Internet Explorer 9’s New Features

If you’re ready, download IE 9 from the Microsoft site. It will install over IE 8 so you must uninstall the beta if you want to revert back.

Still getting used to Internet Explorer 8? Well, don’t get to cozy. Microsoft has already released a beta version of its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7 users.

If you spend the majority of your time on a computer browsing, browser updates can be a fairly big deal — good and bad. There are changes to the user interface that will take some time to get accustomed to, but there are enhancements that will help with performance and security. Let’s check it out!

The visual changes

The streamlined interface, shown in Figure 1, is quickly noticeable. The toolbar area on the top of the window is much smaller, making more room to showcase the web pages. This is more evident if you don’t have add-ons that feature a toolbar menu making the toolbar area bigger.

By default, the drop-down menus (Page, Safety, and Tools) and buttons that were introduced in the past two versions won’t appear on the toolbar. They also have hidden the favorites toolbar and buttons. Plus they removed the search box. Lastly, you might notice there isn’t a status bar on the bottom of the browser either.

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