14 DAY TRIAL // Just in case you still have doubts about the huge evolution that Internet Explorer 9 represents over its predecessors, Microsoft has put together a comparison chart designed to illustrate the advantages that the next generation of IE has over IE8 and IE7. IE9 has been downloaded over 36 million times already, 25 million while it was still in Beta and the remaining 11 million after it graduated to the Release Candidate (RC) stage.
There have to be absolutely no questions about IE9’s superiority to IE7 and IE8 for the early adopters that have already tested the browser.
I’ve said it, and I’m going to say it again, IE9 is in a different league than any other IE release offered by the software giant.
The comparison chart offered by the Redmond company is simply a visual representation of IE9’s superiority in three categories: performance, user interface and user experience, and security.
IE9 comes with Chakra, the new JavaScript engine which delivers performance at least on par and even faster than rival browsers, but also with full hardware acceleration for HTML5 content, including video and audio.
Speed enhancements also involve better add-on management, faster startup and shutdown times, and snappier tabs.
IE9 also offers a better overall user experience, providing users with the One Box, which combined the Address Bar and the search box, with increased screen real estate space for browsing, a minimalist UI, and seamless integration with Windows 7’s UI including Pinned Sites.
With IE9, Microsoft has extended user privacy putting users in control of the data they share with third-parties through Tracking Protection.
Additional security enhancements have been delivered to the SmartScreen Filter, now capable of issuing better warnings when dodgy downloads are detected.
Another part of making IE9 browsing a more trusted experience is related to increasing reliability. By isolating tabs to their own processes, IE9 is safe from a single or more tabs crashing, and will continue to run, immediately recovering the sites that went down.
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Release Candidate (RC) and Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 8 (PP8) are available for download here.
