The recent survey by NetApplications claims that Microsoft’s share of browser market has fallen to below 70%. The news of Microsoft loosening grip on the browser market is circulating in the air. And probably for that reason Microsoft’s IE9 launching may be seen as their fight back to the browser wars. Here are some exciting features of internet explorer 9.
The most exciting feature in the newest IE is Pinned Shortcuts. Drag the favicon from the OneBox to your taskbar, and Windows will treat that site as if it were its own application. Clicking on the shortcut will launch the page in its own browser window. One of the most important improvements IE9 brings to Web developers – the ability to use a wide variety of fonts without having to Photoshop images of them. This alone could save days in the time it takes to create and update websites, and let designers focus more on the design of the site and less on the mechanics of creating it. IE9 joins the JavaScript speed team, revving up performance in other ways with graphics hardware acceleration. Finally, IE9 has become a “modern” browser, by supporting new Web coding techniques like HTML5, CSS3, Canvas, and SVG. From OneBox, you navigate directly to a site, search Bing, Google and other services, and pull sites from your history and bookmarks.
Microsoft has built a somewhat Firefox-y looking download manager into Internet Explorer 9. IE users will finally have a single pane which maintains download history and provides centralized access to running or opening downloaded files. The launch of a new version of Internet Explorer comes as the browser race has become increasingly competitive and more strategically important. Microsoft’s browser, though still the market leader with about 60 percent of the market, has been ceding share for years, first to Mozilla’s Firefox and more recently to Google’s Chrome OS. Beyond that, the Web has become the hub of much of people’s computing experience and Microsoft is eager to show that the PC matters. By using hardware acceleration, Microsoft is hoping to give people a reason to choose Windows over other current choices and over emerging rivals such as Chrome. Along with making the beta version available for download later on Wednesday, Microsoft is detailing the user interface and other features of the browser.
As compared with past versions of IE, the new version is far more streamlined, featuring a prominent back and forward button, a single bar for both searching and entering Web addresses, and surprisingly little else. Small icons on the far right let people access settings or their favorite sites, though neither option is given much prominence.
Apart from that a general note for the common users. The security factor is challenged if you use various internets surfing medium that is browsers in your computer. With the increasing variety of browsers, organization and individuals become less certain about their most vulnerable software on their Computer. Remember your browser is the primary interface with the outside world and is most likely to catch a cold!
