Hands on: Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft's fish tank test is a cool tool to show off Internet Explorer 9's hardware acceleration at work. Photo / Supplied

If, like many, you only tend to fire up Internet Explorer to download Firefox or Chrome, then you may want to check out what Microsoft's elves have been slaving over to put these browser upstarts in their place.

In the past Internet Explorer hasn't had a lot of good press. Cluttered with pointless toolbars, which just get in the way of the web, it had a reputation for being painfully slow. And last (but by no means least), from a purely aesthetic perspective, its user interface looked as if it'd been hit with the ugly stick one time too many.

In short, Internet Explorer may have won the browser wars back in the 90s, but since then, times have changed. Microsoft hasn't been taking this sitting down and has been cracking its whip over the Redmond code monkeys to crank out a newer, shinier, bolder and faster version of Internet Explorer to try and arrest the kicking they've been getting.

Showcasing IE9, Microsoft talked up its support for HTML 5 and hardware acceleration which sees the browser doing tasks previously the domain of Adobe Flash, while offloading graphical chores into graphics hardware.

Interactivity and zippy graphics aside, IE9 also sports a bevy of other lesser known features such as "Pinned Sites" and what Microsoft calls "One Box". But the million dollar question is whether or not IE9 and it's new feature set have the chops to take on Chrome and Firefox?

Look and feel

While Internet Explorer has long sported a user interface that even its own mum would struggle to love, IE9 signals a change in design direction. The clutter has been kicked to the curb as IE9's designers focus on less interface and more on the web. This may sound like small beer but at the end of the day, as web pages become increasingly information rich and complex, less is the new more in the browser interface game.

From this perspective, IE9 seems to have moved on from its awkward teen years into a more mature early adulthood. The fugly menu bar is gone and its navigation buttons and address bar now dominate proceedings. Equally nice are the small-yet-noticeable tweaks that add a hint of sophistication - such as the backwards and forwards buttons changing colour to match the of the site you're browsing. Add in the Aero glass frame and translucent windows, and IE9 is a good match for Windows 7 or Vista. It won't work on the aging XP operating system.

New features
Rather than taking the same tired old chassis and adding different coloured upholstery, racing stripes and a shiny set of wheels, Microsoft seems to have gone to some effort to add genuinely useful features to IE9.

It may be one of IE9's more subtle features but Pinned Sites quickly became an indispensible part of my surfing repertoire. Thanks to Gmail and several other sites, I live with browser pages open 24/7 on the PCs scattered throughout my home and work.

As the cloud continues to grab a growing slice of our productivity, being able to pin websites to the Windows Taskbar makes a whole lot of sense. Once you've dragged a site to the bar, it'll behave like a completely separate application, complete with notifications (e.g. new email etc).

Some pinned sites also support jump lists (which are shortcuts to site specific tasks when you right click the pinned icon on the Windows taskbar). It mightn't sound like much, but it goes a helluva long way towards streamlining how you interact with the web.

Also absent is the multitude of distracting text field boxes that plagued previous versions of Internet Explorer. The address bar is still there but now does double duty for entering search terms. Tab trickery has also been given a spit and polish with tabs now able to be snapped out from the browser and misbehaving tabs able to be closed without killing the entire application.

Equally nice is the new Tab Page which shows sites that you've visited. Last but by no means least, Microsoft has finally heard the pleas of many a geek and added an actual real to goodness Download Manager so you can now see what files have been downloaded and the progress of downloads as they happen.

Performance

IE9 may be brimming with usability improvements, but power users have a near insatiable need for speed, so has Microsoft added a bigger donkey under IE9's hood?

There's been a lot of talk about IE9's HTML5 support and hardware acceleration as well as a new faster JavaScript engine, plus support for fancy pants web technologies like CSS3 and SVG2, but is IE9 really that much faster?

Having spent the better part of a week with IE9, my answer to this is a positive yes. After having had several badly-behaved Firefox add-ons bring it to its knees in the past, IE9's "Add-on Performance Advisor" was a godsend.

The first time I fired up IE9, I was greeted with a pop-up asking if I'd like to speed up browsing by disabling slower add-ons. The resulting snappiness was a welcome addition.

Perhaps the most noticeable performance boost with IE9 during my testing wasn't browser start up or page render times (although these felt plenty fast), but how responsive it felt in use. Hitting the stop button on earlier IE versions felt like trying to stop a runaway bus, especially when lots of tabs were open. With IE9 things felt more like taking a spin in a Lotus Elise.

To IE9 or Not to IE9?

Until recently IE was primarily seen by geeks in the know as a vehicle for downloading Firefox or Chrome, but the will IE9 see this change? Thanks to a significantly improved interface design, some genuinely useful features and usability improvements (one of which is definitely speed) Internet Explorer 9 is primed to give both Firefox and Chrome a real run for their money.

If you're willing to give Explorer another chance, it's available for download from here.