I’m no web developer, I’ve made my site and that’s about the sole experience of it I’ve had. I’m sure that will change as time goes on. Naturally I checked how my site looks in IE9, turns out the same as other leading browsers, which is good for me. Microsoft have really worked to be compatible with standards a lot more.

If you haven’t tried it out yet you can pick it up from here.

So I’ve been using IE9 from the day after it was released. There are a number things I like about it, but my use of it hasn’t been painless.

Pinning

IE9 allows you to pin web applications to your taskbar. After seeing this it wasn’t long before I had my 2 most frequently used apps pinned. The pinned apps have styling to blend in with the theme of the app, this distracts from the point of it being in IE, it really feels a lot more like a native app.

Twitter pinned

Applications that have been pinned can utilise jump lists, for example on twitter you effectively have jump list shortcuts for Mentions and the like. Saves having to navigate the site and page loads.

Graphics Hardware Acceleration

This is another feature you should visit www.beautyoftheweb.co.uk for. It really utilises your computer for a nice browser experience. Laggy responses are gone, instead you see the site as the developer intended. Microsoft have got this right, as they should, it’s their OS after all.

Download Manager

Due to a slight issue I had with the Dreamspark website I was unable to use their download manager. I had to download it all using internet explorer. In the past it hasn’t been great. Here it is now:

dlm

Not too shabby.

A thing which could be useful, if you’re downloading executables, is that it scans the  This will be useful for people taking their first steps on the web. Or analyses it at least. If it’s something found that isn’t deemed as good, you are warned.

My issues

Using blogger as a blogging platform I’m able to view some analytics for how many views different pages get and so on. However in IE9 this page didn’t load. There’s an uncaught exception which prevents it from continuing to load. The solution wasn’t difficult to find. Compatibility view was an easy toggle, although, unclear at first as to where it was – see bellow.

Combatibility mode

A trivial one is the fact that all my bookmarks are on Chrome, which is all well and good, if I could transfer them with ease. But even so, pinning my most common apps means I don’t really need to use them often.

For whatever reason, I was unable to install BBC iPlayer the desktop app. I have heard of other people having problems trying to install this too.

HTML5 is being pushed with this. But it isn’t something new. Other browsers have been able to cope with it for quite a while now. Yes, they may not do it quite as smoothly, because they haven’t quite got the acceleration right. A lot of the features aren’t really ‘new’ in comparison to other web browsers. Pinning is, to me, what sells it. I know I could have the shortcuts on my desktop, but that is so much cooler, the amount I use web apps it pays to get there in one click.

I’m yet to have a use for the accelerators, I’m also sure other browsers have plugins to do the same thing, but that isn’t ‘out of the box’ as such.

I like the minimalist UI, it gives me the vertical space I want most when browsing. At first glance it’s larger than Chrome’s, possibly even if you have the bookmarks bar. But Being able to pin things, for me almost eliminates the immediate bookmarks. But I also I like bookmark syncing. Another thing, which helps with the space thing. It saves your zoom level, now I’m aware this is probably the same for other browsers. But I haven’t had luck with that in the past myself.

Seems like they’ve finished playing catch up now, but not really stepped ahead. I will have to see which I prefer in time, it is a beta after all.