After using IE9 for the past few days I thought I’d share with you some of my thoughts of the new browser.
First the good stuff, its quick, very quick. The new pinning feature and the allowing websites to be treated like applications is great and I can see it becoming a popular feature of of Windows 7/IE9 and the fact its Microsoft’s way to combat whatever Google Chrome OS brings to market has not been lost on me. I am also likely the new standards support in IE9, it does indeed make some websites more beautiful.
I also like the design of the new browser, at first I was quizzical of design choices but actually they do make sense, why on earth do I want an address bar right across my 1920×1200 screen, its a major waste of the space so having the tabs sit next to the One Bar makes sense. However I still feel there is more room for improvement as you will read below.
However, despite all the good there is in IE9 (there is more to like by a long way than there is to dislike) I still feel some things need to be sorted.
If you look at the image above you will see a white line at the top of the website, this is put there by IE9. Whilst a lot of websites have a white background and this white line makes it feel that the browser blends in with the website I feel that the design detracts from the core idea behind IE9. This line takes up value space, 3 pixels to be precise, which makes no sense to me. It would be just as obvious which tab was open by the white gradient on the tab without the white line across the top of the web site too.
Following the same idea of space saving I think the UI can still be made smaller, the tabs don’t need to be as tall as they are and there is valuable space along the entire length of window below the minimise, maximise and close buttons (on the left side the large back button takes up this space but I think that the button can occupy the glass above it). One thing that is annoying me is the lack of web site title in top left of the window, just because I can see the title in the tab isn’t enough. When I open up several tabs I quickly loose track of which tab is for which site as the tabs get smaller, this is even worse when browsing several pages on the same site. I use a large screen to browse but have a netbook too and know that it doesn’t require me to be looking at many pages before I loose track of which tabs I was reading. It might also be good if the thumbnail feature of the Windows 7 taskbar was used for the tabs in IE9 too.
I think the emphasis on what is in the window is wrong too, if Microsoft want people’s sites to shine then they should make it look like the websites are above the window rather than in the window (achieved with only a little gradient/shadow use). It might also be good if the window faded whilst someone was reading/using a website and returned to full colour when the mouse was hovered over any part of the window. With web apps on the increase its likely people will be spending more time on one site before moving to another tab (specifically Office Web Apps, if I have to write something I am unlikely to be switching back and forth between tabs and will want as few distractions as possible, other tabs). This again would allow the sites to really shine and with less UI around the website they would feel even more like applications.
Now on to the missing features, I used to use the “new session” option a lot to manage multiple Twitter accounts, that no longer appears possible with IE9. I also question why old UI elements still exist with IE9’s menus and options.
I am looking forward to what the different teams within Microsoft have planned for their sites, its a shame Windows Live doesn’t yet have jump list options.
If you haven’t downloaded IE9 yet, I really do think you should, then you can get it at http://beautyoftheweb.com.
What are your biggest compliments or complaints with IE9?
