Windows 7: Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) in the Spotlight in mid-March

More at: Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) in the Spotlight in mid-March 2010 - At least a little bit - Softpedia

Hm...it is time for Microsoft to bring the guns with IE 9 and finally staple the browser as usable, reliable, and fast...

IE 8 is a great step forward...lets see a leap with IE 9

(quoted for truth)

I'll likely be one of the first to take a look once the beta is available for download to get a first hand look at any changes as well as how well it performs. If things are implemented even in the beta as suggested in a previous article on the next IE it should be interesting!

Hi there
IE8 was a bit of a dog when it first came out (and still seems to do unpredicatable things at times).

Hopefully IE9 will be better.

1) PLEASE MS - no 32 / 64 bit versions on the menu like IE8. The application should be intelligent enough to know if it needs to execute 32 / 64 bit code.

2) Don't keep asking all those rediculuous questions when you initially install IE8 -- must have answered those about 100 times.

3) Plugins - etc - DYNAMICALLY LOAD if required each time - don't have these permanently built in. Back in the days of MVS /360 / 370 OS'es we could dynamically load stuff if required

(For old IBM mainframers -- LOAD EP=EPNAME or LOAD EP=(1) where you loaded an address into a special register = Reg 1 -- and this was back in the late 60's early 70's).

The overhead on modern systems of dynamically loading stuff is really very small and makes the browser much less bloated -- also more secure as the AV software can monitor what is being dynamically called.

Integrate better with MS Office (although we might get the stupid EU having a go again about "competition").

In any case it surely can't be WORSE than IE8 although with the latest set of Windows updates IE8 seems a bit more stable now.

Cheers
jimbo

How can 'the application' do that when any single application which runs on an x86 platform is the only one which could also run on an x64 platform? Where do you do your debugging if you could have such an executable?

FWIW Microsoft were on target with iE7, and it was a joy to use, but they fluked out conpletely with iE8 by disturbing the prior decent tab functionality, and by introducing things like 'in private browsing' and 'web-slices' which were absolutely unnecessary and served to bloat the iE7 lean machine beyond recognition.

If only they left the basic browser frame alone, swift, bareboned... adding features in extension modules a user could choose to add on if they wished.

I'm not holding my breath regards iE9.

I'm expecting it to be a monolithic epitaph to bloat and frivolity...

Hi Qdos
If you are running on Windows 7 X-64 then look in the menu - there's 2 entries for IE8 (one 64 bit and the "ordinary one").

And it's REALLY simple to check in any case if you are in an X-64 or X-86 environment -- any beginner Assembly language 101 coder can do this.

Execute a dummy 64 bit instruction -- for example a NOP (No Operation) type.
Trap the error -- if it's a CPU invalid instruction or whatever -- job done.
You don't need to go into the OS entrails etc to get this info.

The issue I was complaining about is that we shouldn't have to have two separate entries for IE8 on the menu when using Windows 7 X-64. The code above could EASILY be incorporated into IE8.

With Windows 7 X-86 problem doesn't arise.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 DOES give the double choice as well -- but this is quite clearly stated that ADOBE is STILL working on some of it's own Filters and other plug in's that haven't all been converted to 64 bit operation yet - but recommends if you aren't using these then you'll get much better performance using the 64 bit version.

P.s not having a go at you but I think you might have mis-understood what I was getting at.

Cheers
jimbo

No sweat, I didn't misunderstand... and I'm well used to x64... it's simply that I can't see how you can have one browser module (sic iE9) to cover both x64 and x86 systems - unless it is purely an x86 build

I just don't think we're going to see it happen.

I'd like to see M$ adopt the Mozilla concept. A basic browser. Add on extensions for everything individuals might wish to add. However - I'm not holding my breath, M$ are sure to bloat iE9 to the gills...