I finally got around installing the first beta preview of Internet Explorer 9. So far, I’m pretty impressed!
It is pretty fast. Is it the fastest browser? I got no idea, but it’s fast enough: I don’t have the feeling of slow browser experience I had since IE 7. Actually IE 9 even profile the start-up of its plug-ins and propose you to disable slow plug-ins. I like this new Microsoft approach where they do blame the plug-ins when they do fail (e.g. the new driver model running in User Mode from Vista and after).
The whole site centric thingy isn’t that much of a change. It’s following Google Chrome trend of removing the toolbar clutter, but compared to a vanilla IE 8, it’s not that different.
Now, one of the big new feature is support for HTML 5 and it does so blazing fast. It’s like looking at a WPF application. Among good examples are IMDB trailer gallery, the National Museum of China virtual visit, Web Viz Benchand Never Mind the Bullets (an online comic book).
There are a couple of other goodies, such as ability to pin a web site into Windows 7 task bar.
All around it’s a major version of Internet Explorer and the first beta is fairly stable: I didn’t have any problems with it. So I encourage you to try it out!
