Internet Explorer 9 Brings Better Performance, But Not Much Else
I’ll be honest: I hardly use Internet Explorer. Google
Chrome is my current browser of choice.
When that fails me, Firefox is my backup. The main reason I
use Chrome is speed: the browser runs lickety-split on
Windows 7 when the network is running smoothly, with minimal
latency in page load.
By contrast, IE has always felt slow and clunky, like Web
pages had to take a detour through a jar of molasses before
arriving in the browser. Even Firefox, which was originally
spunky, can feel slow and bloated at times.
IE8 on Windows 7 makes vast improvements in page load time;
Microsoft’s browser, in most cases, feels as snappy as
Chrome. The IE team at Microsoft aims to continue that trend
with Internet Explorer 9, which is now available for public
preview.
This pre-release of IE9 is touted as a “developer preview,”
and for good reason – there’s not much to it. It installs as
a separate application in your system without replacing your
current installation of IE8. Open it up, and you’re treated
to the world’s most spartan browser interface.
You’ll have to click the Page menu and click Open to
navigate to a new site.
As Microsoft discusses on its IE blog, most of the current
changes in IE9 are under the hood. IE9 uses hardware
acceleration to speed the performance of HTML5, a new
version of the Internet’s lingua franca that enables
developers to build Flash-like applications in the browser.
The IE team has also rewritten the JavaScript engine so that
it runs natively inside of the browser, instead of running
inside of a complex scripting architecture that supports
various scripting languages.
Unfortunately, even these performance improvements might not
be enough. According to the benchmarks released by Microsoft
back in March, IE9′s performance still lags behind Firefox
and Chrome.
If you’re an end user looking for new features, there’s
nothing here for you (yet). A leaked version of the full IE9
browser gives us a small hint of what’s to come when
Microsoft releases IE9 Beta in September: features include a
new download manager, a Chrome-imitating Start tab, and
better add-on management. Those are necessary improvements,
but not enough to pull me away from Chrome.
It feels like IE9 isn’t meant for PC end users at all, but
is paving the way for fast HTML5 applications on Windows 7
tablet PCs.
Unless the IE team unveils some new features it’s been
keeping tucked under its hat come September, it appears that
the best Web browsers for Windows 7 will continue to come
from outside of Microsoft.