LOL...
Microsoft steals ideas from Chrome that Google stole from Opera.....
Good to see IE users catching up with things that Opera users have been enjoying for years....
Microsoft is offering Internet Explorer 9 beta for download. Although this follows four earlier platform previews, this is the first time the new IE user interface has been shown to the public. Like Google Chrome, IE9 combines the address and search boxes into a single "OneBox". It also integrates with the Windows 7 taskbar, …
Opera users have enjoyed these features. Presumably including the interface. Explains a lot. I'll stick with Firefox 3, and then Firefox 4 after someone gets a skin/theme out that makes it look like 3.
Too old for this new fangled hibbery jibbery. Take the ribbon bar with you when you go!
*grumble grumble*...get off my goddamned lawn…*grumble grumble*
that have significant input on the way the Internet is today, work at Opera, Håkon Wium Lie for example, the creator of CSS,
Regardless of that, it's the fastest, most standards compliant browser out there, and anyone calling themselves a techie should be using it, simple as that really. Why on earth run privacy dodgy browsers like IE9 and Chome, or bloatfests like Firefox or Safari?>???
The same is true of Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla and Google. As much as you guys like to think, Opera didn't invent the web browser. They weren't the first to do many of the things that are claimed to be copied from it either. And actually, WebKit shits on Presto in terms of compliance with existing **and** emergent standards.
It doesn't matter how good IE9 is, there won't be anyone upgrading from IE6 to IE9. The people still running IE7 on Vista are people who haven't bothered upgrading to IE8, so they probably won't upgrade to IE9 either. IE8 is probably the only browser that is going to see significant replacement numbers.
I haven't been troubled by ads for years, across different operating systems and browsers. Just get one of the many blocklists available and stick it in your hosts file. Works with all known browsers and doesn't let a few slip through provided they're from the author's pals like a certain well known plugin.
Not Windows XP? What about 2000? Just kiddin'
Who in their right mind uses Vista? Does the "Download manager" still copy files to %temp% before copying them to the desired location? If so, no thanks, think again MickeySoft.
Have they fixed the download progress indicator or does it still do 15 minutes .... 2 hours ... 3 minutes ... 4 days?
Seriously, how do these people operate?
My wife has all her bookmarks, from regular to vaguely interesting to must-read-sometime on the Firefox Bookmark's Toolbar. In no particular order and running off into a massive scroll-down list. It drives me insane.
And no, I don't think she knows they're all accessible through the Awesome Bar.
@captain veg: your lucky day. The original Chrome installer did that. "Installs the Chrome browser shell on the google cloud servers." all you need to run Chrome is a web browser which can do the HTTP and display part of things.
@Neo2010: Try aptitude.. maybe its sitting in the alternative universe repository.
The use patterns of the laziest and most ill informed is going to define the feature set?
Yeah, that sounds like a strategy. Write the thing for those too stupid to complain. That'll show those power-users!
Why even include a location/search bar? Just make the thing go straight to Facebook.
Does it support the STANDARDS that every other browser supports yet? Or are web devs going to have to carry on waiting until that fabled "promised support" that IE10 will allegedly bring us? Please, please, please MS - make a standards compliant browser and then we can concentrate the majority of our time on doing our jobs and not on fixing your mess!
I wouldn't say that Microsoft are copying anyone really, browser UIs have be going that way since Chrome was originally released. I've never been a fan of the bigger back button.
The most important thing from where I'm sitting is Trident, which has caught up with current standards. What bothers me is that they are trumpeting themselves as leaders and, as per usual, misleading everyone into thinking hardware accelerated fish makes for a fast overall browsing experience. It's still slower than Chrome when actually come to rendering everyday HTML, CSS and JavaScript and I'd be worried if they couldn't actually get the app to launch faster on their own OS! Still, credit where it's due, it's a big shift in attitude for Microsoft and good work has been done. All this good work is utterly pointless though until the world is rid of IE6; a fantastic browser for it's time, but that time was 10 years ago!
While I'm at it, why on earth have Microsoft implemented a "tweaked" version of Trident from IE7 in Windows 7 phone? That is monumentally fucking stupid. I'd get the reasoning behind using the current *3 year old* version found in IE8, but the way they have gone is inexcusable. For all the UI shiny that 'softies are espousing, the browsing experience is going to be shit.
I _hate_ the new UI. Sticking the tabs on the same bar with the address/search bar means that there isn't much room for tabs, unless you like your browser taking up the entire screen. Also, they chopped out a lot of the functionality of the search box when they combined it with the address bar. Now, instead of being able to select from your list of search providers, you can only choose from the first few (however many will fit in the width of the tiny address bar.) The list of search providers has also been changed to a set of icons for the search engines. If a search engine doesn't have an icon, (even Google Images doesn't have an icon) then it gets a generic magnifying glass. The list of crap you get when you type stuff into the address bar is overwhelming as well. It tries to combine your browsing history with your typed address history and some search queries that makes it take up a lot of space that it doesn't need to. I'd bet that people use the proffered selections in the address bar even less than they do favorites.
You can still turn the command and favorites bars on and off, but there doesn't seem to be any way to fix the tab/address bar layouts. It will let you shuffle the reload/go & stop buttons around to either side of the address bar though. The downloads box sounds like a nice idea, but I couldn't stand that UI long enough to try it out. I won't miss the home button though, the idea of a home page was nice before favorites and search boxes were added, but since then, it's been kinda useless. They did also add quick links to their default new tab page, which is nice for those people who only frequent a dozen or so sites.
Overall, it's a horrible release. But I won't use Chrome for a lot of the same reasons. I only hope that they get enough hate mail to at least put the IE8 UI as an option hidden in some dark recesses of the browser configuration.
I see that the BBC website wrote an advert, sorry, article about IE9. They make out it has been launched until the very last set of paragraphs. It is a total suckfest and is absolutely disgusting that they are persuaded to advertise this POS.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11315819
your efforts in the browser field have finally pushed Microsoft to devote the resources necessary to make significant improvements its problem child of a browser ! This would hardly have happened if Microsoft had been able to maintain its quasi-monopoly. Alas, we still have yet to see a similar development in the OS field....
Henri
it is not my experience that the latter need to «catch up» to the former. But different strokes for different folks ; I have no problem with JDX preferring and using Windows OS on his or her computers, but I do dislike having to jump through hoops to get a new box without paying the Microsoft tax. I hope that the European Commission will finally acknowledge the importance of this issue, and take a good hard look at the dodgy marketing practices which have allowed Microsoft to gain a quasi-monopoly in the field....
Henri
Love how an Opera fanboy was presumably waiting to get first comment. It must be terrible for Opera disciples, having had every good feature for decades all the other browsers introduce, and yet nobody uses it. FireFox gains market share, Chrome comes from nowhere and overtakes them.
Ultimately there has to be a reason Opera doesn't get used. Other open-source browsers have done very well so either Opera people suck at advertising, or Opera just sucks.
IE9's W7 integration sounds pretty similar to Chrome/ChromeOS. Interesting at the least. They'll be slammed if they play it safe, or if they try to make big changes, anyway.
Considering
how long time it takes certain people to upgrade from one MS OS to another,
and considering that
IE9 will be for Vista and Windows7 only (not XP)
and considering that
IE9 will be the only MS browser which supports HTML5,
... it would seem that the mooted 2025 date for HTML5 being fully established is quite accurate.