IE9 download available!

[George P Global Moderator]

It's kinda funny how not many people noticed that they also released PP5. I thought PP4 was the last Platform Preview but I guess not. This is good though, they're sticking to their release cycle. Hope to jump back with the next beta and see how that one goes.

[XerXis]

if sites that should have round corners are still displaying squares they are doing it wrong and are using mozilla or chrome css extensions instead of css3.

[pezzonovante]

Prob it's been said :

Inprivate Filtering reg changed.

Now it's "PrivateMode" with value 1 instead of "StartMode"

Throw in Fanboy adblock list and you're good to go.

Actually it should be "FilteringMode" instead of "PrivateMode".

[liju]

Doesn't work.

+1. Doesn't work for me either.

Actually it should be "FilteringMode" instead of "PrivateMode".

"PrivateMode" seems to work for me, InPrivate filtering is enabled even after closing all instances of IE and reopening it. BTW I'm on win7 32bit.

[pezzonovante]

"PrivateMode" seems to work for me, InPrivate filtering is enabled even after closing all instances of IE and reopening it. BTW I'm on win7 32bit.

Interesting. Because, I'm also on Win7 32 bit.

[hdood]

So, clearly this is aimed at complete beginners? The kind that only have one or two tabs open and care about nothing else? I do realize that this is IE's primary target group, but what am I supposed to do if I have more than three tabs? Why on earth has the information bar been moved into a floating window at the bottom (which I suspect most people will think is something the website is showing and try to get rid of it by clicking any button they find as quickly as possible)? At least you can turn the status bar on.

[liju]

"PrivateMode" seems to work for me, InPrivate filtering is enabled even after closing all instances of IE and reopening it. BTW I'm on win7 32bit.

Interesting. Because, I'm also on Win7 32 bit.

Yep you were right, :D after trying one more time it failed. So it should be "FilteringMode"? I'm not that familiar with registry. Thanks going to try.

Edit: "FilteringMode" works!!!

[pezzonovante]

So, clearly this is aimed at complete beginners? The kind that only have one or two tabs open and care about nothing else? I do realize that this is IE's primary target group, but what am I supposed to do if I have more than three tabs? Why on earth has the information bar been moved into a floating window at the bottom (which I suspect most people will think is something the website is showing and try to get rid of it by clicking any button they find as quickly as possible)? At least you can turn the status bar on.

They are actually discouraging people to have 20+ tabs open. Because no matter which browser you use, having that many tabs open seriously hampers the usability. The preferred way of browsing would be to pin individual websites like Facebook, Neowin, Twitter etc to the taskbar, so each windows will have less than 5 tabs open. I think this is a very good move by Microsoft.

[Calum Veteran]

They are actually discouraging people to have 20+ tabs open. Because no matter which browser you use, having that many tabs open seriously hampers the usability. The preferred way of browsing would be to pin individual websites like Facebook, Neowin, Twitter etc to the taskbar, so each windows will have less than 5 tabs open. I think this is a very good move by Microsoft.

I agree completely and was also going to point that out to hdood.

hdood, I've been using IE 9 for a good few hours now and due to being able to pin apps to the Taskbar, I've not had many tabs open in each window. Also, even if I have had a fair few tabs open, I can get a good 8 tabs on the window without the title of each tab becoming too truncated (on my 17" screen). I've never really needed to see the title of each tab, so it doesn't bother me that when I have 20 tabs open I can only see the favicon because I find it pretty easy to find my tabs at all time. Another thing to point out is that when you hover over a tab, a tooltip appears informing you of the tab's title. I really see no need for them to place the tab bar anywhere else. I don't see what harm it's doing here, especially with the tooltip option.

[...] Why on earth has the information bar been moved into a floating window at the bottom (which I suspect most people will think is something the website is showing and try to get rid of it by clicking any button they find as quickly as possible)? [...]

You might be right about that, but people will just have to stop clicking anywhere and everywhere without reading, won't they? It frustrates me, as a designer and developer, that some people expect designers to not reach their full potential just because of some (often the majority of) users being ignorant. I think it's a much nicer place for the bar because it's much less obtrusive. I'm sure if people read and try to learn how the UI works, they would be able to figure out it's an IE element.

[hdood]

They are actually discouraging people to have 20+ tabs open. Because no matter which browser you use, having that many tabs open seriously hampers the usability. The preferred way of browsing would be to pin individual websites like Facebook, Neowin, Twitter etc to the taskbar, so each windows will have less than 5 tabs open. I think this is a very good move by Microsoft.

That is just a silly way of saying I should have multiple windows open instead of using tabs. You are of course entitled to feel that way, but for me, having 40 windows with 3 tabs would be a lot less productive and usable than having 6 with 20. Pinning is of little value to me, as I have no interest in keeping my bookmarks on the taskbar. I have better ways of organizing them. Really, what you describe is something that would work best for the group I mentioned.

[hdood]

I really see no need for them to place the tab bar anywhere else. I don't see what harm it's doing here, especially with the tooltip option.

It's a perfectly reasonable default, especially when you consider IE' target market, but I'm just not going to use something that won't let me at least change it.

You might be right about that, but people will just have to stop clicking anywhere and everywhere without reading, won't they?

That's never ever going to happen though. It's a basic design rule. People don't read things (especially if it's more than a few words), and if something pops up, they get scared and will try their best to get rid of it immediately so they can get back to what they were doing. That's just how it is.

I think it's a much nicer place for the bar because it's much less obtrusive. I'm sure if people read and try to learn how the UI works, they would be able to figure out it's an IE element.

I don't think it's very unobtrusive. It floats on top of the content and is annoying, yet kind of has an appearance that makes it not quite clear that it's actually part of the program itself. It's not part of the container. The messages also makes no real sense. Is it really obvious what "only secure content is displayed" means when I'm just browsing a random major (non-SSL) site? I'm not a UI designer though, so I am open to it working better than the info bar even though it doesn't feel that way to me.

I'm sure if people read and try to learn how the UI works, they would be able to figure out it's an IE element.

People don't want to. You should try your best to make sure it's as obvious as possible from the start.

[dr_crabman]

So, clearly this is aimed at complete beginners?

I wouldn't say "for complete beginners", it's more like "not for the hardcore users". MS has data to support design decisions and according to interviews very few people use power-user features. So they didn't add any and even degraded stuff like Quick Tabs which is why Opera will stay my main browser. But we have to realize that we're not really the target audience and not only beginners use browsers differently than we think. Another thing that surprised me for example was that MS said fewer and fewer people use bookmarks.

Behind the design of the Internet Explorer 9 chrome

"An obvious question people have asked ever since the UI leaked out a month ago is that how the browser deals with many tabs. Not surprisingly there is a power-user perception that everyone runs with dozens of tabs but as the design team found out via telemetry that it is simply not true.

For 90% of the browsing sessions they analyzed, most people had 4 or fewer tabs open and never more than 8. As such, on a reasonbly sized display, there is more than sufficient room for tabs used by most users."

[pezzonovante]

That is just a silly way of saying I should have multiple windows open instead of using tabs. You are of course entitled to feel that way, but for me, having 40 windows with 3 tabs would be a lot less productive and usable than having 6 with 20. Pinning is of little value to me, as I have no interest in keeping my bookmarks on the taskbar. I have better ways of organizing them. Really, what you describe is something that would work best for the group I mentioned.

So will you find it more productive if EVERYTHING on your OS runs in a tabbed-browsing mode? Then you will have 4 Neowin.net tabs, 2 Microsoft Word windows, gmail.com, 3 Facebook tabs , Windows Live Messenger window, twitter.com, bbc.co.uk all running in separate tabs instead of Windows.

I like the fact that Microsoft is treating Web Applications like native apps and encouraging users to use separate Windows for them.

[hdood]

So will you find it more productive if EVERYTHING on your OS runs in a tabbed-browsing mode?

No, but then I never claimed that.

[pezzonovante]

No, but then I never claimed that.

So if you can run Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel on separate Windows instead of tabs, what's wrong with running Facebook.com and Neowin.net separately as well? What do they have in common that Word and Excel don't have?

IMO, It's just a matter of mind-set.

[Renshaw]

So if you can run Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel on separate Windows instead of tabs, what's wrong with running Facebook.com and Neowin.net separately as well? What do they have in common that Word and Excel don't have?

IMO, It's just a matter of mind-set.

The way you phrased that, Its just that the tabs are at the top..

The task bar at the bottom could also be classed as tabbing.

Its just personal preference of the user.

[hdood]

So if you can run Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel on separate Windows instead of tabs, what's wrong with running Facebook.com and Neowin.net separately as well? What do they have in common that Word and Excel don't have?

Nothing. The problem arises when you have more than just a few open. Right now I have two Visual Studio windows open. One has 17 tabs, the other has 9. I could have had 26 windows open instead, but it would reduce usability. Tabs let you group documents, be it sheets in an Excel documents, source files in Visual Studio, or web pages in a browser. Again the problem is that you are describing the usage scenario of a very casual user. One that only has a couple of things open.

As for what Facebook and Neowin have in common versus Word and Excel. It wouldn't be unreasonable to want to group Facebook and Neowin together. They're both forumy community type sites where you can waste time. I tend to keep those things grouped in a separate window from, say, some topic I'm researching.

[Buendia]

Exactly my friend !

Works like a charm.

It's your choise to add later XML Fanboy list.

From where have you downloaded XML Fanboy list?

I can't find it on http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/

[TDT]

Adblock Pro seems to work fine with IE9 (32bit). So that issue is gone for me. There's still the bookmarks bar thing, that won't be so easy to "fix". :D

[George P Global Moderator]

They did toss out real world stats they they've collected showing that <10% have 8 or more tabs open at one time in their browser. Around 8 to 9 is what I normally have for example but I know people who have more of course. That said, there's been lots of feedback arleady about having the option to move tabs back under the address bar so you have more room for space. Some people don't wanna pin everything to the taskbar and so on.

I expect to see that option and other things at some point, they've been listening to people more and more now.

[meccs]

Meh. I don't like it. I never used IE8 so I can't compare but IE9 feels sluggish compared to Chrome. I like the UI tho.

[pezzonovante]

Nothing. The problem arises when you have more than just a few open. Right now I have two Visual Studio windows open. One has 17 tabs, the other has 9. I could have had 26 windows open instead, but it would reduce usability. Tabs let you group documents, be it sheets in an Excel documents, source files in Visual Studio, or web pages in a browser. Again the problem is that you are describing the usage scenario of a very casual user. One that only has a couple of things open.

But those 17 and 9 tabs are of the same application. Think of websites as separate applications. IE9 doesn't take away tabbed browsing from you. You can still have 5-6 Facebook tabs open in the Facebook window, separate from the 5 tabs in the msdn.com window. It's just that the IE9 UI discourages the user to open those 12 tabs in the same window because they are functionally different.

BTW, if you argue that you may need to have 20 tabs open from the same website at the same time, then you are a super minority.

[TDT]

I rushed with the above conclusion...the adblock works only if I launch IE, but not on pinned sites. On those, the browser loads without the addon, even if it says that it's enabled. Weird...

[pezzonovante]

From where have you downloaded XML Fanboy list?

I can't find it on http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/

http://cid-83edeb637d37824c.office.live.com/browse.aspx/Public%20stuff/Adblock%20filters%20for%20IE8?sa=148404974

[.Neo]

Speed is disappointing! Can't stand the tab bar placement either. (N) However, it does have that same nice clean look to it like Safari on Mac OS X.