Internet Explorer 9 has only been out in the wild for two days racking up 2.3 million downloads in its first 24 hours online. If you do some quick sums that equates to 27 downloads each and every second – imagine the bandwidth needed to support that!
The most noticeable difference with IE9 is the stripped back look and feel the browser has, its much like Google’s Chrome in that respect. Microsoft has removed cumbersome tool bars in the header choosing to focus on the actual websites for a change – the internet suddenly looks less cluttered.
Users can now pin sites to the Windows task bar, use new HTML5 video accelerators and utilize a built-in download manager – a first for IE.
Only Vista and Windows 7 users can download IE9, other users will have to make do with older versions. Initial response has been good with most users happy with the new look and feel, others are notably more pessimistic or dismissive of the update with Twitter receiving around 1,200 new updates per minute on the topic (the promoted hash tag #IE9 has clearly helped here although it wasn’t present on the site today).
@spgriffinjnr said “nice IE9 doesn’t work with windows XP. Finally Microsoft got something right.” While @shadevampire said “IE9 install stole about 20 minutes from my life! But… actually it’s pretty damn good.”
What do you make of IE9? Hit, miss or about the same as IE8?
I’m suffering from many IE9 problems. Firstly I had to rejig our intruder alarm website because we had helvetica listed as the primary fonts in our stlyesheets, and that resulted in IE9 displaying a blank page (see http://simunix.com/wordpress/?p=115 for more information on that one!). And then I tried to fill in this form, but IE9 wouldn’t let me, had to use chrome. Then our twitter page stopped displaying on IE9. In fact, the only twitter page I can get to load is the homepage; everyone’s profiles just presents you with a blank page. I used to be loyal of IE, but IE9 is incapable of rendering a whole host of pages properly.
Can't use Google translate anymore, sad upgrade