IE9: What's Missing?

I’ve been using Internet Explorer 9 beta for a few days, so I’ve put it to the everyday browser test. Hours and hours and many, many websites later I’ve come to enjoy browsing using IE9, but there are a few things that still bug me. It goes without saying that IE9 is still in beta, so many or all of these annoyances may be fixed before final release sometime in 2011. I realize that I’ve certainly missed some things and have probably been a bit picky on some others, but here is what comes to mind:


User Interface

For the most part, the IE9 interface is very well done. It does borrow from Chrome’s minimalistic look, no doubt, but they did make some improvements as well. One of my complaints has to do with the “one box”. This is the Chromesque search bar/address bar located at the top of your browser window. I’m the kind of user who opts to use his drop down on the address bar to jump to frequently used sites. This can be accomplished by saving them to favorites or using the “popular sites” page when opening a new tab, but I’m a creature of habit and I would like a url history list that’s greater than the last five websites I’ve visited.

The inconsistency and incorrect placement of the Home button is also a bit confusing. Why Microsoft has moved the Home button to the less-accessed right side of the browser window is beyond me, but when you’ve pinned a site to your taskbar, the favicon then becomes the home button, which has now disappeared from the right side of the window. I’d like to see the home button moved to where the favicon appears (to the left of the back button).


Browser Options

My other complaint has to do with the lack of options within the Options menu. While I get that Microsoft was looking to completely slim down the browser, IE9 is missing some essential options, especially those regarding the search history and popular sites page. I would consider myself somewhere between a casual browser user and a power user, but the lack of options to customize the different settings and pages in IE9 is quite baffling. Maybe I’m missing something, but I’ve been using the browser for days and I can’t find a way to customize many of the pages and options in IE9. There also needs to be an outcry for Microsoft to update the dated look of the Internet Options menu window.


Cross-Platform Compatibility

Even though the large majority of the world are Windows users, there are, at least, four or five people running OSX and other versions of Linux. Microsoft needs to capitalize on the market share to be had in Windows XP, OSX and Linux systems. I realize they have their reasons for dropping XP compatibility, but if Microsoft wants to retrieve market share lost by IE6, IE7 and IE8 they need to make it available to as many users as humanly possible.


Speed and Compatibility

There’s not too much to complain about in this department. The browser loads pages as fast as Chrome does on my machine and even faster in some situations. Being that Chrome is the speed benchmark, Microsoft has done well. The speed of IE9 is pleasantly surprising and continues to impress with help from the GPU.

I haven’t experienced too many compatibility issues with web pages, but they are out there and let’s be thankful that IE9 still includes the Compatibility button.


Conclusion

Overall, IE9 is a solid browser and if Safari, Firefox, Opera and Chrome users would use it without biased they would admit it as well. Sure, it has its shortcomings, but it’s still a beta version so that’s to be expected. Simply, if you are currently an Internet Explorer user, this upgrade is a no-brainer. If you use another browser and are aggressively-evangelistic in promoting it in forums and comment sections, then you’re probably going to find fault in IE9, no matter how good it is.

If you are a Windows Vista or Windows 7 user, you should download the beta and see how you enjoy it: Click Here