Five Reasons to Use Microsoft’s Latest Browser

By PAUL BOUTIN

Last week Microsoft unfurled what it calls the “release candidate” version of Internet Explorer 9, the latest version of the world’s most widely used browser.

Unlike the beta version I wrote about in September, this version is considered ready enough for the general public. No doubt Microsoft will make a few more small tweaks – probably bug fixes — before declaring a final version, but you can go to the company’s beautyoftheweb.com site and install the release candidate now. It will automatically update itself to the final release later, using the standard Windows Update system on your PC.

Why install a new Internet Explorer? Because it’s much, much faster than previous releases, and it includes some of the mass-appeal features that have made Google’s Chrome browser popular with early adopters. Here’s a rundown of the best new features since last fall’s beta version.


Speed:
IE9 RC, as the release candidate is officially labeled, starts more quickly. It opens Web pages, even Javascript-laden interactive pages like Facebook, in a split second, assuming you have broadband and a recent PC. As a result, you’ll reach for the Internet more often, and spend less time impatiently waiting for pages to load.

Screen Space:
One of the biggest annoyances with Internet Explorer has been that its controls take up a lot of vertical space at the top of the browser window. On IE9 RC, Microsoft has trimmed the top of the window down radically, so that by default the controls use even less vertical space than the minimal set on Chrome. (If you’ve installed toolbars on your browser, which take up even more space, ask yourself if you really use them. Reclaiming the top of the window may be a better idea.)

Browser Tabs:

If you open lots of browser tabs while Web surfing, even the beta version of IE9 was frustrating, because it crammed the tabs into the limited space to the right of the browser’s address bar, where the URL you’re currently looking at is displayed. With IE9 RC, you can fix that with two clicks. Open any Web page. IE9 will create a tab to the right of your address bar. Right-click on the tab, and choose the option “Show tabs on a separate row.” That tab and all others will appear on their own row below the address bar. This layout option takes exactly as much vertical space as the default version of Chrome, which is to say not much. Also, it’s easier to read and click your tabs on their own row, rather than having them crammed to the right of your address bar.

HTML5 support:

Web developers have been moving toward a new technical standard called HTML5, which has been gradually making sites more powerful and less buggy, as well as removing the need for plug-ins, Flash players and other extraneous software. Last year’s IE9 beta version choked on HTML5 pages including some of Microsoft’s own sites (that’s why they call it a beta), but IE9 RC has been rock-solid on every site I’ve tested.

ActiveX off switch:

As the Web moves to HTML5, there’s less and less need for Microsoft’s downloadable ActiveX controls, which security experts have long criticized as the source of malware attacks, since ActiveX can reach further into your PC’s operating system than the browser itself is allowed to do. On IE9 RC, you can disable ActiveX by default, then turn it back on for specific sites.

To do that, click the Tools icon, which looks like a cog in the upper right corner of IE9 RC. Click Safety -> ActiveX filtering. That will disable ActiveX controls. As you surf, you will sometimes see a blue “do not enter” type icon in the address bar for some pages. It happens on YouTube, on the tech news site Techmeme, and on Gmail’s login page, which a Google spokeswoman said used ActiveX for Gmail’s built-in Google Talk feature. To enable ActiveX on a site, click the blue icon next to its URL, then click the “Turn off ActiveX filtering” dialog that pops up. That will allow ActiveX controls from that site only to be loaded in that tab until you close it.

Many of IE9 RC’s features seem to be playing catch-up with Chrome, but the ActiveX filter can also be used to emulate Apple’s banishment of Web-embedded Flash players from its mobile iPhone and iPad browsers (Flash eats battery juice, Apple’s chief, Steve Jobs, has said). And moving pixels on Web pages agitate some people, including me. By turning off ActiveX, you’ll block Flash-based ads, videos and animations from loading without your consent. This will also speed up your browsing experience further. I think it says something that Microsoft’s Beauty of the Web site doesn’t use ActiveX at all. It’s all HTML5, a preview of the Internet’s future.