Internet Explorer 9

Last week Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9.

“Sites are instant. Sites amaze. Fast is now beautiful.” – tagline.

I have enjoyed the following about the new browser:

• Minimal clutter – the window has almost no toolbars or extraneous elements that detract from the content being displayed from the website
• Pinned Site – adding a site to the taskbar or desktop makes it feel like you’re launching a regular application rather than a website. Right-clicking on a pinned site and getting a jump list of common commands for the site is also handy.
• Usage of hardware graphics acceleration – this is where the speed comes in… finally, aside from video games, I can justify spending money on a graphics card.  You can check out a sample site provided by the National Museum of China that takes advantage of the graphics acceleration.

I was reading interesting analysis of some of Google’s actions – the creation of the Chrome browser wasn’t for Google to get into the web browser business but instead to push the other primary browser developers (Microsoft, Mozilla, etc.) to innovate and provide a better experience for users… which would affect Google since the main way people get to Google is through the web browser.