IE9s Best New Tools Revealed

Microsoft has unveiled the first public beta version of its new browser, Internet Explorer 9 (www.microsoft.com/ie9), and it’s packed with impressive features. With IE9, Microsoft hopes to win back some of the surfers who have abandoned the browser in favor of rivals such as Firefox and Chrome. Back in August 2008, IE was used by almost 70 per cent of surfers. Statistics published in August revealed that this figure had shrunk to 51 per cent.

Part of the reason for IE9’s fall in popularity was the introduction in March this year of an EU requirement that forced Microsoft to let Windows users choose which browser they use, rather than simply bundling IE onto all new Windows PCs. So the success of IE9, which isn’t compatible with XP (see box top right), is crucial to Microsoft if it wants to hold onto its dominance of the browser market.

Microsoft has high hopes for IE9, claiming it will make the web “a more beautiful place” by using the new HTML5 web standard. Here’s Web User’s guide to the new tools it has to offer.
Redesigned user interface

IE9 has been designed so that the screen displays as much of a website as possible and the area dedicated to browser controls is minimal. Microsoft found when observing surfers’ online behavior that the Back button was the most clicked button on any browser, so in IE9 it has been enlarged. Similarly, the company’s research showed that people rarely click the Home button, so this has been moved to the right of the window. Error messages now appear at the bottom of the window so they are less distracting.
One-box search

The address bar and search box in IE9 have been merged, with this one box now performing both tasks. When you start typing into the address bar, results from your browsing history will appear, as will search results from the web – you can choose which search engine IE9 uses to do this (Google, Bing, Yahoo and Wikipedia are the default options). This search feature can be switched on and off to protect your privacy, Microsoft said. By switching it off, your keystrokes can’t be traced for phishing purposes. You can also set the address bar to automatically send you to the top search result each time.
Tabs

Tabbed browsing is standard across most web browsers but in IE9, Microsoft aims to make it more intuitive. Now, when you open a new tab, a page of recently visited sites appears in a grid – in much the same was as it does in Opera, Chrome and Safari. Each has a ‘favicon,’ making the site instantly recognizable, as well as an activity bar indicating how often you visit that site. Microsoft’s research also found that many surfers will open no more than five tabs at a time so the size of the tab bar has been reduced to reflect this. The amount of space given to a single tab is now proportional to the size of the screen.
By: Francis David