Internet Explorer 9 Inching Closer to Final Release

Microsoft last week unveiled its release candidate for Internet Explorer 9, bringing the final version of its new browser a step closer to reality. For IT pros whom support IE at their organizations, what does the latest RC version offer?

First off, those of you still on Windows XP won’t be able to run the new version; IE9 works only under Windows Vista and Windows 7. But if your environment supports it, the latest browser does provide some new and improved features that are worth noting.

Microsoft has tweaked the interface in IE9 RC to make it cleaner and more streamlined. With its minimalist toolbar displaying only a few icons, IE9 now resembles Google (News - Alert) Chrome in its simplicity, giving you more room to see the actual Web pages. Of course, you can opt to turn on the usual toolbars and menus if you still want quick access to all of IE’s commands and features. I tend to turn on menus and one or two toolbars so that I can easily get to any command, but I do like the cleaner, less cluttered look.

Internet Explorer 9 also provides a single combined address and search field, so you can type either a specific URL or a search term, and the browser will respond accordingly. That’s a nice touch from the current version, which separates the address and search fields. IE 9 has also borrowed a page from Firefox when it comes to downloading files. Now instead of displaying the familiar in-your-face dialog box, IE shows a more subdued box at the bottom prompting you to save or run the file you’re downloading.

With past versions of IE, Microsoft has often been dinged for not following HTML standards. As a result, those of us who develop and design Web content are often challenged by pages that look fine and work correctly in one browser but not in another. With IE9, Microsoft (News - Alert) is promising to comply more closely with Web standards, including the latest upcoming HTML5 and CSS3 specifications.

But it’s in the area of security that IE 9 is trying to take some big leaps. The new version offers ActiveX Filtering to let you turn off certain ActiveX controls from running on pages you visit as a way of shoring up security. ActiveX controls are a ripe target used by malware writers to infect PCs via the browser. However, many sites rely on ActiveX, including ones that use Adobe Flash. So I’m not sure how practical this option will be, especially since you have to manually add each site that you trust to an exclusion list to get past the filtering.

Internet Explorer 9 also offers a new feature called Tracking Protection, which limits or blocks the data that online advertisers can track as you surf the Web. Like ActiveX filtering, this sounds like another promising idea. But here, too, you have to add specific sites with whom you don’t mind sharing your data to get past the Tracking Protection. That information promises to come in the form of whitelists, however, since you still have to manage this feature, I’m not sure how it’s going to play out in the real world. But I do applaud Microsoft for at least attempting to address online security and privacy, which certainly are hot-button issues for all of us these days.

Although Microsoft still dominates the browser market with about a 60 percent share, it’s steadily seen users drift away over the past few years to such rival products as Firefox and Chrome. So the company has a lot riding on IE9 as it attempts to woo back some of the audience it’s lost over the years.

Those of you who want to take IE9 RC for a spin can download it from Microsoft as either a 32-bit or 64-bit edition. The company has also put together an information and demo page where you can learn more about the latest version of IE and see it in action.