Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 9 beta

As a college student, by nature, I have a lot of friends who consider themselves tech-savvy, or at least well-versed enough to know that “Internet Explorer = bad” and “Mozilla Firefox = good.” In fact, it’s a stigma to most young people today to still use Microsoft’s clunky, boring, insecure old browser. Internet Explorer is the browser my friend’s parents use because they don’t know any better. Internet Explorer is the browser my professors use because they don’t trust technology enough yet to deviate from the default. Internet Explorer is just uncool.

Microsoft aims to change this.

The beta version of Internet Explorer 9 was released to the public on Wednesday. The new update brings both a drastic makeover and a slew of added features to the browser. Some of the features to look forward to include full HTML5 support and better tab management (tab dragging and a most-viewed site tab included). Visually, the search bar has been removed, the tab bar now neighbors the URL bar, and icons have been streamlined somewhat. Overall, the browser doesn’t appear to look too bad, or as aged as its predecessors seemed. But looking nice isn’t really a priority to most users; how does IE9 perform?

Pretty darned well, apparently; Microsoft has made dramatic improvements on the performance front for the new browser. IE9 now handles Javascript just as well as the other guys, and has an improved start-up time. In an ironic twist, the new version of the browser once considered to be one of the slowest on the market has been compared to, believe it or not, Google’s Chrome, the browser marketed (and applauded) for its super-speed. And not only is IE9 fast like Google’s browser, but it’s obvious that IE9 has got some Chrome-envy in terms of looks as well.

Unfortunately, if you, like me, are one of the almost-half of computer users who haven’t moved on from Windows XP yet, you won’t have the opportunity to try out the upgraded browser; Microsoft has been trying to kill the 10-year-old operating system for years, and removing support for XP in IE9 is another step they’re taking to make sure you upgrade to Vista or 7. If you’d like to try the beta version of IE9, you’ll have to upgrade to a newer Windows OS.

Or, if you’re in the minority not still clinging onto Microsoft’s old operating system, head on over to Beauty of the Web (yes, really) to download the beta version of IE9.

(via PCMag)

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Tagged as: IE, IE9, IE9 beta, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 9, Windows