All posts tagged ‘internet explorer’

File Under: CSS, Web Standards
Feb
9
2012

WebKit Isn’t Breaking the Web. You Are

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WebKit may seem like the only game in town, but it's not. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired.com

It sounds like something from a galaxy far, far away, but in truth it was not that long ago that the web was littered with sites that proudly proclaimed “works best in Internet Explorer.” Thankfully those days are over. IE6 no longer dominates the web.

But, while IE6 may be a thing of the past, the root problem — websites that work in one and only one web browser — sadly, remains.

This time the culprit is WebKit, the rendering engine that powers the browsers on the iPhone, iPad and Android phones. But what’s different about this round of monoculture is that, unlike IE 6, the WebKit developers haven’t done anything wrong. It’s web developers that have created the WebKit-only web.

Instead of writing code that will work in any browser, which might mean adding an extra three lines of code to their CSS rules, some of even the largest sites on the web are coding exclusively for WebKit.

The problem is bad enough that on Monday at the CSS Working Group meeting, Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera announced that each are planning to add support for some -webkit prefixed CSS properties. In other words, because web developers are using only the -webkit prefix, other browsers must either add support for -webkit or risk being seen as less capable browsers even when they aren’t.

The danger is that if other browsers implement -webkit prefixes then the entire CSS standards effort will be broken. Instead of coding against a single CSS specification developers will need to code against changing vendor prefixes. As CSS Working Group co-chair, Daniel Glazman, says, “I don’t think this is the right way. And this is the first time in this WG that we are proposing to do things that are not the right way.”

Vendor prefixes like -webkit and -moz were designed to help web developers by allowing browser makers to implement CSS features before the official standard was published. Prefixes were intended to help speed up the process of adding new features to the web and, used properly, they have worked. Unfortunately they’ve also been widely abused.

WebKit is currently the dominant mobile browser in the mind of most web developers (that Opera is actually the single most widely used mobile browser). But even the perceived dominance of WebKit is not the real problem. The problem is — just as it was last time — that web developers are developing exclusively for WebKit.

To be clear, Firefox, IE and Opera also support these features. In most cases, the -webkit properties being used have -moz, -ms and -o prefix equivalents for use in the respective browsers. Popular CSS 3 features like border-radius, transforms, gradients and animations work in all modern browsers. Developers simply need to add those three additional lines of code to make their websites compatible with Firefox, IE and Opera. But they aren’t doing that.

That the problem lies with web developers, not the browsers, led Glazman, to put out a call for action, asking web developers to “stop designing web sites for WebKit only, in particular when adding support for other browsers is only a matter of adding a few extra prefixed CSS properties.”

Neither Glazman, nor anyone else is suggesting that Apple and Google should stop innovating or stop implementing new features as fast as they can. As Tantek Çelik, a Mozilla representative in the CSS WG, says in the minutes of Monday’s meeting, “I think it’s great that Apple wants to innovate as fast as they can…. I don’t want Apple to slow down in innovation and implementing new things. That helps the Web grow and innovate.”

At the same time both Apple and Google have set some bad examples by building a number of WebKit-only demos that might be part of what lead some developers to conclude that only WebKit supports such features. That has also spilled over into the world of tutorials where even sometimes even standards advocates showcase -webkit in their sample code while ignoring -moz-, -ms- and -o-*.

What makes the current -webkit-only epidemic all the more depressing is how easy it is to solve — just use prefixes they way they were intended. Thanks to modern toolkits you don’t even need to write any extra code. Preprocessors like SASS and LESS make it easy to output five lines of prefixed code with a single mixin. Not a fan or SASS or LESS? No problem, just use cssprefixer, which parses your CSS and adds any prefixes you need before you publish it to the web (there’s also a client-side auto-prefixing solution if you prefer).

That’s fine for your website, but what about all the rest of those top 30,000 sites you don’t control? Well, you could email the developers, let them know that their site isn’t working in the most popular mobile web browser; let them know that you can’t use their service. If you’re a programmer or web developer you can help out with Mozilla developer Christian Hellman’s effort to Pre-fix the web. Pre-fix the web is looking for developers willing to seek out projects on Github that only work in Webkit and then fork the project, adding the missing prefixes to the CSS, extending JS code to do proper feature detection and then sending a pull request. In other words, literally fixing the web.

We at Webmonkey hope it’s obvious that building WebKit-only sites is a waste of time. If you’re only interested in iOS users then take a tip from Instagram and build a native app. As Peter Linss, Hewlett-Packard’s CSS WG representative says the CSS WG minutes, “there’s no advantage to the Web to have someone write a platform-specific website.” There’s also no real advantage for the developer, especially when an automated prefixer can do all the work for you. If you want your site to embrace the web, take the time to learn the craft and embrace all of the web. Be good at what you do and do it right.

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File Under: Browsers
Feb
2
2012

Microsoft Touts Plugin-Free Web, Offers Desktop Fallback for Flash

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Microsoft’s new version of Internet Explorer has barred browser plugins in the Metro environment. But Microsoft has revealed a method that plugin-dependent websites can use to leap over Metro’s walls and reach the green fields of the conventional Windows desktop, where Flash is still allowed to roam free.

The relevance of proprietary browser plugins is declining as standards-based web technologies mature. Native web technologies don’t yet supply complete functional equivalence with the capabilities of plugins, but the open web has the advantage of greater ubiquity.

The ubiquity of native web standards over proprietary plugins is set to get a major boost from Microsoft with the launch of Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10. As we have previously reported, the next major version of Microsoft’s web browser will not display plugins in the Metro environment, which will be the default shell in Windows 8.

A plugin-dependent website prompting the user for permission to run on the desktop. Image courtesy of Microsoft

Microsoft has published a series of posts in its official IE development blog that discuss the implications of this change and what it means for users and web developers. In a new post published this week, IE program manager lead John Hrvatin highlighted the advantages of plugin-free browsing and emphasized the need for web developers to start supporting users who browse in environments that don’t have plugins enabled.

“The transition to a plug-in free web is happening today. Any site that uses plugins needs to understand what their customers experience when browsing plugin free. Lots of web browsing today happens on devices that simply don’t support plugins,” he wrote. “Metro style IE runs plug-in free to improve battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers.”

A growing number of websites that rely on browser plugins already offer a standards-based fallback for users who are browsing on popular plugin-free devices such as as the iPhone or iPad. Microsoft has previously discussed some of the steps it is taking to ensure that those websites serve their plugin-free content to Metro users.

There will still likely be many Flash-heavy websites, however, that can’t accommodate users who are browsing without plugins. In the blog post, Hrvatin explained that such websites can ask the user for permission to jump to the conventional Windows desktop and launch the windowed version of Internet Explorer, which will have full support for plugins.

Web developers can get the browser to display the prompt by including the special requiresActiveX=true property in an X-UA-Compatible meta tag or HTTP header. Hrvatin cautions that this feature is included for transitional purposes and is intended to serve as a last resort. The preferred behavior is still for web developers to display a plugin-free version of their site to users who are browsing in the Metro environment.

This article originally appeared on Ars Technica, Wired’s sister site for in-depth technology news.

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File Under: Browsers
Dec
15
2011

Microsoft’s New Automatic Update Plan Could Mean the End of IE 6

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Microsoft has announced that starting in January 2012 Internet Explorer will, like Chrome, Firefox and Opera, no longer pester you with update notices. Instead Internet Explorer will automatically download and install updates in the background.

The new auto-update feature will only apply to users who’ve opted into the automatic updates through Windows Update. Those that have opted in will be upgraded to the latest version of IE available for their system. If you’re still on Windows XP that means you’ll be updated to IE 8. Vista and Windows 7 users will move to IE 9. The Windows Blog notes that when upgrading, your home page, search provider, and default browser settings will not be affected.

Internet Explorer updates have been offered through Windows Update previously, but unlike other “important” Windows updates, users needed to initiate the actual installation of IE updates via a dialog box. The only real change for most users in today’s announcement is that you’ll no longer need to mess with all those notification windows and dialogs. Instead IE will just seamlessly upgrade.

If you don’t want automatic updates, you can turn off Windows Update (though you should be aware that doing so could leave you with a insecure browser and operating system). Enterprise customers can opt out of the new auto-update mechanism using the IE 8 and IE 9 Automatic Update Blocker toolkits available from Microsoft.

The new auto-updating will ensure that users have the latest, most secure and stable version of IE, and web developers may be able to enjoy a fringe benefit as well — fewer IE 6 and IE 7 users on the web.

According to Microsoft IE 6 usage is currently at 8.4 percent worldwide, with some countries already under 1 percent while others, like China, remain high at 27.9 percent.

Microsoft has previously launched a campaign to kill off IE 6 and many large websites — like Google and WordPress — have already dropped support for the aging browser.

Web developers still supporting IE 6 may not need to do so much longer if Microsoft’s auto-update strategy pays off. Since the new auto-update mechanism will apply to IE 7 as well, it too may not need to be supported much longer. Of course, even in the best case scenario where IE 6 and 7 users drop below 5 percent worldwide, web developers would still need to contend with IE 8. While IE 8 was a huge step up from its predecessors, it still lacks support for most of the HTML5 and CSS 3 features found in modern web browsers.

Microsoft’s move to silent, automatic updates for Internet Explorer means that Apple’s Safari web browser is now the only browser that doesn’t default to automatically updating. Microsoft says that the auto-updating will roll out regionally, starting in January with users in Australia and Brazil and “scaling up over time.”

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File Under: Browsers
Dec
1
2011

End of an Era? Chrome Surpasses Firefox

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For the first time Chrome Beats Firefox on Webmonkey.com

Once the darling of the tech set, Mozilla’s Firefox web browser is no longer the perennially #2 underdog of the web.

According to StatCounter, a web analytics company tracking browser market share, Google Chrome has overtaken Mozilla Firefox to become the second most used web browser in the world.

For the first time Chrome also managed to beat out Firefox to become the most used web browser among both Wired.com and Webmonkey.com readers.

StatCounter claims that for November 2011 Chrome accounted for 25.69 percent of browsers on the web while Firefox trailed it by the tiniest of margins at 25.23 percent. Both still pale in comparison to Internet Explorer’s 40.63 percent market share.

As Mark Twain noted there are lies, damn lies and statistics. StatCounter’s numbers should most definitely be taken with a grain of salt. NetMarketshare, which also tracks browser usage, still shows Firefox nearly four percent ahead of Chrome globally.

That said, the traffic split between Firefox and Chrome at both Wired.com and Webmonkey.com nearly mirrors StatCounter’s numbers. The main difference around here is that both browsers beat Internet Explorer. But for the first time in a very long time, Firefox is not the most used browser among Webmonkey readers. Last month Chrome accounted for 32.14 percent of users while Firefox trailed just behind at 31.06 percent.

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File Under: Browsers
Nov
2
2011

The End of an Era: Internet Explorer Drops Below 50 Percent of Web Usage

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A couple of interesting things happened in the world of Web browser usage during October. The more significant one is that Internet Explorer’s share of global browser usage dropped below 50 percent for the first time in more than a decade. Less significant, but also notable, is that Chrome for the first time overtook Firefox here at Ars, making it the technologist’s browser of choice. [Ed. Note: That still hasn't happened at Webmonkey, but it's very close. See below for more stats.]

Internet Explorer still retains a majority of the desktop browser market share, at 52.63 percent, a substantial 1.76 point drop from September. However, desktop browsing makes up only about 94 percent of Web traffic; the rest comes from phones and tablets, both markets in which Internet Explorer is all but unrepresented. As a share of the whole browser market, Internet Explorer has only 49.58 percent of users. Microsoft’s browser first achieved a majority share in—depending on which numbers you look at—1998 or 1999. It reached its peak of about 95 percent share in 2004, and has been declining ever since.

Where has that market share gone? In the early days, it all went Firefox’s way. These days, it’s Chrome that’s the main beneficiary of Internet Explorer’s decline, and October was no exception. Chrome is up 1.42 points to 17.62 percent of the desktop browser share. Firefox is basically unchanged, up 0.03 points to 22.51 percent. Safari grew 0.41 points to 5.43. Opera has been consistently falling over the last few months, and it dropped again in October, down 0.11 points to 1.56 percent.

In spite of Android sales now outstripping iOS sales, iOS users are far more abundant on the Web. Mobile browsing is currently a much smaller market, with 5.5 percent of Web usage conducted on smartphones and tablets. This small market is also a lot more volatile than the desktop market. Mobile Safari was up by 6.58 points last month to 62.17 points. The biggest single loser was the Android browser, dropping 2.91 points to 13.12 percent. Symbian, BlackBerry and Opera Mini also registered falls, down 2.15 points to 2.55 percent, 0.64 points to 2.04 percent, and 0.27 points to 18.65 percent, respectively.

The trend graph says it all: Firefox’s share is flat, with Chrome driving all Internet Explorer’s losses.

Safari’s long-term dominance in mobile is clear. Also clear is that Android’s sales growth isn’t at all reflected in its Web usage.

The upgrade trends show a familiar story. Chrome users, who for the most part receive updates automatically, switch to new versions quickly and efficiently. Chrome’s “tail” is growing ever longer, though, with about 2 percent of desktop browser users—about 14 percent of Chrome users—using old versions. That number is growing every month, and it appears to be resilient.

Firefox retains its clean split between people on the new, rapid release versions (4-9) and those on the old stable version (3.6). The rapid release users are upgrading fairly quickly, though the cut-overs are neither as rapid nor as automated as those of Chrome. However, almost a quarter of Firefox users are sticking with version 3.6. Until and unless Mozilla produces a stable edition with long-term support, this is unlikely to change.

Internet Explorer, however, continues to see major usage of old versions. Internet Explorer 6 and 7, which aren’t current on any supported version of Windows, are still the version used by 25.4 percent of Internet Explorer users, 13.38 percent of desktop users as a total. These are people that can upgrade to either Internet Explorer 8 (if they’re using Windows XP) or Internet Explorer 9 (if they’re using Windows Vista), but who have, for some reason, refused to do so. Internet Explorer 8 users appear to be switching to Internet Explorer 9 at a slow but steady rate, with the former down about a point, and the latter up by about a point.


The browser usage here at Ars Technica continues to be unusual, with Firefox and Chrome over-represented on the desktop, and Android showing a much stronger performance among mobile user than is seen on the wider Web.

A compelling case can be made that the causes for these two phenomena—Internet Explorer’s decline, and Chrome’s growth—are closely related. They represent the influence of the computer geek.

Ars Technica’s unusual usage figures are not surprising when considering its audience: visitors to the site tend to be technologists and early adopters: Ars readers were among the first to switch to using Firefox as their browser of choice, and similarly they’re leading the way with Chrome. While Internet Explorer’s decline, Firefox’s flatlining, and Chrome’s growth have happened faster at Ars than the broader Web, the underlying trends are the same. [Ed. Note: Webmonkey's browser stats are roughly the same as of October 31st. Chrome has yet to overtake Firefox among Webmonkey's perhaps more developer-heavy audience, but it's gaining on Firefox every month. For the month of October 33.4 percent of you were using Firefox, 32.4 percent Chrome and only 16.0 percent Internet Explorer.]

This is perhaps not surprising. Ars has more than its fair share of IT decision-makers, both in corporate environments and home environments (I’m sure that many of us know the perils of being the “computer guy” roped in to fix the problems plaguing friends’ and family’s machine). It might be a few months before a Chrome-using Ars-reading geek starts to recommend it to friends and family, or a few years before he gets approval to roll the browser out across the company whose computers he maintains, but the migration will happen. Technology decisions are usually made by technology people—and technology people read Ars, ditched Internet Explorer for Firefox a few years ago, and are now switching to Chrome.

Firefox appealed to the geek demographic by offering tabs, a wealth of extensions, and active development: geeks enjoy new things to play with, and a browser that’s frozen in time, as Internet Explorer 6 was, holds no appeal. Chrome in turn offered a focus on performance and stability, even more active development, and the cachet of being built by Google. Chrome was also quick to offer obvious but useful things such as built-in, robust session restoration, and a useful new tab page (something Internet Explorer 9 replicated, and which is currently in beta for Firefox). Bundling Flash also removed a potential headache, by ensuring that a potentially buggy plugin was kept current and up-to-date. On top of all this, Google has been vocal in pushing its view of how the Web should work, with the VP8 video codec, the SPDY Web protocol, and most recently, the Dart scripting language.

A browser that doesn’t appeal to this demographic won’t receive the benefit of this kind of on-the-ground advocacy. Mozilla is working to bring some of Chrome’s appealing features to Firefox, with its new development schedule and future features such as tab isolation, and though this is currently causing some headaches—there are continued issues with extension compatibility—Firefox’s market share is for the most part holding steady. Once Mozilla can get rid of the annoying wrinkles and make updates as pain-free as Chrome’s, it might start to win back the attention of the techie demographic. Especially if Mozilla can come up with a viable IT-friendly long-term support option.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is strenuously avoiding this same demographic. Internet Explorer lacks small but significant creature comforts such as resizeable text boxes, built-in spell checking, and session restoration, and while it does offer certain extensibility points, they fall a long way short of those offered by Firefox, and as such, its extension ecosystem is a whole lot less rich. It’s not enough for Internet Explorer to be a solid mainstream browser: the less technically engaged users who switched to Firefox because a trusted authority told them to aren’t going to spontaneously switch back to Internet Explorer, even if it is good enough for their needs. They’re going to wait until their techie friend next fixes their PC and tells them that they should consider switching to Internet Explorer because it’s “better”. Just as they did for Firefox and do for Chrome.

Internet Explorer is still an important browser, with a userbase large enough that few developers can afford to ignore—though sites that don’t need global appeal may well be able to safely ignore Internet Explorer 6—and at current rates it will remain important for a few years yet. But until and unless Microsoft makes its browser appeal to the influential geek demographic, it looks as if Internet Explorer has nowhere to go but down.

This article originally appeared on Ars Technica, Wired’s sister site for in-depth technology news.

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File Under: CSS, Web Standards
May
20
2011

A Guide to CSS Hacks for Internet Explorer

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Woolly, the CSS sheep.

Internet Explorer. That’s all you really need to say to raise a web designer’s blood pressure. And yes, we know IE is improving, but there are still plenty of users stuck on IE 8 and IE 7 (even IE 6) and you can’t just leave those browsers out in the cold.

The first method that came along to deal with IE’s rendering quirks were various CSS hacks — slip an underscore in here, add an asterisk there and you can target specific versions of IE in your stylesheets.

CSS hacks work well enough, but they’re a pain to maintain. Using conditional comments to load IE-only stylesheets is another option, but now you have extra HTTP requests and two stylesheets to maintain. You could also use conditional comments to add CSS classes to the <html> or <body> tags of your pages, but that increases the size of your pages in every browser.

The truth is there’s no perfect way to handle IE. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages and the right answer will vary from project to project.

We can’t tell you how to handle IE, but we can tell you that developer Mathias Bynens has put together a very well written and thorough rundown of all the different ways you can handle Internet Explorer’s rendering quirks — conditional stylesheets, conditional classnames and good old CSS hacks. Bynens also has a fourth option: combining conditional classnames with “safe” CSS hacks.

Bynens defines “safe” CSS hacks as hacks that “work in specific versions of a given web browser” and are “unlikely to be parsed by all other browsers, including future versions.”

Regardless of how you choose to deal with Internet Explorer, the reality is you will have to deal with it. Bynens’ post makes a great primer on the various options available and is well worth adding to your bookmarks.

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File Under: Browsers
Oct
5
2010

Internet Explorer Isn’t Dead. And Wow, Look at China

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Web analytics firm StatCounter is reporting that Internet Explorer dipped below 50 percent in worldwide browser market share in September for the first time since the browser wars of a decade ago. The firm also notes that Chrome is now at 11.5 percent.

But have a look at Net Marketshare Hitslink, which shows IE still commands 60 percent worldwide. Net Marketshare also puts Chrome at just under eight percent, a notch above where it was in August.

At the beginning of each month, a new crop of browser market share stats are released. It’s the same three or four big firms that report the data, and each has its own methodology.

The numbers vary widely depending on who’s reporting them, and the results tend to get spun harder than the Sprewells on my Bugatti Veyron. Browser vendors, tech journalists, and SEO experts toss these numbers around as definitive proof that one browser is choking on its own vomit while another is going to take over the world and eat your children.

Of course, I would never say any of this data is bunk — each firm does solid work — but you should always look at all the reports and study their findings as a group.

That’s why my favorite chart is the one on Wikipedia, which collects the median values from the five biggest stats reporting firms and presents the broadest view (Note the current chart hasn’t been updated with September’s data).

The big takeaways from the latest numbers: Firefox is holding relatively steady and Chrome has officially become a Big Deal. But half of the worldwide browser share is a massive chunk, and IE is still a huge force, especially in the U.S. Its influence is certainly eroding worldwide, no doubt thanks to the EU ruling that Microsoft begin presenting a browser choice screen to Windows users in March, 2010.

The most important browser share stats to pay attention to are the ones that show usage on your own site. You should be running Omniture or Google Analytics or some other tracking app to study which browsers are hitting your site, then adjusting your own development strategy accordingly.

There’s some interesting stuff buried in these new reports.
Continue Reading “Internet Explorer Isn’t Dead. And Wow, Look at China” »

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File Under: Browsers
Sep
23
2010

Chrome Frame Leaves Beta, All Set to Hijack an IE Near You

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Google’s controversial Chrome Frame browser plug-in is now out of beta and ready for prime time.

Chrome Frame is an Internet Explorer plug-in that replaces the default IE rendering engine, which is lacking in support for web standards, with the more modern and capable engine that powers Google’s Chrome browser. It essentially embeds Google’s browser inside any tab or window within Microsoft’s browser, giving even the older, antiquated versions of IE the gift of enhanced JavaScript rendering and support for HTML5 technologies like embedded audio and video.

So if you’re stuck using IE6 or IE7 at work and would like to see what the latest and greatest on the web actually looks like, you can grab the official release of Chrome Frame from Google. If you’ve been using the Chrome Frame beta, you’ll automatically be updated to the latest version.

According the Chrome blog, the latest release of Chrome Frame is three times faster on Windows Vista and Windows 7, and the most common conflicts with other IE plug-ins have been solved.

While it sounds like a good idea — improving the web by bootstrapping older, less capable versions of IE — Chrome Frame has proven to be quite controversial. In the past, Mozilla Vice President of Engineering Mike Shaver has quite convincingly argued that Chrome Frame for IE muddles the user’s understanding of browser security, and in the end will create more confusion and little benefit.

Still, whether or not it’s a good idea, Chrome Frame appears to be here to stay. The Google Chromium blog reports that sites like DeviantART and Github have already added support for Chrome Frame. Google Docs and YouTube are also on board, and Gmail and Google Calendar will soon support Chrome Frame as both services begin to drop support for older browsers.

The next version of Internet Explorer will have expanded support for HTML5 and a much better JavaScript engine. It’s in beta now, but the final release of IE9 is still several months away. Our estimate on its arrival is early 2011.

If you’d like users to see your site via Chrome Frame — provided they have it installed — all you need to do is add a head tag to your pages:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">

Alternately, you can had an HTTP header using your Apache (or similar) webserver configuration. See the video below for more info on making sure your site triggers Google Chrome Frame when it’s available.

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File Under: Browsers
Sep
15
2010

Internet Explorer 9 Beta Drops. It’s Lean, Fast and Modern

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Internet Explorer 9 Beta on the Windows 7 desktop

Microsoft will release the first beta version of its new Internet Explorer web browser Wednesday morning.

Internet Explorer 9 Beta will be made available for download shortly after it is announced at a launch event in San Francisco, around 10:00am Pacific time. We’ll post a download link for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users as soon as we have one.

The final version of IE9 is still some months off — Microsoft wouldn’t commit to a definite time frame for the browser’s release when we asked. But we’ve spent a few days in IE9 Beta’s company, and so far, it has proven to be a thoroughly modern machine. The world’s most-sed browser is getting a new look, much expanded support for HTML5 and other 21st century web technologies, and a big speed boost.

Quite a change. Microsoft has a reputation for being an also-ran when it comes to browser innovation. When IE8 arrived in March 2009, we found it rich in features, but lacking in support for the emerging standards powering the shiny apps that make the web exciting. IE8 was faster and more secure than its predecessor, but when it came to speed and productivity, it wasn’t up to snuff with its peers — Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera. In fact, it was a bit of a snooze.

A year and a half on, Microsoft has smelled the coffee and is wide awake at the wheel. IE is fit to play in the same league as the other browsers.

Keep in mind, IE9 Beta is still pre-release code, so it may not run perfectly. But there’s enough new going on here — especially that speed boost — to make the download a must for the curious who want a taste of IE’s future.

A new look

The most striking difference between this browser release and the IEs of old is the new user interface. It’s sleek and minimal, and — what are those? — it now has the inverted top-tabs, which are quickly becoming common.

We first caught wind of this design change when a screenshot of the new IE9 leaked onto the web. It decreases the amount of real estate the browser consumes on screen and makes way for more content.

Another shot of IE9 Beta. Click for larger.

“The browser is the stage and the backdrop, but the website is the star of the show,” Microsoft general manager of Internet Explorer Dean Hachamovitch tells Wired. “We think the browser should totally take a back seat to the sites.”

Freeing up those extra pixels with a minimal top bar is a path others in the industry are taking. Chrome shipped with the tabs-on-top look two years ago, Mozilla has adopted it for Firefox 4, and Safari has flirted with in the past. Opera offers a few different choices for where to put your tabs.

Other notable details: a unified search and URL bar (a la Google Chrome) where you can get search suggestions as you type. Bing is the default, but you can add Google, Wikipedia or a host of other engines. There’s also an enlarged back button, (a la Firefox) and a noticeable lack of menu items in the main bar. Something else new in IE9 is the New Tab window with thumbnails of your most commonly-visited sites, which looks much like what you’ll find in Safari, Chrome and Opera. A nice addition here is a little bar in each thumbnail that shows how much time you’ve spent on each site.

Continue Reading “Internet Explorer 9 Beta Drops. It’s Lean, Fast and Modern” »

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File Under: Browsers
Aug
26
2010

Leaked Screenshot Shows a Cleaner, Simpler IE9

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The new design for Microsoft’s next web browser is expected to be unveiled September 15th, but the company’s Russian press site may have inadvertently spilled the beans a bit early. A screenshot of what appears to be the new IE9 made a brief appearance on the site before being yanked down.

It wasn’t taken offline fast enough to escape the press, though. Long-time Microsoft specialist Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet grabbed a screenshot that shows a much simplified user interface for IE 9.

Leaked Photo: This may be the new look for IE 9

Internet Explorer 9 promises to be a boon for the web — the modernized rendering engine is faster and much better with emerging web standards. We’ve seen four developer previews of IE9, but thus far the focus has been on the underlying code and rendering engine. There’s been no real hint as to what the final browser interface will look like until today.

Among the notable details visible in the screenshot are a unified search and URL bar a la Google’s Chrome browser, an enlarged back button, much like what you’ll find in Firefox, and a noticeable lack of menu items in the main bar.

In short, it looks like Microsoft has decided that less is more by greatly simplifying the browser UI. This is keeping in line with something Ryan Gavin, director of platform strategy at Microsoft, said previously: “The browser is the theater, we’re not the play.” In other words expect IE9 to have a cleaner, less in-your-face design. As the Russian site stated (in translation), “Now the user sees only what you need to navigate.”

Until the official launch, only Microsoft knows what the browser looks like, and it wouldn’t comment to Foley or to anyone else about the screenshot.

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