Internet Explorer 9

The Internet Explorer 9 ( officially Windows Internet Explorer 9; Abbreviation: IE9 or MSIE9 ) is a web browser from Microsoft. He was released on March 15, 2011. His current successor is the Internet Explorer 10

History of development

During the development of IE9 about every eight weeks was offered a so-called Platform Preview available for download. Thanks to these users could test the performance of the new web browser, respectively its current state of development. The new graphical user interface was missing, however. On 15 September 2010, the beta phase started.

On February 10, the only release candidate version appeared.

Innovations

Web Standards

Internet Explorer 9 features compared with IE8 significantly improved support for web standards: He reached the Acid3 test perfect score. The browser supports web standards such as HTML5 and CSS3 noticeably better than its predecessor and also can now show ( the last of the five major browsers) SVG fundamentally. The execution speed of JavaScript has increased significantly over the older Internet Explorer versions. Also the IE9 support HTML video tag. So H.264 video can be viewed directly and without external programs in the browser.

IE9 uses to render all content direct access to the graphics card. Especially useful it is for notebooks in battery mode, as will be saved in this type of power respectively, the battery life can be extended.

Functions

The Microsoft browser has many new features. So it contains a download manager, as well as in particular for developers useful functions. Lately appear when you open a new tab, the most popular websites in the form of an overview. In Windows 7, it is now possible to attach a URL to the taskbar.

Surface

Goal of the designers of the surface of IE9 was to utilize the available space as well as possible. With regard to this objective, rarely used functions in IE9 are hidden by default, so that only one bar left. This has forward and reverse buttons and an address bar that can be simultaneously used as a search bar and the buttons are integrated with page-specific functions. The tabs appear to the right of the address bar. In addition, there are three buttons with the " Jump to Homepage ", "Invoking favorites " and "Advanced Menu".

Criticism

In general, the IE9 was perceived positively by the media. Even the part of the competitors of Google IE9 received good criticism. This is mainly due to the good support of web standards and the speed of the web browser. However, the site caniuse.com shows the comparison with other in 2011 current browsers still a lag in the support of several web standards. Internet Explorer 8 supported only 35 percent of the tested properties ( without Working Drafts ). The Internet Explorer 9 comes to a support of 80 percent of the properties. The versions at the same time available for Firefox 9.0 and Opera 11.6 achieve a rate of 93 percent and 94 percent.

Was criticized also that IE9 is only available for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users. Users of older versions of Windows, especially for users of the release of Internet Explorer 9 is still widely used Windows XP will not be considered.