IE9 download available!

[Damien]

Nice! Will surely give this a try.

[qdave]

i've noticed that when middle clicking links from neowin main page(mini spy) it crashes a lot :(

[meccs]

Thanks!

BTW

Does anyone know why is in Internet Options > Advanced > Enable software rendering instead of GPU option checked but also greyed out? It means that I cannot uncheck it.

I have the same problem :(

[Buendia]

I have the same problem

What is your GPU?

[liju]

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...

In Ed Bott's review he says that it is by design that the addons don't work in pinned window. Why not use InPrivate Filtering with the xml Fanboy adblock list? I think it works with pinned sites; not sure as I'm not on my PC now.

[Denis W. 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 can think of one example where pinning tabs to the taskbar to group sites together is silly: when you're doing research for a paper or a project, and you've got tons of tabs open on multiple different sites. You expect them to pin every site down there in the taskbar, then when they're done you expect them to unpin each one? Also, at the moment my taskbar is about ~70-75% filled with 12 icons pinned. That's excluding IE which isn't currently pinned down there. I don't have a whole lot of space to create multiple app icons to group together tabs.

Firefox 4 would be slightly better in this situation in that you can create temporary tab groups if you do want grouping. Then when you're done you can easily remove everything in one shot. I'm not sure if you can search through tabs though. I do know Opera has a hidden Windows panel that can search through names of windows and tabs, but no tab grouping.

[Calum Veteran]

I can think of one example where pinning tabs to the taskbar to group sites together is silly: when you're doing research for a paper or a project, and you've got tons of tabs open on multiple different sites. You expect them to pin every site down there in the taskbar, then when they're done you expect them to unpin each one? Also, at the moment my taskbar is about ~70-75% filled with 12 icons pinned. That's excluding IE which isn't currently pinned down there. I don't have a whole lot of space to create multiple app icons to group together tabs.

Firefox 4 would be slightly better in this situation in that you can create temporary tab groups if you do want grouping. Then when you're done you can easily remove everything in one shot. I'm not sure if you can search through tabs though. I do know Opera has a hidden Windows panel that can search through names of windows and tabs, but no tab grouping.

You bring up a great point. Most people pin their most used programs to the taskbar; likewise, some will pin their most used websites to the taskbar. When using a program which is not pinned to the taskbar, an entry for that program is temporarily created in the taskbar and then removed when the user closes the program down; however, this doesn't happen when visiting a website which isn't pinned - that's some inconsistency in how pinning websites functions compared to pinning applications and something I didn't realise until your post.

I was originally going to state that if one is doing research for a paper, it makes sense to still only use the pinned websites they would always have pinned (e.g. I'm currently researching for a report right now and I have my Channel 4 and The Guardian 'apps' open because I'm reading some articles on their websites; I also have Internet Explorer open with articles from other websites); however, this might still mean that some users will have many tabs open inside the main Internet Explorer window.

I'm starting to think Microsoft could extend this 'pinning' capability and improve it in a few ways, before they release the final version of Internet Explorer 9.

[Code149]

How about if Microsoft allowed people to create IE add-ons using the .NET framework? This works really well when creating add-ons for Office applications and it makes sense, to me, because people would then be able to be very imaginative with their extensions; also, as with Windows Phone 7, a lot of people should wish to create extensions for IE due to familiarity of the .NET framework. Just a thought.

I agree wholeheartedly! The same can also be said about Windows Media Player plug-in system that still uses COM interface and C++ as the language that I have no interest in learning it for now.

Regarding the tabs, I think they should be providing the choice for those of us who don't want everything to be pinned on the task bar; a wider tab bar that is at the same time unobtrusive and doesn't take up the page view state must be there.They can make the tab bar auto-hide or semi- transparent to keep it out of the page view state.

[maash]

this sucks. I am stuck using Chrome on XP SP3

[pezzonovante]

Has anybody got the app for Bing working? On all the articles and things, I've seen people pin Bing to the taskbar and it provides jumplists and a decent icon. When I try to pin Bing, I don't get jumplists or a decent icon; also, the 'back' and 'forward' buttons don't look smooth at all. I've tried changing the location in Bing, but nothing seems to work. Seeing as I've seen others do it, I would have thought Bing have already added it?

You need to disable Compatability View for all sites in order to pin sites to the taskbar. Bing worked for me after disabling Compatability View.

[Calum Veteran]

You need to disable Compatability View for all sites in order to pin sites to the taskbar. Bing worked for me after disabling Compatability View.

Thank you. Is there a way to completely disable the feature? I've looked through all of the options, but cannot find it. I don't have compatibility view enabled for any site, including Bing, but the button is displayed next to the address bar.

[pezzonovante]

Thank you. Is there a way to completely disable the feature? I've looked through all of the options, but cannot find it. I don't have compatibility view enabled for any site, including Bing, but the button is displayed next to the address bar.

I think there's an option through Group Policy and Registry to remove the Compatibility View button from the Address Bar. Don't remember the details though.

[Antaris Veteran]

Ya, I guess the difference is they're not as fancy as some of the stuff you can get on FF/Chrome maybe? Fancy in terms of looks and stuff, I dunno. I never got into the extention game, which is also why I had no problem ditching FF long ago.

I think one of the main issues with extensibility in IE, is that is isn't really pushed as a core part of the browsing experience. Taking Firefox as the perfect example, Extensions are easy to discover, easy to install, update, remove etc. We're beginning to see a similar trend with Chrome and Safari since they enabled them. IE on the other hand doesn't really promote extensibility at all.

If they made it easier to create and discover add-ons in IE, it could be yet another reason to start using it.

[Bioran]

Are anybody experiencing keyboard issues, where text input seems to lag in IE9? (And some letters end up not being inputted if you type too fast)

[TDT]

there are other things about adblock pro that do not work correctly with 9 as well such as right-click block this image

That's not a problem, I just "drag" the small icon on the status bar to whatever image/banner I need to block. I agree, it's more "painless" than a right click, and also you need to have activate the status bar every time you need to do that, but it's better than nothing. :)

In Ed Bott's review he says that it is by design that the addons don't work in pinned window. Why not use InPrivate Filtering with the xml Fanboy adblock list? I think it works with pinned sites; not sure as I'm not on my PC now.

I think it's stupid. Why shouldn't the addons work on pinned sites?! I really don't see a valid reason for this.

As for the inprivate filtering, I tried it, but has much less success at blocking stuff than adblock pro. :)

[cork1958]

Export your bookmarks and then import into IE.

You KNOW that has to be to much work, as that was that posters ONLY reason for passing on it.

Keep the comments coming on this beta people, It's sounding better all the time.

[Bioran]

Can anybody use the "Send Feedback" functionality if you have Windows Live 15 installed? It seems like IE9 uses an outdated version of live log-in assistant...

[Eric Veteran]

Can anybody use the "Send Feedback" functionality if you have Windows Live 15 installed? It seems like IE9 uses an outdated version of live log-in assistant...

The feedback tool it installed that's accessible in the gear menu works fine for me. I've sent 10-15 suggestions/bugs with it so far...

[George P Global Moderator]

I can't have the live sign-in assisstant installed due to the fact it screws up my WD TV Live media player and win7 network shares, so it seems that while I can login to the connect IE9 feedback page and comment on things I can't send feedback myself anymore. I also had to uninstall beta 1 due to some graphics problem with menus I was getting.

Bummer, but for those who can, can anyone (unless this was posted already) send in some feedback asking for the option to have a "Paste and Go-to" option when you right click on the address bar and paste in a url please. It's something opera has had for a while and would be nice. As it stands now you have to paste and then either click the go-to button or hit enter.

Oh and it'd be nice if we could have the option to download something without using the new download manager. I often download very small files that don't need the use of a download manager etc. Maybe if we hold shift+left click on the file it could use the old IE8 way of downloading?

[ViperAFK]

I can't have the live sign-in assisstant installed due to the fact it screws up my WD TV Live media player and win7 network shares, so it seems that while I can login to the connect IE9 feedback page and comment on things I can't send feedback myself anymore. I also had to uninstall beta 1 due to some graphics problem with menus I was getting.

Bummer, but for those who can, can anyone (unless this was posted already) send in some feedback asking for the option to have a "Paste and Go-to" option when you right click on the address bar and paste in a url please. It's something opera has had for a while and would be nice. As it stands now you have to paste and then either click the go-to button or hit enter.

Yeah I would like this option too, I just notice firefox added it in one of the latest nightly. So now chrome, fx, and opera have this feature by default.

[Kevin.]

I've played around with it for a little bit, and here are my thoughts so far:

What I liked:

-The interface in general. It's much, much better than IE 8's with it's minimalistic and simplicity.

-Finally! A download manager! Long overdue.

-It's snappy and overall a lot more faster.

-Pinning websites to the taskbar is a nice feature.

-Better standards support (95/100 on Acid3 test! Well done!)

What I didn't like:

-Being forced to restart after installing it. This is really annoying, and I feel like I shouldn't have to restart after installing a web browser. Yes, I know it downloads and installs "updates", but it would be great if it didn't force you to restart the computer.

-The placement of the tabs. It would be much better if it was above the address bar and make use all of that unused space. The inability to move the tabs area is annoying too.

-The back button is too big and cut off at the bottom.

-The refresh and stop buttons should be combined. I also wish they were right after the back and forward buttons by default and not right after the address bar.

-No page previews in the "New Tab" page. It would be nice to have that.

-The speed of the file transfer missing from the download manager. It's useful for monitoring my internet connection in case a download is going a lot slower than it usually would.

-I wish Active X would be ditched. It's been a major cause of security problems. From my personal browsing today, I barely see it in use anymore. Windows Update was the exception, but that was XP's version, and IE 9 won't be supporting Windows XP anyway.

One thing I really wish Microsoft would do is regularly update IE like 9.1, 9.2, etc and make improvements along the way. The problem with the "major release only" is they're usually playing catch up with the competition.

If Microsoft can play their cards right, IE 9 could be a real winner. I'm looking forward to seeing what improvements will be in future builds.

[Guest xiphi]

-The refresh and stop buttons should be combined. I also wish they were right after the back and forward buttons by default and not right after the address bar.

Right click an empty space in the tab area, and select "Move Stop and Refresh".

[Elliott]

What I didn't like:

-Being forced to restart after installing it. This is really annoying, and I feel like I should have to restart after installing a web browser. Yes, I know it downloads and installs "updates", but it would be great if it didn't force you to restart the computer.

The rendering engine is integrated into the system so that other programs can use it. Safari has the same limitation on OS X because other apps can use the WebKit framework built into the system.

[George P Global Moderator]

The rendering engine is integrated into the system so that other programs can use it. Safari has the same limitation on OS X because other apps can use the WebKit framework built into the system.

Mostly it was just used by the Help system in windows and any apps, but MS changed that with Vista iirc, ofc some old apps probably still use it so until that changes we'll have to keep restarting I guess. I would love for MS to cut down way more on the need to restart with Win8 and anything else they have.

[liju]

Installing IE9 beta overwrites explorerframe.dll (to a new file version?).