‘Beauty of the Web’; Haven’t you experienced it yet?

By Jude Perera, SLIIT

Two days, two million downloads. That’s the official download count for IE9 beta just after its worldwide release, and is quite a huge accomplishment for a browser in its beta stage. Internet Explorer is still the most popularly used web browser with around 50% of the global market share. And, with the current trend, IE9 will surely roll out for a bigger stake in no time.

IE9 comes with the theme ‘Beauty of the Web” and en-route to unleash a new echelon to the web browsing experience with its dynamic outlook and simplicity of use.

The ‘First Look’ always has a huge impact, even for a browsers ‘Graphical User Interface’ (GUI). Unlike its predecessor IE8 which almost had quite a lot space reserved for toolbars and buttons, IE9 has got the meekest and space-efficient user interface making it much Cleaner. The browser has only a small Address Bar, Back and Forward buttons, ample space for Tabs and three small Quick Access buttons giving the rest of the screen for Web Page Viewing. This of course is what we really look for in a browser. Putting it in simple terms, IE9 focuses on the ‘web’, not the browser.

While having the good looks, if IE9 is to deliver an immersive, fascinating web experience, the developing team had to reimage the entire browser to be Super-Fast, and they marvelously did it. IE9 not only emphasies on page load time, but also the entire browsing experience and performance as well.

A native application always uses the existing hardware and processing power to throw its best performance. So why not give IE9 that capability and make the web look like a virtual application that sits right on your Computer. The devs did embrace that concept by giving the ability to take full advantage of the power of your computer’s hardware, with the help of sub-system enhancements, add-on advisor, hang recovery, Chakra the new JavaScript engine plus many more features to ensure more real like graphics, faster responsiveness, more stability and reliability. IE9 at the same time is one of the first browsers to bind the power of the graphics processor for hardware-accelerated video, animations and other graphical rendering scenarios giving a rich graphical experience.

“We have had more than 10 million downloads of the Internet Explorer 9 Beta making Internet Explorer 9 our fastest adopted browser beta to date!” said Ryan Gavin Senior Director, Internet Explorer Business and Marketing at Microsoft at the Professional Developers Conference while announcing the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 6.

According to the latest statistics Microsoft® caters to more than one billion Windows® Users around the world. It’s not a secret that most of the time almost all the users’ access internet in some way. Here comes Internet Explorer® 9, Microsoft’s own Web Browsing Solution for its Windows Desktop, Server and Mobile Operating Systems.

Since 1994, with their first browser named “Internet Explorer 1” Microsoft has released 8 major Browser versions To Web (RTW). IE was able to gain a peak worldwide usage share of 95% once and was able to become the ‘Most Used Web Browser’ of all time.

Over time, web browsing evolved into one of the most essential activities of a user. For customers, the web has moved from being just another look and feel factor to a much more personalised experience. With Firefox, Chrome, and Safari trying to grab the market share, Microsoft saw the necessity to create a big bang to win over consumers as well as developers. Thus a new era of a Browsing Platform through the IE Family, “Windows Internet Explorer 9” or simply called “IE9” was imaged to give its users a fascinating experience of the web that they have never experienced before. Right at the moment Internet Explorer 8 is the current stable and the latest release of Microsoft’s browser wave whereas IE9 is still under beta stage which means it is still under development. The only downside of IE9 is that it requires Windows Vista or 7.

“We are particularly excited about developer reaction and feedback to IE9 Beta, with 37 million pages views of our Test Drive site and 13,000 pieces of feedback submitted," said a spokesperson for Microsoft, further adding that IE9 is "on track to be our fastest adopted browser ever".

Internet Explorer 9 is HTML5, SVG, CSS3, ECMAScript5, and DOM friendly, thus supporting developers and end-users to write and feel what you want the way you want. With the HTML5 support, audio and video viewing and sharing experience is taken into a higher level with no need of Add-Ons or Plug-ins. Ultimate result? IE9 now starts fast, runs fast and ends fast to give the user a feeling that the entire web resides just inside your PC.

Give an encore for IE9s HTML5 skills. According initial HTMLS conformance tests conducted by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 beta release 6 topped with the best score beating Firefox 4 beta 6 and Google Chrome 7.

IE9 is armed with industry-leading technologies such as the SmartScreen® Filter which is a Dynamic Security Intelligence and Safety Service that is designed to protect the end-users from phishing attacks and malicious software. Additionally, pinned sites, jump lists, tear-off tabs with Aero Snap, One Box and Notification Bar etc. are some of the cool features that you’ll come across while playing around with IE9.

With the all new ‘F12 Developer Tools’ in Internet Explorer 9, developers can now monitor even more characteristics of site performance as well. The IE team has provided a special test-drive environment over at http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/ for a whole lot of tests on Speed, HTML5, Graphical and Browser Demos to experience and test how compatible they are to get hold of the beauty of tomorrow’s web. Dedicated IE9 representatives and other dev pros will give you the best assistance that you can get over at their testing and guidance forums.  What you just read about is just a fraction of the maiden browser. Does IE9 live up to the hype? Well, all I can say is “why don’t you try and find it out your-self”.  Just visit http://www.beautyoftheweb.com to give the IE9 beta a spin. Use it to experience it. Don’t be left behind. More than 10 million users have already unlocked the Beauty of the Web.