The IE9 beta has been launched by Microsoft. I just read a review that says it brings features that have been long needed. One of those si a download manager. Yup, IE badly needed this. In the age of wifi networking (prone to interruption) and mobile computing (who hasn’t had to hibernate the laptop in the middle of a download) IE has needed this since … well … 1996 maybe? Plenty of people have used other browsers or independent download managers to compensate.
I’m told the UI is smaller because, like with Office, many of the browser features aren’t used by most people. That gives more viewing space for the content. I’ll wait and see.
A nice new bit takes advantage of the way people work with Windows 7. You can grab a tab, apparently, and drag it to a location where the shortcut can be tabbed. Lots of people do this with programs so they can be quickly launched. We’re moving to browser based SaaS so this makes sense.
Something very cool was demonstrated by MS Ireland’s DPE, Martha Rotter, at our user group event last week. IE9 can use a graphics card in a client machine to process graphics. You can see this in action using the test drive website.
Stuck on XP? Sorry folks, MS aren’t exactly going to be developing much (if anything) new for you folks anymore. You’ll need Vista or Windows 7 for IE9.
I’m hoping to download and install IE9 on my Windows 7 netbook today.