User Experiences: Sites in the Spotlight
The web is changing rapidly. More than ever before, web sites provide highly engaging, immersive experiences that people revisit frequently (e.g., web email throughout the day) or stay on for extended periods of time (e.g., Facebook all day). From captivating media to highly interactive web games, from social networking sites to online productivity tools, sites enable people to do things that were previously not possible on the web. In turn, people spend the majority of their time (57%) on the PC on the web.
Our early design explorations and usability studies around Pinned Sites quickly revealed that focusing the browser on the site by reducing the amount of UI made the Pinned Site feature even more useful and desirable – developers have more flexibility in defining the experience and people using the feature are even more engaged in the beautiful, tailored sites. In fact, one of the questions that participants constantly asked in those early usability studies for the Pinned Sites was: “Have you guys considered minimizing the amount of UI for IE all the time?”
When looking at our usage data on how many tabs people use, we realized that an overwhelming majority of IE sessions (time between a window open and close) only have a few tabs – over 97% of IE sessions have 5 or fewer tabs, and more than 90% of users have never had more than 8 tabs open simultaneously. These numbers are consistent even when we filter out short sessions and sessions without navigations. This data helped us realize that the tab row is mostly empty, most of the time, for a great majority of people browsing the web today.
Clicking the Back button, switching to another tab and navigating via the Address bar are 3 of the top 5 most frequent actions that people do in the browser. By combining tabs with the essential navigation functionality and a streamlined Tools menu into a single row of UI, IE9 reduces the amount of vertical screen real estate dedicated to the UI, saving even more room for the important content – sites.
We understand that even though they represent a minority of people who use IE, there are a lot of people who consistently run IE with more than 5 tabs open. In fact, we suspect that most of the people reading this blog post have more than 5 tabs open right now :). In recognition of that, our tab layout algorithm dedicates more room to tabs by default at large screen sizes – at screen widths larger than 1280 pixels, tabs get 2/3 of the window width, and on widths smaller than 1280 pixels, tabs get 50% of window width:
IE9 at 1366 pixels wide – at resolutions wider than 1280 pixels, tabs get 2/3 of window width
IE9 at 1024 pixels wide – at resolutions narrower than 1280 pixels, tabs get 50% of window width
Also, you can control exactly how much space you have for tabs by dragging the border between the Address bar and tabs.
We optimized the browser to be great at the few commands we know the majority of people use, as observed through careful scrutiny of real-world usage data representing hundreds of millions of sessions and tens of millions of users worldwide. A reduction in the number of top-level commands is a reflection of that data. This change also recognizes the fact that modern sites already include a lot of functionality (like sharing or authoring tools) that a browser had to compensate for in the past.
The layout of those top-level commands was influenced by two primary factors – historical consistency and relative usage data. Back and Forward buttons occupy the left-most position that they have always occupied. The Back button is by far the most used command in IE and it has been enlarged to reflect that relative usage. You’ll also notice that the Back button is cut off at the bottom. As important as the Back button is, this visual treatment further reinforces our desire to have the UI “step out of the site’s way,” communicating through the button’s relative z-order (it is “behind” the site) that its importance is lower than the importance we place on the site itself. The cut off also creates some visual interest around the most important command in the UI.
We’ll go into the details of One Box changes and improvements in another post, but it is worth mentioning here that its position is historically consistent. The majority of people see the Address bar as inseparable from Back/Forward functionality and this design respects those expectations. Back, Forward and the Address bar all apply to the active tab and keeping them together also separates them from the tabs, reflecting two basic types of navigation that IE affords and that dominate its UI – navigating within the currently active tab or switching to another tab.
Home and the modified Tools menu are to the right of tabs, where they historically have been in previous releases. Favorites’ positioning between Home and Tools is a change from where the button showed up in the past. This largely reflects the overall desire to support efficient scanning patterns and group similar navigation functionality together. Specifically, Favorites’ being next to Home reflects the fact that both of these commands enable people to quickly navigate to the site(s) they have “bookmarked” in the past.
Favorites bar, Command bar and Status bar are not shown by default. However, they are accessible through customization:
This design decision is consistent with the focus IE9 places on the experience of the site itself and is a reflection of the actual relative usage data for commands on the Favorite bar, Command bar and Status bar. For example:
- 54% of people have 2 or fewer items on their Favorites bar (we ship with 2 by default); 99% of people have 0 folders on their Favorites bar.
- The most used item on the Command bar is Favorites Center, clicked on by 30% of people, next is Home with 13%, and after that is Print with 4%. Everything else is lower than 4%. So we still surface at the top-level the most commonly clicked items in the Command bar.
- The most commonly used item in the Status bar was “Select Preset Zoom” used by 1.6% of people. Setting the zoom level is now possible through the Tools menu, as well as through keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+, Ctrl+0, Ctrl-).
All of these changes lead to a decrease in visual distraction from sites and a significant reduction in the vertical space that IE9 dedicates to its UI. Here is a visual comparison of the UI height in IE9 and few other browsers:
Vertical UI space is easy to measure and talk about. However, beyond decreasing the vertical UI space, the monochromatic icon treatment (based on the work and findings from the System Tray updates in Windows7) and a tight integration with Windows Glass in the title bar area helps sites to shine as well. These changes provide for a “quieter” frame, one that is not demanding attention. On a related note, by reserving the title bar space for a window drag action, we respect the basic usability expectations that Windows users have in terms of easy application/window management.
We are excited to ensure that in IE9 the spotlight is on sites more strongly than ever before. We are looking forward to Beta feedback and shipping a great user experience in IE9.
Mirko Mandic
Program Manager, Internet Explorer User Experience
Comments
Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
Thanks for explaining your reasoning behind the UI changes. Of course, since I'm an IT pro, I understand that many of these changes weren't targeted at me and so you aren't interested in what I would prefer. There are two things that I don't like that I think all people will agree with though. First, I don't like how there is no indication that the page is still loading. The tab displays a spinner for a few seconds, then it stops, even if the page hasn't finished loading. I think that spinner should continue until the page has finished loading, so I don't end up refreshing the page and interrupting the page loading. The second thing I don't like is that the page title from removed from the title bar. It is annoying to have to hover over a tab whenever I want to see the full title of the page. I think the full title should be displayed in the blank area at the top of the window. That will still allow the user to easily drag the window around, while filling the wasted space.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
@Cavalary "the tabs absolutely MUST have their own row" +1 at least there should be an option, instead of being forced by your own thinking and designAnonymous
September 20, 2010
@Adrian: There's a known bug with the donut stopping its spin prematurely in the beta build. I don't know if there's an existing Connect bug (see connect.microsoft.com/ie) about the absence of the Title bar text but there have been quite a few comments on it.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
you also need a right click menu option, for the address bar, to pin the site to the taskbar. shouldn't have to drag it from the top of the screen all the way to the bottom. @Cavalary "the tabs absolutely MUST have their own row" +1Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
Where is classic menu bar? How can I get separated tab bar and address bar in two rows? I love IE8 style, not this beta version.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
I think I can understand why the decision to turn off plugins for pinned sites was made: to offer a more consistent experience and to load faster, but this makes the feature useless for me. I can't browse a site without gestures and ad block.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
@Emil - and it's not like 3% is some tiny number of users. Raymond Chen talked often about how a change impacting 1% of Windows users was still 1 million people (or more) and and so not something to be taken lightly. Yet here we are at three times that number and so far just rationalisations, no solutions. Did the 3% count as accepted casualties? If so that's a major change in Microsoft engineering practice.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The navigation controls Home,Back & Forward (Navigation controls) must be always grouped together . Why is the Home button on the right?Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Thank you for letting us in on your UI research. It's very interesting and I agree with most of what you have done. But, I would also vote for at least an option to move the tabs to its own row. I always have lots of tabs open. Despite the stats, I'm sure you'll find a lot of people like me who use the wonderful right-click option: "Open in New Tab" for a half-dozen links on a page, and then I proceed to go through them, doing the same for the others. Well, that task is tedious when I can only see the names of the sites if there are 3 or fewer tabs available. I've got some other disagreements with your UI decisions, which I mentioned a day ago on another IEBlog entry. I won't repeat them here, but since you appear to be the main UI guy, I'll refer you to the comments in: blogs.msdn.com/.../user-experiences-accessibility-in-ie9-beta.aspx Keep up the innovation. Just be careful with the UI and remember that everyone is very familiar with what you have in IE8, which truthfully is quite good. Please respect the UI standards that Microsoft has built up over the years, and don't add anything that breaks them unless it is something new you are planning to implement across the whole Windows operating system. (Again see my comments in the other post for a good example - your replacement of the forward/back down-arrow). LouisAnonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
It is a pain to be in the minority. I have 42 tabs open right now in Firefox4 so some way to see those tab titles a bit easier would be useful. And as someone mentioned, 3% is an awful lot of people. Oh, and I have a 30" monitor at work and a 24" at home, and I never use the browser maximized.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Okay so IE9 lets you pin a site to the taskbar but the taskbar will soon get crowded as I already have my apps there. How about also letting us pin individual sites/favorite URLs each as a jump list to the main IE icon? This would be analogous to pinning documents in Notepad.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
What's going on when you drag a URL onto your desktop to create a shortcut? It removes the tab from the current window and put put it in a new window and creates an pinned style icon but the site is not actually pinned. I just wanted to create a shortcut back to the page for later viewing, but my browser tab layout / flow got all jacked up in the process. Hopefully this is another Beta issue and not the expected behavier. I'll reiterate the option for a separate tab row. Pinning and modifying sites on the "new tab" page is a must. My New Tab page at work will be ESPN, Reddit, Digg, IE Blog, Channel 9, etc. I need to be able pin at least some of my work sites first so I don't get fired! I guess there's always InPrivate, but you get what I'm saying. I also just realized that I can't spell and I don't yet have a spell checker for IE9. IE7 Pro was a great all-in-one solution for those who hate downloading a million add-ons. I hope there is an easy way for built-in add-on discover. Navigating independantly to a website is cumbersome. My parents won't be able to get any add-ons if they have to search for a website, then search for add-ons, then install them. They'd actually have a shot if they could click on an icon in the browser and be giving popular suggestions. Take some notes from Firefox on that one I guess.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
I guess I get the open window chrome row at the top. When the window isn't maximized you definitely need it to drag the window around. Chrome pushes it's tabs down to do this when not maximized. If you don't have the open row at the top when maximized you'd either be giving up double click ability for a new tab or double click ability for windows restore down functionality because you can't have both on the same row. That is some pretty expensive real estate up there. Like Manhattan expensive.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
I would be very happy if IE9 supports Webworker and Websocket.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
I'm using Chrome so you're not getting my statistics but I accumulate tabs over time and usually when I start to hit somewhere around 25 I start closing them. When I'm forced to use IE8 (corporate environments, parents' computer) I usually go up to five or so and then usually IE8 just dies or I have another IE8 instance open because some popup decided to open into its entirely own window so that evens it out. "Less than five" has more to do with IE8's shortcomings than what people actually want to have. So as others have said, tabs need their own row.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The Chrome screen is indeed misleading. As already pointed out in the comments, when maximized, the title bar gets hidden (or the tabs overlap it, as you prefer), and the UI takes less space than the one of IE9. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, but this can't possibly be an honest oversight. This is not the way to go. IE9 looks good enough as is, no need to try to mislead your users to make it look even better.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Obviously it wasn't an oversight, but they chose to show the products in the fashion that best accentuates their own...in a non-maximized windowed state. Nothing wrong with that. With widescreens becoming prevalent less and less people are using browsers in a fully maximized state anyway. In a maximized state IE9 is roughly the same as Chrome in terms of vertical space. In a windowed state IE9 crushes Chrome in vertical space.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
Please, never eliminate features based on these usage statistics. The folders in Favorites Bar are very useful for us geeks who want to control our "livemarks" (rss feeds) in a firefox-like way....... So it doesn't matter if 99% don't use it, remember that in a scale of millions 1% is very important!Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
Good article. But it is called the Notification Area, not the System Tray. (Raymond Chen to the rescue) blogs.msdn.com/.../54831.aspxAnonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
First: "the tabs absolutely MUST have their own row": +1 (Or at least make it an option). Also, cut of the useless top white border and the frame bevel and you save another few pixels. I do like almost all UI changes though! It just needs some tweaking. I like the overall simplicity and the characteristic cut-off back button.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
One other thing, I frequently have 10-15 tabs (and more) open. I got to a website, middle-click the links as I go through, then read the new tabs when I'm finished. Having that many tabs open in such a tiny space is excruciating. Oh, I use Firefox most of the time, so you won't have my usage data. I do want to like IE9 though, but unless I can bend it to my will then that isn't going to happen.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
To put it simply: if I can't have tabs on a separate row I will not upgrade to WIE9. Simple. So all that work on improving web standards gets wasted: and I'm sure there will be others who will agree, and those who will try the new browser, dislike it, and either roll-back to WIE8 -- and those who will try a different browser. On a Virtual PC I'm testing WIE9 on I also decided to try the latest versions of the other main browsers (Firefox 4 Beta 6; Google Chrome 6.0.472.62; Opera 10.62 and Safari 5.0.2). Have to say that on UI alone Firefox looks best (though I'd prefer the Navigation Bar to go at the top like WIE8). Hate Chrome's look -- always looks to me like it's in full-screen mode -- and NO customisation of the toolbars/row orders at-all (after WIE8 have to have "Home" on the right)! Opera looks good, though find having the Personal Bar (equivalent to Favourites Bar) above the tabs and Address Bar odd. Safari, like Chrome, is also just too inflexible: you can choose what buttons you want on the toolbar and where -- but you can't decide in what order you want the separate bars to be. Also it's the only browser (Chrome excepted, as it wouldn't require it) where you cannot obtain a "customise toolbar" feature via a right-click.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
refresh button place before homepage iconAnonymous
September 20, 2010
One thing to say about the "tabs-on-top" style: bit inconsistent. Power-users often double-click on a window's Title Bar to maximise and restore a window. Do this in Opera and you get a new tab; do this in Chrome and it restores the window size. But also in window (not maximised) mode, clicking on what would appear to be the Tab bar then in Chrome still maximises the window -- even though a small area at the top would appear to now be the Title Bar. :pAnonymous
September 20, 2010
Great to have IE minimize the space it takes. Using IE9 (and other browsers) I still have an empty row just above the addressbar and tabs. This used to be the title bar, but is now empty. Why don't you use that space?Anonymous
September 20, 2010
I love the IE9 UI. It has by far the most minimalistic UI of all browsers. Yes, even when maximized, IE9 takes up less vertical space than Chrome. I have checked it out myself. I love the way tabs are placed in the same row as the address bar. It creates less distraction by having all the navigation features in a single row. Also the space above the address bar is not being "wasted" as some posters are suggesting. I love to drag my windows to take advantage of the Aero snap features of Windows 7. But in Chrome there's no space at the top for dragging. Plus the lack of a bookmarks button in Chrome makes IE9 the clear winner in the browser UI department.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Personally, I don't think a separate tab bar matter that much anyway. If you open 5 tabs, 800px is enough (each tab 160px), if you open 25 tabs, 800px is little different to 1280px for the user in practical use (each tab 32px vs.50px) I often open 50+ tabs, so I hardly care whether the tab bar is in its own row. I think IE9's way of trying to reduce the number of tabs per window is the correct approach here, instead of trying to somehow squeeze 50+ tabs in one row better.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
@Stifu: "The Chrome screen is indeed misleading. As already pointed out in the comments, when maximized, the title bar gets hidden (or the tabs overlap it, as you prefer), and the UI takes less space than the one of IE9." Even with both windows maximised, IE9 looks to be a few pixels less than Chrome. Still, there's not much in it and I can see your point. Also, for those complaining about the empty top bar, you might be forgetting about the Windows 7 feature that allows you to drag a window to and from a maximized state (Aero Snap). I love Chrome, but it does interfere with this a little bit - when I have a full row of tabs there's only a small amount of space next to the window controls where you can drag or double-click. I have to say, I love the tabs and address bar on the same row, although InPrivate needs a new, smaller indicator. Also, please follow in the footsteps of other browsers and combine the refresh and stop buttons. You usually only need to do one at a time and, once the web page has loaded, the stop button becomes redundant. A Stop->Refresh would still be simple, two clicks of the same button.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
IE9 looks like ***. That UI is horrible.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Im really liking the UI so far...It was worth the wait! But seriously...a few things need work:
- Internet Options panel - please make it look like it was designed sometime in 2010...not 2000.
- Making the Alt + 9 keyboard shortcut work without the dev tools open at the bottom like they did in the platform previews. When I load Twitter, it loads up in IE8 standards and doesn't give me rounded corners!
- Just curiously...searching for weather in the OneBox gives me a neat little shortcut without running a search...why doesnt something similar happen with currency conversions? Thanks!
Anonymous
September 20, 2010
How do i enable the option of pop-up favorite-bar? In the clip it seems like there is such option..Anonymous
September 20, 2010
I believe your statistical data is wrong by factors: Simply all power-users use Firefox or another browser, but hardly anyone professional uses the IE. You can see it here: "54% of people have 2 or fewer items on their Favorites bar (we ship with 2 by default); 99% of people have 0 folders on their Favorites bar." Yes, even my IE on all computers have only these 2 items in the favorite bar, but on the same computer all Firefox-instances have hundreds of folders and items. So the statistical data gives you informations which lead to the wrong direction, please watch out - intuition is sometimes the better instructor than numbers alone. I'm for sure that the distribution of the number of bookmarks and bookmark-folders is way different among the actual firefox users.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
@Sentinel: That is twitters fault! They need to change their code "<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8">" This is what they have. They should change it to IE=9 I can fit 8 tabs with no problem in my screen, they display almost complete, but then again, I have a 2048x1152 screen res. @All of You: I agree with almost everything you say. IE can keep the UI has it is by default, but make it customizable. Enable all user to change the placement of UI elements. HEY, it would be the first browser in the world to do so! Imagine the possibilities… Changing the placement of elements won’t break the browser funcionality, it would just look diferent. Being diferent better for Power Users.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
From time to time I also open 10 tabs or more, usually by middle-clicking many links on a webpage, to read the articles one after another. But I don't see the current rather small place for tabs as a problem, because I simply read one website, close it, read the next one, etc. When I have that many tabs open I usually don't need to switch to a specific one. Concerning the favorites bar, I agree that its current design in the beta is the same from IE8 and it doesn't really fit to the new UI in IE9. I use it very often, as I have my RSS feeds in there, categorized in different folders. Being notified of new RSS posts without the favorites bar can be very tedious, you would have to regularly open the favorites center to look for feeds that have been updated (you had to do it this way in IE7). I also cannot believe that so few IE users use the favorites center regularly. I have more than 40 sites in my favorites and use several folders to group them. I hope the design of the favorites bar, together with the favorites center, is revised to look more consistent with the rest of the interface.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
I use my favorites bar for RSS feeds "live bookmarks". it'll be nice to have the "auto-open" open whenever there're updates. Or a notification popup.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
sentinel wrote:
- Internet Options panel - please make it look like it was designed sometime in 2010...not 2000. Please, make it resizable - it's laughable on big screens that you can't use your screen estate.
Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
i do a lot of my web browsing on a Tablet PC in portrait mode. I accept fully that this puts me well into the 3% awkward users category, but it's an experience I genuinely believe can't be beat and something that I would hope the success of iPad will finally start to see slip into the mainstream. That being said, there are a few aspects of the IE9 UI that don't play at all well in that scenario. Tabs on the same row, for example, is particularly cumbersome. In portrait mode vertical space is far less precious than horizontal space and trying to squeeze everything in to one row becomes a right pain as neither can really be allocated enough space to function adequately. Secondly putting things like favourites on the right hand side makes them particularly awkward to access with a stylus, wheras the old position on the left hand side was a far more comfortable gesture (granted this may be entirely the opposite for left handed users, I really couldn't say). Finally, I'd stick my vote in for more consistent support when the taskbar is relocated. Pretty much the single best step to improving the Tablet PC UI is to move the taskbar to the top of the screen and I know quite a few people who've commented on that before. Unfortunately it now means the tab pinning is even less discoverable than usual.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
I agree the tabs should move on their own row when more than X tabs are shown (a settings configurable, press 0 to always have two rows). When in two-rows mode, the title bar should be used to show the tabs. They could be very thin, it's not a problem since most of the time we have less than X tabs. Screenshot here : cid-201f3835d49587fe.office.live.com/.../IE9%20Tabs%20Rows.jpg Another thing I would like : Addressbar fill full window width when focused (overlap tabs or hide those) so that we have more room to edit the URL & have the "paste & go" feature built-in. Regards, FrançoisAnonymous
September 20, 2010
<< i do a lot of my web browsing on a Tablet PC in portrait mode. I accept fully that this puts me well into the 3% awkward users category, but it's an experience I genuinely believe can't be beat and something that I would hope the success of iPad will finally start to see slip into the mainstream. >> +1Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Google Chrome UI reaches 86pixels when maximizedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
@all who want +1 row for tab why dont u guys use other features like tab tearing and browse other tabs in new window.. it makes ur browsing experiance clean... tab tearing feature is not introduced for showcase. using these features will make u feel that u dont need +1 row for tabs (dont complaint me that u have to open more than one window.. do you remember when using ie 6 u guys were using many windows)Anonymous
September 20, 2010
How about this? bogascorp.com/myie.jpg I think it's stil clean.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Worth noting is that your "data from millions of users" comes from the people who still run IE8 and havn't bothered to switch off data mining. This is NOT a representative sample of how experienced users browse the web. No sane person who knows better would use IE8 and most people who actually read installation dialogs choose to not participate in behavior analysis. It would be interesting to see the same data from firefox users. And plus, even if it would, it is still not a good meassure to limit your program design on. 97% of the time i drive my car with empty trunk, but when i really want to go weekend-shopping or on vacation i want to be able to really fill it. I can think of over 100 similar examples.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
bogascorp - That's gorgeous!! No more wasted title bar space. I might even be able to give up my love of titles in the titlebar for that.......Anonymous
September 20, 2010
"over 97% of IE sessions have 5 or fewer tabs" After 5 tabs you hit the end of your screen in many resolutions, maybe people don't use more because it's already too hard.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
So you can save space because the majority don't have many tabs open, or you could add on a measly 21 pixels and cater to many more users, plus follow the UI convention that the tab is connected to (and thus associated with) the address bar and controls. I appreciate the attempt to do something different, but add me to the users that say do tabs on top like all the other browsers.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 20, 2010
I think tabs on bottom of the address bar and tabs on the side should be an option. By the way, the reason behind the odd numbers in those statistics is that a lot of advanced users don't use IE. It's like if you said 100% of people liked fast-food using a McDonald's study.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
On the first screenshot, the Home button is not visible. How can I manage this? I'm using 'about:blank' anyways as my default page, so I don't need this button. Furthermore the Go/Refresh/Stop-buttons can be merged into one single button. Besides that, I'm absolutly loving IE9.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
I vote for tabs at top with office 2010 ribbon effects. And address bar could be inside of a tab... i54.tinypic.com/2edzk93.jpgAnonymous
September 21, 2010
I don't know if I can stand using IE9 if I have to keep using this new UI the way it is right now, I might have to finally give up and switch browsers. IE8 UI was so much better, now in IE( every feature I use is less convenient.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
If you have to make a blog post explaining your UI decisions, you've failed.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
IE9 is by far the best iteration if IE so far, and I have very few qualms with it, but it's still slower than Chrome and not as useful. When you compare the available vertical space of maximized windows, you'll see that Chrome provides as much space as IE9, but uses it better, so that I can have more than 5 tabs open and still have room for 6 application buttons with mail notifications, weather and so forth. I may not be an average user, however. I never move the browser window, since I have it maximized at all times. I usually have 3-4 sites pinned and 5-10 tabs with content, and I have the browser set to remember its complete state between sessions. I think that remembering state between sessions is very important for all applications.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
Tabs on top are a real problem when trying to use Aero snap... as would the otherwise pleasing solution proposed by bogascorp. IE9 seems to go out of its way to accommodate muscle memory (I was surprised that you can still close the window by double clicking on the upper left corner, even though all it shows is empty glass), and crowding the title bar is a good way to prevent that. To be honest, I do use a lot of tabs, but I don't use the tab bar: I use the Windows 7 taskbar instead. I get Aero preview (even a thumbnail if I don't have too many of them open), longer titles, and the single-click close action on inactive tabs that many seem to miss. In general, it's such a better experience that I almost never reach for the IE tab bar, with the only exception of creating a new tab (yes, you can do that from the taskbar, but IE provides a fatter single-click target) and now to tear tabs around. Off a tangent... while integrating the tearing with the taskbar is probably impossible, I think that providing the "New Tab" window in the taskbar preview should be possible (just make it a real tab) and would make the tab bar even less important. And the ability to pin tabs to the taskbar improved the experience even further... it would be nice to be able to select which add-ons to run for pinned sites, though. Just my 0.02$Anonymous
September 21, 2010
Just noticed something, because I tried to use it and it wasn't there: The back/forward list is gone. I wanted to go straight back to the page I was on 3 clicks before, meant to click on the little arrow next to the button and... there's no arrow, so just had to click back 3 times. I think that pulldown menu was quite handy there.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
@Cavalary: Right-click the back button,or click-and-hold it.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
Yeah, just figured that out and was getting back here to say so :) Thanks. But noticed another little issue: If only a single previously-"connected" tab is left open, it keeps the "group color", doesn't return to normal color. Also saw a CSS issue... Though in fact I don't know if it's an issue or not, but it's an unusual behavior. I have a page on my site that uses pre around some stuff placed inside tables. In previous versions of IE, as well as in FF, pre overrides inherited text styling, so the text looks as "preformatted text" should look like. In IE9 it looks all weird, because the text style that refers to table/tr/td is also applied to the text inside pre.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
Corrected a typo in the 5th paragraph J is now :)Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The whole 'space at the top - just so you can drag and drop for Aero Snap' argument, doesn't really make sense. If you were to put the tab row on the top, the obvious horizontal position with be aligned to the left corner of the adress bar. That leaves enough space above the Back and Forward buttons to click and drag for Aero Snap, that top left corner space is ideal for this too. As you don't even to look at the screen just drag the mouse up left, simple and intuitive behaviour. As long as you take away the drop down menu with options of rezising the window on that corner, does anyone even use that anymore? Especially now that there's not even an icon there. Also, the fact that you can tear a tab right of for use with Aero Snap, really enforces this. But personally, I'm fine with how the tab row is now. What I want to do with the space at top, is put the Favorites Bar up there instead. Blended in as separate buttons with the transparent background as it is now. Even if according to your data, that only a small percentage of users uses the Fav Bar, the 2 links that comes with the browser - Suggested Sites, and was it Web slice? Those 2 will certainly add value to the functionality of the browser for users just by being visible at the top.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
Oh, and this one annoying thing, take away the pixels of white space right below the tabs please!Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
Hey IE team, I saw on Connect that you have posted an image to show where users have to hover to view the download speed. This is ludicrous. Any dynamically and constantly changing information such as download speed should not be moved to a tooltip. Please stop burying all the info we could see in IE8 under more clicks or under tooltips. You are only catering to users who want simplicity. This is not the right approach. Are you please getting this feedback loud and clear?Anonymous
September 21, 2010
I think the only to missing features in the interface are a progress bar (maybe embeded in the adress bar) and a hide button for the toolbars (to hide them not disable them)Anonymous
September 21, 2010
it's hard to design a minimal and functional UI; it's even harder to design both a minimal and functional UI and a powerful and functional UI and let users transition smoothly between them - but that's what I'd like to the IE9 have. I want the sleek minimal option and then I want a version that has the three extra things each power user wants that they can place on the ui without having to open the Command Bar Of Clutter and a full-width tab bar, and I want them both to look good. Take the way OneNote has minimal and full interfaces, for when you want more space for the note vs the full set of tools. Progressive disclosure for the download manager, progressive functionality for the browser. Now that's a really hard design problem.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
"The most commonly used item in the Status bar was “Select Preset Zoom” used by 1.6% of people." The problem with using telemetric data like this is that it doesn't actually give you the complete picture of how certain UI elements are used. For example, the most important aspect of the zoom control on the status bar for me was that it also shows you the current zoom STATUS. Therefore, I'd be using the zoom status without actually clicking on it, and therefore no telementry would have recorded my use. Moving the zoom status to the "Tools" menu is a retrograde step. Perhaps to compensate for its lack of UI exposure a TV-like on-screen-display could be shown when adjusing the zoom level (e.g. like when adjusting the volume on your TV) ? The re-arranged "Tools" menu is also a complete mess, especially the random "File" section of the menu. Out of the 6 options in the "File" section only "Save as..." actually has anything to do with files! @badger - with items in the title bar you actually can still have the same window dragging functionality. A click can do a particular function, but dragging can still move the window. Here was an idea that I posted to the Mozilla guys on this topic (anyone can use it - just happened to post it to Mozilla first!): bug572160.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgiAnonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
I've become a fan of having tabs located on the same row as onebox. Beforehand, it was common for me to have 15-20 tabs open at a time. But now with Pinned Site capability, I find myself grouping my activities in multiple browser instances far more often. The benefit there is that I'm not wasting time hovering my mouse over taskbar. Commands: I appreciate the design thoughts behind for the home, favorites, tools icon..but couldn't that have been achieved by docking the Command Bar in the same location and updating the look-n-behavior of the command bars. Favorites: Be careful...your current usage data probably doesn't account for how consumers will browse the web using upcoming portable Slate PCs. Pinned Sites: Love it. I still don't understand why you would disable/hide a command like "Messenger Companion" or "Send to OneNote". Two Suggestions:
- Take Pinned Sites one step further and support previewing webslices from taskbar.
- Place the Home button and the Pinned Site icon (in browser) in the same location. Its jarring to see one instance located on left and another located on right.
Anonymous
September 21, 2010
I never liked the “improved” features of IE8—the web slices, the accelerators, the big favorites bar. I’m not even much of a fan of tabs, often preferring to open separate top-level windows instead. I’ve been running IE9 beta both at home and at work since it was released and I’ve got to say, “I love it.” Thank you for putting browser clutter in the background and letting the sites shine through.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
So basically this is all just fixing symptoms from the switch to 16:9 and 16:10 display formats for monitors? I liked they 4:3 format; at least that provided suffcient 'vertical space' for anything that was not video-related...Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
1> Most power users know that IE has no such option during setup and has not had such an option since IE7. 6> Every good software team writes blog posts about their decisions. Every software blog has plenty of amateur trolls who whine and complain about those decisions and rant about how some other browser is better. 7> As always, I'm happy your silly little tantrum won't go clutter up the actual bug database, lest it mask actual problems.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
Dear IE team, It's great that IE9 reduces clutter and strives for a clean UI (by default). However, don't cut features completely. Give advanced users the option to turn on again the advanced features they want to use, for example:
- Add an option that the tabs can be positioned below the address bar, even in pinned sites mode.
- At least offer an option to turn on all add-ons in pinned sites mode. After all, we're still using IE9 on our personal computers, where we, the users, should have the last word whether we want to use a feature or not. With IE9, I have the impression that Microsoft values sites higher than the will of its power users. Never before in the history of Microsoft or the PC existing features have been simply cut completely for the sake of simplicity - they might have been hidden or reorganized, but not cut! If you continue to take this new direction, most power users will switch to Chrome or Firefox (or not come back if they've switched already), and IE will just be the program for the masses. Grazie!
- Anonymous
September 21, 2010
- page-load indicator in address bar like Windows 7
- page title back in the title bar I would like to see that
- Anonymous
September 21, 2010
- page-load indicator in address bar like Windows 7
- page title back in the title bar I would like to see that
Anonymous
September 21, 2010
Tabs NEED to have their own row. You gave your justification, but so did we. Sure, you may thing that puting tabs and address bar is ingenius, but we, you users, disagree. Perhaps 90% of us are wrong, but we are still your users and we chose to use IE as oppose to Firefox or Chrome.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
In Office 2010, you can collapse the ribbon with a button at the right side of the window (next to the help button). I would like to see such a button in IE9 as well if the menu bar, the Favorites bar, or any toolbar (add-on) is visible. When clicking the button, IE would collapse/fade out/hide all bars that are located below the address bar/tab bar. Experienced users could then hide/show the bars on demand by clicking the button (or pressing a shortcut key like Ctrl+F1 in Office). In Pinned Sites mode, IE9 could collapse all bars by default. If the user chooses to show his bars again by clicking the button, IE9 should remember this setting for all future Pinned Sites instances. The collapse/expand bars button could be located next to the settings button on the right. If no bars are visible, the button could simply be hidden.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
Dear fellow power users. I probably should have posted this earlier when people were still reading the comments, but you may want to try out re-enabling quick tabs. It's disabled by default in IE9, but once enabled, you can press ctrl+Q to see all your open tabs. also, I just wanted to say I'm one of the fellows who is quite pleased with IE9's new interface. I'm okay with adding an option to use a second row of course, but I think the present configuration should be the default one.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
Regarding the issue raised in my last comment (URL not completely visible in narrow address bar), I could think of 2 mitigations if address bar and tabs are displayed in a single row:
- Whenever the address bar is too narrow to display the complete current URL, display a ToolTip with the complete URL when the user points to the address bar. (It's already displayed in a ToolTip for the current tab. However, lots of people might not know this, and it fades out after a few seconds, making it hard to decipher a long URL)
- When the address bar gets focus, make it wider so that more of the URL is visible for editing/replacing (the tabs part will be made smaller). If it loses focus, restore its original size.
Anonymous
September 21, 2010
I commented before but I have one more followup suggestion. That is to rework Favorites to be much more touch friendly. I wouldn't have much of a need for the Favorites Bar if Favorites was more touch friendly. I bet if you do usability studies, folks who are on Slate PCs will want to utilize Favorites far more than you may be anticipating. Instead of the small flyout window..I'd like to see you do something along the lines of the "new tab" experience and support for categories/folders. Now, if the roadmap is to ultimately have Pinned Sites replace Favorites then typing in the address onebox should search pinned sites AND the Windows Client team needs to enhance the taskbar further.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
I just upgraded to Windows 7 from XP but I cannot locate the "User feed synchronization" task under Windows 7's task scheduler any more. Under XP task scheduler, there was a User feed synchronization (Feedsync) task which when executed synchronized all feeds instead of manually updating each and every feed. How does msfeedsync run now?Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
connect.microsoft.com/.../Feedback - also crashes in msie9 beta / win7x64 / ie7pro IE tries to redirect to live login - and crashes I'd not to install mappings local user account <-> Live ID (Feed back liveID heper) - browser could achieve the same via cookies if needed. IE Feedback pages does not work in Opera - no way to make 'submit new feedback' appear. Hence here is the only way left.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
I too would like to have a separate tab bar, with the favorites column back in the left corner, like IE8. And with a smaller margin between individual favorites in the list - longer lists look too cumbersome with those huge margins!Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
IE team, you underestimate the important of choice. Too little choice can take away all your users. Everything at Microsoft seems to be about locking down more, giving user less choice and deciding what's best for him. Even the Connect beta site apparently has got rid of voting up or down for some stupid reason. Searching by number of Up, Down or Total votes becomes useless as it being locked down returns irrelevant posts. What's happening to this company which distinguished itself from Apple for giving total choice and customizability?Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
Hello! i downloaded the beta version of ie9 beta it rocks you internet explorer team guys finally! did something cool =D but something in ie9 does need improved for the stable version when it comes out and i'm talking about TABS next to the URL bar cause i have a laptop computer and it isn't good to have tabs next to the url bar but you should keep it like that and allow us to have an option to put TABS on the top. or TABS next to the url bar by default.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
@Eric, One thing to consider here. Although power users may be a small percentage, I say that this small percentage is a significant driver for the remaining percentage. By this I mean that it's the power user who is in IT decision making roles, who sets his Aunt and sister's default browsers and supports them, who opines in tech forums (good or bad). I think the current strategy is one that may not take hold, unless some appeasements are given back to the power user, in the form of allowing more UI customization. I'd like to see IE9 succeed because I feel that technologically it is the superior browser, but I feel that to get momemtum and mojo back, you may want to alter course a bit in terms of the UI. Best of luck!Anonymous
September 21, 2010
Dont move the tabs when they get to 8+ tabs by default. Its a terrible idea. Dont let people who only care about themselve influence your decision. I like the way IE is now. It should teach us all a little bit of constriant. Its understandable to provide a mode toggle (light and heavy mode) but not automatically switch between the two. Another solution will also be to investigate why people use 8+ tabbs. I do get there sometimes and its mostly because im on the quest for information(search), found a couple of site but think I "might" need to read them so I leave them open till I tell myself I dont need it anymore. If most people get to 8+ tabs like this, maybe best way is to provide a mechanism/feature where where people can dock(pin is already being used) a tab into a docking station at which they can access at will till they decide they dont need it any more. Sound like bookmark but not exactly. People bookmark because they want to keep it. This will be a temporary docking station for tabs. Now, I am not saying it should be so. All im trying to say is that there is probably a behavior pattern with people who have 8+ tabs and UX can tap into that behavior to create a good balance.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 21, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 22, 2010
I by all means love UI innovation, so congrats for trying to do something better. This will be perfect for inexperienced users since they don't care much about the URI nor have many tabs open simultaneously. However, for experienced users, I imagine it's a pain, since we both want to see the URI AND tend to have many tabs open at the same time (I currently have 11), so allocating more space for the tabs and making the address bar shorter isn't going to help. There should definitely be an option for this.Anonymous
September 22, 2010
Also, if you care that much about space, why waste all this space above the address bar/tabs?Anonymous
September 22, 2010
@Lea Verou That is the title bar. Adding elements to the title bar would violate window's human interface guidelines.Anonymous
September 22, 2010
I must say I like the new UI. But one thing you must fix is the "omnibar". Remove things like http://www. for saving space and put the Refresh button together with the with the Stop button.Anonymous
September 22, 2010
I do not like refresh and stop together. There are elements on the page that are useful to stop after the page is loaded ... for instance a meta refresh.Anonymous
September 22, 2010
Hello i hope this version of internet explorer will have new like have a 9.0 and a 9.1 and a 9.2. with stuff that fixes bugs. i hope you guys will reply thanks =)Anonymous
September 22, 2010
hi will internet explorer 9 be faster than firefox and it will handle all html codes better than ie8 does?Anonymous
September 22, 2010
"over 97% of IE sessions have 5 or fewer tabs, and more than 90% of users have never had more than 8 tabs open simultaneously" Sure. Then optimize for this scenario, but, please, give us some way of changing the default layout. The ideal solution would be to let the user decide where to put the tabs. Obvious "alternative" choices are Title bar and below the address bar, but more freedom would be better...Anonymous
September 22, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 22, 2010
Tabs in own row = -1 a) Someone wrote above about 15 tabs. I have a 24" wide screen monitor and the browser have usual the half screen width. How many tabs I can get in Chrome? About 7 or 8? In IE only 4, sure, but 15 tabs "fails" in both browsers, therefore what's the point? b) I have wide screen monitor, therefore the width is unimportant for me, but the height isn't. With tabs in a own row I lost always 50 pixel or more in height, even thought I have only 4 tabs. No sorry, I like this new design. The only thing where I find personal not any good solution are favorites that I use very often.Anonymous
September 22, 2010
From IE4 to IE6, Internet Explorer had a great GUI, and it was customizable. The only missing feature was the tab browsing. Give us the IE6 GUI back! Stop changing the GUI all the time and concentrate your efforts on everything else.Anonymous
September 22, 2010
Tabs MUST have their own row like chrome. Tabs MUST have their own row like chrome. Tabs MUST have their own row like chrome. Tabs MUST have their own row like chrome. Tabs MUST have their own row like chrome. Tabs MUST have their own row like chrome. I hope IE Team is listening to us.Anonymous
September 22, 2010
Voting for or against tabs on their own row is silly; the answer is let the end user decide. The statistics this article mentions correctly motivate and explain the default layout, but that doesn't mean functionality that empowers users should be taken away. What changed from Office 2010 to Office 2007? More customizability is one big thing. Take a lesson from that change, please. I would also point out that the statistics are probably lower than what they could be because many people who rely on tabbed browsing have switched browsers. It's great that IE9 promises to change the slow tab performance (it can be faster to open a new window than a new tab in IE7/8), but wouldn't it be silly to make tabbed browsing better but not allow users to experience tabbed browsing as they prefer? It'd be like an airport that expands runways and gets new air traffic controllers because of long delays and canceled flights, but then the airport also closes half the terminals at the airport because few people used the airport more than once. (It's a rough analogy, I admit, but I think it gets the point about it being a bad choice to fix one problem but then break something that the fix was supposed to help.) Please, make this the best UI for everybody, not the minority. Did you know that (0.9)^6 is only about half? In other words, if you remove 6 features that only a small minority of 10% use, you may have affected half your user base, even though no specific change affected that may people. The answer is simple: customizability. P.S. The other thing Office 2010 improved on was an easier-to-use UI for people familiar with Office 2003 and earlier. For example, Office 2010 has the "File" button and an arrow to show how to hide or unhide the ribbon. In IE9, does the home button belong on the left or the right? If it's the right, why does it move to the left for pinned sites? Is consistency too much to ask for? I actually think the right is correct, so why not make it that way always (or customizable for that). But the home/pinned home button should never be to the left of the navigation buttons; that's kind of weird. And the dropdown for the back button really takes so many pixels that no user should ever be able to customize the UI to bring it back?Anonymous
September 22, 2010
IE 7 got a lot of comments saying "UI needs to be more customizable" IE8 got a lot of comments saying "UI needs to be more customizable" and now IE 9's getting a lot of comments saying "UI needs to be more customizable" Do we really think MS will listen this time? And +1 for the option of giving the tabs their own row +1 for putting the title in the title bar and let us move the home button up to the back/forward/refresh area... better yet, let us move everything around like FF does and IE6 didAnonymous
September 22, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 22, 2010
What about adding a "Paste & Go" item in the context menu over the address bar? It's really that useful in some circumstances.Anonymous
September 23, 2010
Please children, go to the playground if you want to play.Anonymous
September 23, 2010
@DavidPaulo No-one is trying to play: Microsoft need to come up with a better system of showing who on this post is a genuine Microsoft employee. Putting "ΜSFΤ" inside square brackets after the name is no good as it's too easily spoofed: all I did was use non-English-language letters that happen to look just like the correct Latin/Roman letters. Surely putting an icon of the new Internet Explorer icon in 16 x 16 size to the left of a team members name could be an easy option? Or a graphic cented between the name and date/time of the post saying "Microsoft Employee".Anonymous
September 23, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 23, 2010
@Drake @Aethec and others - Misrepresentation is not allowed in the IEBlog comments. We are well aware of who is legitimately posting from the IE team. All other comments claiming to be from Microsoft will be moderated. There is an open comment policy on this blog. You are not required to sign in and comments are published immediately. We believe this is the best way to foster open communication. Please do not force us to change these policies.Anonymous
September 23, 2010
Where is the IE icon in the top-left corner so I double-click to close it? Well, at least the title bar is still there even when the maximized, that makes sense…Anonymous
September 23, 2010
@Ben50: Even though the icon isn't shown at the top-left, you can still use the system menu. At the top-left of the IE window, single-click to show the system-menu, or double-click to close the window. (The same trick works in Windows Explorer in Windows 7).Anonymous
September 23, 2010
So the testers did mainly zoom and print pages? Do you hire the testers from elderly homes? If so, then that's very nice from you because many people there probably don't know what to do and also pretty wise because the population is aging and living longer.Anonymous
September 23, 2010
@Eric: Great. Thank you! Another thing, you should probably talk to those Live guys, these large subdomains are problematic, in the first screenshot the domain is invisible, that's quite problematic IMHO. Or how about always showing the domain and adding ellipses in front between protocol and domain if needed, e.g. "https://e0…3f.live.com/…" ?Anonymous
September 23, 2010
hi i have windows xp and it is out of free space my best friend told me to ask on here how can i free up alot of free space my computer has 199MB of free space left :( there is no programs that we use and i use ccleaner to clean the temp everyday PLEASE HELP. or i may remove xp and put linux on it :( i love you so much microsoftAnonymous
September 23, 2010
@cries hi! Microsoft Windows xp is dieing on your computer we heard....go to http://www.ubuntu.com and download our FREE! OS its is fast and awesome and lighter than windows xp is.Anonymous
September 23, 2010
I don't wish to troll but I am getting extremely tired and frustrated of this simplifying trend at Microsoft beginning with Vista/7. I feel like crying for so many features I could do in IE8 can't be done in IE9. Microsoft is the only company I know that consistently makes its products less functional and less customizable as time goes on. Remember IE team that you made a loyal IE user extremely unhappy by removing features.Anonymous
September 23, 2010
@ JabCreations I'm sorry, but your proposals are completely rubbish. The default IE9 UI is absolutely gorgeous and productive. The File Menu is gone forever from all modern softwares. It's never ever coming back. But while I like the tabs to be in the same row as the address bar, I think there should be an option to move the tabs to the bottom and/or to the top for those who prefer it that way. And, who said the quick launch feature has been removed from Windows 7? You can pin as many apps as you like to the Windows 7 taskbar. Windows 7 is a million times better than XP in every respect.Anonymous
September 23, 2010
@ieblog Yes, it's all well-and-good to say "Misrepresentation is not allowed in the IEBlog comments. We are well aware of who is legitimately posting from the IE team." Trouble is WE don't always know, your audience. A simple change to the style of posts from genuine employees would make this so much easier. How about highlighting the background area in a light blue shade for example? @Ben50 Removing the old Application Menu icon and titlebar seems to be an upcoming trend. Better get used to it, sadly. I don't understand why it's being done either, though as EricLaw said, at-least the functionallity is still there (though, weirdly, none of the Windows Live Wave 4 applications, released earlier this year, have followed this style). @cries Do a Disk Cleanup and click the More Options tab once scanning is complete. Then click the [Clean up...] button in the System Restore section to remove all but the most recent restore point. That should free-up a fair bit of space. Also consider going into Add or Remove Programs and see if there is any software you're not using you could remove. Failing both of those -- storage is so cheap now (~£50 for 1TB USB hard-disk; ~£60 for 1TB internal SATA hard-disk) why not just buy more? Or burn some old data you're not using onto DVDs then delete. Going to Ubuntu over this reason alone would be silly -- no operating system can stop you running out of drive space if you choose to have loads of files! (Except, perhaps, Google Chrome OS and suchlike with "unlimited cloud storage" -- but we'll have to wait and see on those.) @JabCreations Not forgetting you can restore the Quick Launch toolbar with a simple right-click, Toolbars > then New toolbar... then just browse to where the Quick Launch folder is located in your AppData folder. Has everyone suddenly lost the ability to use Google or Bing thesedays to research an issue?Anonymous
September 23, 2010
@Drake i did that but nothing works :( i have 2GB of ram....i only have ie8 installed on it please helpAnonymous
September 23, 2010
Drake, there will always be lying children trolling the blog. The IE team has better things to do than waste development time trying to set colors or other silliness. Fake comments don't live long and they're always obvious anyway.Anonymous
September 24, 2010
Each tab should have it's own address bar. (So we can see th complete url of the page we're on) Tabs need to gaps between them (looks crowded now) One should be able to close a tab without having to first make it active (very painful currently) The new tab button should have a "+" on it so it's clear what it is I don't think a minimalistic UI is the direction to go in. A functional UI is far better.Anonymous
September 24, 2010
hi i hate TABS next to the url bar sooo MUCH!!! so i switching to google chromeAnonymous
September 24, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 24, 2010
hello! i am still running windows xp and i tweaked internet explorer 6 to have TABS and for it to support all the stuff ie9 will and it runs way Fast :D i <3 ie6 it was the classic webbrowser by my friends that i love that is Microsoft people :)Anonymous
September 24, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 24, 2010
Also, IE team, has the RSS platform team abandoned IE? Why absolutely no enhancements to the RSS platform in IE9? IE is one of the best and most convenient RSS readers but still RSS support is nascent. Please at least support the feed URI scheme in IE9. I request the IE team to read en.wikipedia.org/.../Windows_RSS_Platform. By now, IE should have caught up with RSS readers so we don't need them any more (reading feeds in a browser is so much more natural and convenient).Anonymous
September 24, 2010
Some comments on IE9 Beta...
- Back button is overlapped, higher opacity in buttons.
- Command bar button cannot be set in Image only modes. Eg: Page, Tools, Safety
- A command bar button for downloads is missing. Download should be accessible easily.
- Download page requires a place to specify number of simultaneous downloads, queing of downloads, priority of downloads.
- A light drop shadow like boder between tab titles and page makes pages to appear back of the tabs.
- Smooth scrolling effects for pages and sliding animation when a new tab is opened.
Anonymous
September 25, 2010
The address bar is related to the tab content so it should be included into the tab area (like Firefox 4, Chrome, Opera ecc. do). Keeping the address bar outside the tab area is a serious conceptual error.Anonymous
September 25, 2010
How about a browser with the features like one on this? www.youtube.com/watch Will someone like an interface this minimal? Please comment to give feedback.Anonymous
September 25, 2010
Viewing full screen is the BEST way to view the web ,The not so necessary UI elements are hidden but I can get them back easily with a move of the mouse. the only problem is that one cannot use the taskbar easily while in full screen. PLEASE Give an option to keep the taskbar visible while in fullscreenAnonymous
September 25, 2010
Absolutely agree with "RSS". Reading news right in the browser is so much more convenient than having an extra feed reader.Anonymous
September 25, 2010
hi i think you could hide the url bar if users want to you should add to your webbrowser on my webbrowser which you can use this if you want. press Alt U to see the url bar and Tabs :PAnonymous
September 25, 2010
bula_20000Anonymous
September 25, 2010
how about integrating the URL/search bar into the active tab? that would save a lot of space...although a site description/title might be hard to fit in if all the space is used to show the web address...Anonymous
September 25, 2010
another ie9 user @ page description could be above the tab i54.tinypic.com/2edzk93.jpgAnonymous
September 26, 2010
CSS3 Support in Internet Explorer 9 www.impressivewebs.com/css3-support-ie9Anonymous
September 26, 2010
Hey the new IE is not support sis graphic cards I install on my laptop and on the desktop but on laptop is not appear nothing ,only blank page but workAnonymous
September 26, 2010
"the tabs absolutely MUST have their own row" +1Anonymous
September 26, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 26, 2010
I'm a 13 year ex Windows administrator and all I can say is ugh! You guys are really ruining your products with the horrendous UI redesigns. Just like Windows 7 and its dreadful taskbar, IE9 is horrible UI design!!! At least if you're going to make such changes, allow us power users to revert back to "classic" mode! I'll be sticking with Windows XP and IE8 until support ends in 2013, then I'm off to open source! :(Anonymous
September 26, 2010
@TJ: go off to open source now. nobody is holding you if you don't like win7. WinXP is a PoS compared to Win7. period. and obligatory, "the tabs absolutely MUST have their own row" +1Anonymous
September 26, 2010
Great job IE team. I really look forward to playing around with IE9 (Alas I have a Mac that hasn't been bootcamped with windows yet). I have an emulator that runs at full speed in Firefox 4, Google Chrome, and Safari, but runs super-slow in IE8. I hope it can run full speed in IE9. It's a GameBoy Color emulator: grantgalitz.org/gameboyAnonymous
September 26, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 27, 2010
hi i guess internet explorer will be different and i like different cause google chrome, opera, safari, firefox have TAbs on its own row and its to Original and internet explorer is differnet love ie9 i am ex- firefox user i am now a ie9 beta UserAnonymous
September 27, 2010
cut your ego. place tabs over address bar. hate it when they are placed next to address bar. close tab button should be visible on hover. why do we need to click on the tab and then close??? loved your speed results on js, gpu and acid3 results. u guys can beat chrome and firefox by providing devs to build addons to IE.Anonymous
September 27, 2010
hi think you guys should make a internet explorer 9.1 and a 9.2 and a 9.3 and so on and so but with faster speed and more bugs fixed after the 9.0Anonymous
September 27, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 27, 2010
Please... html5 forms for IEAnonymous
September 28, 2010
I have 15 tabs open right now. I probably never have fewer than 6. Undoubtedly, your usage telemetry is not accurate for power users, since they are smart enough to turn off or block such "phone home" features. "the tabs absolutely MUST have their own row" +1 "Show the 'close' button on the tab when hovering over it" +1 Allow customizing the button layout. Just make these things options, with the defaults as you have them. Problem solved.Anonymous
September 28, 2010
Debunking IE Teams measurement argument and thus the basis for having tabs and other bars locked into same row. See also the Postscript in the end which posits existence of a confounding variable in the stats. channel9.msdn.com/.../fadf7afd0e794460a17a9e00002d428bAnonymous
September 28, 2010
Work all you want on GPU features. I won't use IE9 unless you allow to customize the UI so I can have my tabs in one row. Oh, and a proper adblocker, decent session management and optional mouse gestures would be nice additions too. These features are not so hard to implement, and if a small Norwegian company that produces a browser with 1%-2% desktop market share can do it, why is it so hard for Microsoft? Just give us users what we want, or you will keep losing market share. Your call.Anonymous
September 28, 2010
<<not so hard to implement>> Yeah, your opinion on development costs are credible. << small Norwegian company >> That "small Norwegian company" has one product, and a development team larger than IE's. <<with 1%-2% desktop market share >> Every wonder /why/ Opera only has 1-2% marketshare, despite the existence proof (Chrome, Firefox) that getting 5% is no mean feat? Turns out that most people want more from their browsers than a bunch of "features".Anonymous
September 28, 2010
"Yeah, your opinion on development costs are credible." I'm assuming if someone can afford them, it's Microsoft. "That "small Norwegian company" has one product, and a development team larger than IE's." See above. "Every wonder /why/ Opera only has 1-2% marketshare, despite the existence proof (Chrome, Firefox) that getting 5% is no mean feat? Turns out that most people want more from their browsers than a bunch of "features"." Mozilla knew how to take advantage of IE's weaknesses, Opera didn't. And people never forgave them their original sin of being not only closed source, but not freeware as well. If people didn't want more from their browsers, Chrome and Mozilla wouldn't have devised extensions for their browsers, and IE would have never lost maket share. Your logic makes no sense whatsoeverAnonymous
September 29, 2010
Are you gomers going to support PNGs yet? Or will we web-standards developers keep having to make exceptions for your 'behind the times' browsers...Anonymous
September 29, 2010
Here is another vote for tabs on a separate row, and a larger address bar.Anonymous
October 02, 2010
My IE9 beta experience is bad. I have a brand new ION2 based HTPC which can not play video demos from ie.microsoft.com/.../Default.html. Slide show is also s too slow, about 22fps. The reason is because GPU use bottlenecked PCIEx1 port, so every bad optimized application like IE9 that use both CPU and GPU for graphics computation have the problem. Even IE9 has builded from scratch ist a not GPU optimized.Anonymous
October 03, 2010
@Cavalary +1 tabs need dedicated row, this is stupidAnonymous
October 03, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 03, 2010
@Cavalary "the tabs absolutely MUST have their own row" +1 Maybe users don't have many tabs opened every time, but when I search something in google and open results in separate tabs it's good to see full URL and have more space for tabs. In such case 2-3 tabs is not enough.