Internet Explorer (IE) 9 was released on Monday night and having used it a bit this week I can confidently say that it is a clear improvement over previous versions. The main improvement I noticed so far (besides obvious visual design enhancements) is its speed. It’s fast! This is in part accomplished with better operating system (OS) integration (I run a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Enterprise); hardware acceleration and better adherence to well established web standards and protocols. Playing well with existing standards is a great step towards unique user experience across multiple web browsers while at the same time allowing websites which have been designed with slightly outdated concepts in mind to remain functional.
One of the websites I use daily in IE is our help desk call tracking system which by the way should have been designed to work with other web browsers as well, but that’s a story for another time. In any event, as you can see below, IE9 switches to a “Compatibility View” and allows the site to function as expected. While this feature is in no way a new concept it is of great importance to both web content creators as well as visitors as it will take years for majority of websites/web applications to be in line with most web standards.
I have also tested the latest IE version with Blackboard, our on-campus Course Management System and as far as I can tell everything works fine. Just a note of caution though, when it comes to ANY of your enterprise services such as Blackboard please make sure you thoroughly test IE9 and other browsers prior to deploying them to users.
Another component I found useful is IE’s warning system of sorts that informs you which add-ons are misbehaving (due to poor coding principles and/or lack of exhaustive testing) and in turn contributing to slower performance.
On the other hand, what I find as the greatest improvement is the decision to due away from being backwards compatible into the “early” days of Microsoft. As you can see below, due to OS integration IE9 will not work on Windows XP. Backwards compatibility is important, but there have to be reasonable limits to it. Microsoft has been always focused on this component which often caused their software to be bloated, insecure and unstable. On the other hand, their #1 OS competitor, Apple, kept changing their system requirements (both hardware and software) every couple of years to the point where you couldn’t upgrade to the latest OS if your computer didn’t have a Pentium based processor. I think that both Apple’s constant changes as well as Microsoft’s compatibility that at times reaches some 10-15 years back are plain dumb. A medium of some kind (let’s say 6-7 years) could be the optimal solution and with this IE change I hope that Microsoft is heading in that direction.
In short, Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox (along with Opera, Safari and others) once again have a serious competitor in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
*For a more in depth review of IE9 you can head over to Lifehacker and their review of IE9’s best new features.