft Office experience:

Read more