14 DAY TRIAL // If you really want to enjoy Internet Explorer 9 then you must run Windows 7. The evolution of tabbed browsing for IE9 has been tailored to Windows 7’s graphical user interface in order to offer an enhanced UX. Have a look at the videos embedded at the bottom of this article, or simply download IE9 Beta and test it on top of Windows 7.
The experience is like nothing available from rival browsers on the market, and it might just be sufficient to get you to follow the rest of the development process for IE9 until the RTW milestone.
Fact is that with IE9 Beta there are more things that can be done with tabs than in any previous version of the browser.
IE9 enables users to drag out a tab and make it its own window by simply releasing the mouse button. Of course, once a tab has been removed from a specific window it can be added right back.
Eugene Chang, IE User Experience Researcher, revealed that Microsoft followed feedck from end users when it introduced this feature.
“This is for a variety of different scenarios, from comparing products on multiple sites to managing groups of tabs while organizing search results,” Chang explained.
“In IE9, you can drag a tab out of a window to create a new window and move tabs between windows if you want to group tabs of a specific task together.
“When you drop a tab into an existing Tab Group, the new tab joins the group and matches its color appropriately. For keyboard lovers, you can also “cut & paste” tabs to different windows through Ctrl+M and Ctrl+Shift+M!”
And if you used Aero Snap, than you certainly love Aero Snap. Whenever I go back to a Windows Vista or Windows XP machine for some tests, I always find myself dragging windows to the edge of the screen in order to get the functions of Aero Snap.
Yes, Snap is that addictive. According to Microsoft, some 40% of users have enjoyed the feature, with 17% turning to it to compare windows side by side.
“Instead of having to learn another way to compare windows, in IE9 you can use Aero Snap just by dragging a tab,” Chang added.
“If you are comparing a product on two websites in two tabs and decide you want to look at them side by side, all you have to do is drag that tab to the side of the screen and it will snap to fill that half of the screen.
“Just as with Aero Snap, once you pull the tab off of the side of the screen, it returns back to its original window size.”
Most importantly, the content of a specific tab is not affected by actions such as dragging it away from a window.
The content, let’s say a video file, will continue to render fully, because of advances such as hardware acceleration and separate sessions for each tab.
“Finally, you can pin sites by dragging a tab to the Taskbar. Pinned Sites let you put your favorite sites at your fingertips on the Taskbar,” Chang stated.
“As we were developing this feature, we saw during usability studies that dragging a tab was one of the main ways people expected to be able to pin a site. This made sense as the tab is a representation for the site in the browser, so it is natural to have this be a way to pin sites.”
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Build 9.0.7930.16406 is available for download here.