Impressive new features in Internet Explorer 9 beta Video

Impressive new features in Internet Explorer 9 beta Video Transcript

-After several months of using Internet Explorer upgrade with a series of feature free developer previews, Microsoft has unleashed on the world a fully functional desk star, I mean fully functional beta of its next gen browser; the new Internet Explorer 9 beta. Some of IE 9 beta features bring it up to parity with other browsers or other improvement definitely pushed it ahead. As you can see from the interface, the minimalist approach to browse UI is a major change to Internet Explorer, but Microsoft takes a slightly different approach than its competitors, which have also strip down UIs. Tabs are on the same level as the location bar, where Firefox, Chrome, and Opera all have tabs on 1 row and the location bar on the second. It looks fine on a wide screen desktop monitor, but on a standard laptop screen, the combination of tabs and location bar feels a bit cluttered. Microsoft has included the ability to rip tabs off into separate windows and you can arrow snap them as well. Since the search bar is gone, you probably inferred that Microsoft has beefed up the location bar search feature. This too now sits on a level playing field with competitors, although Internet Explorer's version has some nice twist to it. You can also change search providers at the bottom, which is a sleek merge of the old search bar functionality into the location bar. Another interesting feature comes from Microsoft's take on the trend of browsers becoming the operating system. Since, Microsoft already has an OS Windows anybody? They've taken steps to integrate IE more thoroughly into Windows. Pin site allows you to pin websites directly to the desktop task bar in Windows 7; however, it only works when your task bar is in the default bottom position. Hopefully, that will be fixed before IE 9 leaves beta. Windows 7 jump lists have been integrated for websites that include that functionality and thumbnail controls and inbox counts in webmail pin sites are now included too. There's a new tab page that utilizes [unk] instead of snapshot previews, which is different, but definitely likable. The download manager has been beefed up with enhanced reputation-based security features, which has not been seen in browsers yet, but to exist in modern security suites. The add-on performance advisor will automatically tell you when toolbars and other add-ons slow down IE. Improved process isolation prevents individual tab crashes from killing the whole browser and there is now an option for automatic updates as you see in Chrome. Performance has been a perennial stumbling block for Internet Explorer, but the new JavaScript engine Chakra combined with full hardware acceleration means that this inst just the fastest internet explorer yet, but is also the most competitive. Now, whether it can stay that way is up to Microsoft. With your first look at Internet Explorer 9 beta, I'm Seth Rosenblatt for CNET.