Internet Explorer 9 RC Review (Features)
Internet Explorer 9 brings a host of new features to the table. One of the biggest is hardware acceleration of multimedia content. This means that Internet Explorer 9 can now use the GPU to accelerate content such as videos, 3D graphics rendering. This cuts down the strain on the CPU, leaving it free to do other tasks. A similar feature can be found in the upcoming Firefox 4 and Chrome 10 as well.
The other major addition is the improved HTML5 video and audio tag support. If a web developer chooses to have HTML5 video/audio tags to embed content on the web page instead of the Flash then Internet Explorer 9 should have no problem playing them back, provided the audio/video content is in a format that it understands. Internet Explorer 9 currently supports only H.264 video codec and MP3 and AC audio formats.
Internet Explorer 9 also has improved CSS3 support, improved JavaScript performance and full support for Web Open Font Format (WOFF).
We particularly liked the new address bar, which can be used to search as well. The default search engine is Bing, but we chose to use Google as it worked better. When you select Google as the search provider, you can just type the name of the website and then the browser search for it on Google and automatically take you to the first link. This is similar to what happens if you select the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google.com, however, it only works if you put in the name of a website and not if put in random text, in which case it just opens Google's search page. If you select Bing, however, all it does it search for it on Bing and then you have to manually select the first link.
Another addition is the presence of Aero Snap for the tabs. It's not too different from what you do on other browsers. All it does is add a cool looking effect to the mundane task of pulling tabs out of a window or placing them back. Internet Explorer 9 also groups tabs that originate out of a single tab with the same color, a feature which it picked up with Internet Explorer 8. It's a useful feature that makes switching between tabs easier.
A new feature in Internet Explorer 9 is the ability to pin tabs to Windows 7 s taskbar. To pin a tab, you have to drag it out of the window and over the taskbar. Apart from letting you quickly access your website, this feature also has another cool function. Websites can add additional functionality to the pinned tab in the taskbar that can be accessed by right clicking it. So Facebook, for example, shows options such as News, Messages, Events and Friends and clicking those launches the browser and opens that section of the website. Similarly, Twitter has functions such as New Tweet, Mentions, Direct Messages, etc. Some of the other websites that have this functionality right now are Amazon and IMDb. You will notice that in pinned tabs the browser controls take the color of the website, which means on IMDb they would turn yellow and red in Gmail Developers can easily have this functionality for their websites; although it remains to be seen how often people use this function. Since out browsers are always open, we rarely had to.
Every tab in Internet Explorer 9 runs its own process on the OS, which means if one tab crashes it won't bring down the entire browser. This feature was first introduced by Chrome and is slowly trickling down to other browsers. One disadvantage of this is that the browser takes up more RAM, thanks to the multiple processes it runs.
Internet Explorer 9 also has a new download manager, which was a long overdue feature. It finally shows you multiple downloads and now in the Release Candidate the speed of the downloads without you having to hover over the downloading file. One thing we noticed about it is that it keeps asking you every time you wish to download something. Other browsers let you mark a particular type of file as safe and after that the browser won't ask before downloading. We hope Microsoft adds this functionality in the final version, because frankly it can get on your nerves if you are downloading several files.
One area where Internet Explorer 9 lags considerably behind the other browsers is in add-on or extension support. Although it does support add-ons, there are a few to choose from right now. In comparison, browsers like Firefox and Chrome have thousands and even Safari has more than you'll ever need. Opera recently joined the add-on party but somehow did not see the same enthusiasm from the developers for creating new add-ons for it.
