Topic: Internet Explorer 9 is here

I'm not one to mark something as crap until I've actually had some time with it or general consensus allows me to assume so, so I'll go ahead and say I haven't used IE9 yet (asides long enough to note that the interface is much tidier, even if they do seem to have ripped it wholesale from Chromium), nor have I heard many opinions about it. Based on Microsoft's past attempts though, and the craptacular things they did to Live Messenger recently, I don't have my hopes up for it. But, it just installed itself through a Windows Update, so I figured I'd see what people thought of it.

What I have heard is that the CSS support etc is considerably better (not like they could make that worse), and it utilizes the GPU for image and video processing rather than the CPU. I don't know nearly enough about web-based technologies to know whether or not the other browsers already do this or are likely to do so soon, but I'm already a little dubious about Microsoft's claims on the matter.

I can understand the advantages of using the GPU to render things that are already downloaded - as per the Javascript/HTML5 animation examples - but map segments appearing faster? Pretty certain that's got 99% more to do with the time it takes to request and fetch the images from the web server than it has to do with whether your GPU can process the incoming small image files faster than your CPU (I imagine the difference there is negligible). Which casts doubt over everything else that Microsoft tries to sell to me.

And there's something about those tech demos that worries me that Microsoft's trying to push us into a second wave of EVERYTHING! ANIMATED! websites that I'd hoped we were out of, now that Adobe Flash has stopped hanging around street corners at night and got a proper job in the world of video and advertising. A lot of those demos would annoy the hell out of me if they became commonplace.

So, IE9. The ugly duckling finally turned into a swan? Or just choking to death on the other browsers' discarded beer can packaging? _{These metaphors are getting weak, I know.}

Lol I liked the metaphors.

I find the merge of the address bar and search bar to be a bit more cumbersome then it needed to be. I prefer them separate.

I would never touch IE again. Firefox and Chrome are so much better, they run faster, have better security, customizable and they aren't made by a crap company.

Careful. That is a bit too far.

I'll stick with Chrome, thanks

Didn't mean it any disrespectful way, but they've gone so badly with IE its pretty appauling, especially compared to Firefox and Chrome. :/

/me hugs Firefox 4

I do prefer Firefox, but IE 9 seems like a pretty good improvement. Not the total overhaul it needs but still nice.

I'll keep my Firefox, thanks...

I've more-less made the transition to Firefox. I did download IE9 on the laptop and absolutely HATE it! Many of the settings have been tucked away (at least by default) and putting the url and tabs on the same bar is extremely inconvenient! None of the computers at my disposal support GPU processing (even if they did, those computers also have Firefox 4 which also supports GPU processing), so I'm not in much of a hurry to upgrade.

I reckon I'll keep using Chrome for now.

I like me some chrome.
IE9 looks like a nice improvement, but I do not see anyone switching browsers back to IE because of it. Of course, I can't even if I want to as I am on a Mac, but even if I were to still be using my old laptop, there is no way I would abandon my FireFox. Too bad Firefox for Mac was utter crap when I tried it.

Personally I much prefer Firefox and Chrome (Chrome for fast browsing on laptop, Firefox for the more powerful desktop), and it sounds by the responses that IE9 isn't going to change that any time soon. Didn't know Firefox 4 did GPU processing too, so I guess that's IE9's big sell killed off somewhat, lol.

yes I'll have to agree with everyone who spoke about Firefox....it works great. Ever since the demise of Netscape, I looked for a browser to replace it....and thats when I downloaded Firefox years ago. Internet Explorer 8 always runs either slow and/or weird to the point that it takes a little longer to go to the same sites I go to when I use Firefox. And i wanted to try out IE9 but I don't have Windows 7....so...oh well....

im using IE9 right now. i dont find any problems with-it except for the fact that i cannot upload youtube videos. but that is where firefox 4 comes in
as for the removal of the search box it was a welcome change. i did not understand why have somthing that does the exact same thing as the URL bar? for some odd reason that always ticked off my dad.

I like the way the search box and URL bar are combined in Chrome. I cannot imagine it being much worse in IE9. But then again, this is Microsoft