Everyone has faith in their browser of choice. Some worship the ground Chrome walks on, some see Firefox as their true Messiah, maybe you think Opera is the one true religion or perhaps you are part of the long established institution that is Internet Explorer. Much like the Catholic Church, Internet Explorer has had both bad press of late for being awkward and uncomfortable to interact with as well as losing much of its flock to its competitors. Now with the Pope visiting the UK today, it’s interesting that Internet Explorer 9 should be released at the same time. Coincidence?
Ahem…
Internet Explorer 9 (beta test version) is indeed now available and seems to be a timely attempt by Microsoft to reinvigorate itself in an increasingly competitive market for believers. Having lost nearly a third of its market share since its heady dominating overbearing days of 2003, with this release they will really have to go some way to peg back some of the ground it has lost. Like I said before, its reputation has been dashed into oblivion over everything from security to speed and it seems that had it not been for the fact that Internet Explorer was the standard browser on the majority of PCs since computers pranced around the garden of Eden, it would have a much smaller market share than it does now. Also, with the European Commission forcing Microsoft to offer its users a choice of browsers when they buy Windows, IE lost its congregation of blind followers.
So what’s new and Holy in Internet Explorer 9?
New Look
Looks modern and frankly a bit more like Chrome, although I’m sure they’ll say it is following on from Bing’s example. Their marketing tagline says it is “Unlocking the beauty of the Web.” It is more minimalist and focuses more on the content rather than peppering you with toolbars.
Faster
The add-On tracker makes a big difference in this area for a start and with IE9 supporting every new tech including HTML5, the new “Chakra” JavaScript Engine, CSS3 and SVG2, it seems it might just be as fast as Chrome, Firefox and Opera at last.
Have a look at this quick demo video to give you an idea of how it looks:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbiZ5703BxQ[/youtube]
The truth is we may never know if the pope prefers IE9 to any others. He is quite old and spends a lot of time in churches or visiting countries pretending to be some kind of head of state or deity. The fact is that with this update it seems Internet Explorer could actually be usable, but then why would you when it has held a technological hegemony for so long.
Nice try Microsoft but I’m sticking with…anyone but you!
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