Internet Explorer 9 beta out

[Richard]

Gah this is so irritating. In order to keep my address bar history from becoming hopelessly cluttered with search results I've had to resort to going directly to bing.com, google.com, imdb.com, wikipedia.com, etc. in order to do searches.

Having a seperate search box was so incredibly useful and elegant that this new combination feels so crass, inefficient, and moronic. I can almost get used to the tabs where they are (still hate it) but I absolutely have not been able to adjust to having the search box combined with the address bar. When they first implemented it back in IE 7 it was a thing of beautiful genius. Now, it feels like evolution has reverted on itself and we're going back to user unfriendliness.

While I've been using a combined address/search box for oh... a long time this isn't a problem for me, but I can see why some people might not like it. Try this: go into Manage Addons and disable Bing or whatever from searching from address box, then download the Bing or whatever toolbar. It may not look that great but should be a reasonable workround for now.

I do think they should give the user the option to separate the two boxes and also provide tabs above/below. I'm in the 10% slot that has more than eight tabs open but even if I didn't, at my laptop's native res (1280 x 800) with 8 tabs it can only fit the first 4-6 characters of the page's title and that's after reducing the address bar to show Beyond3D's full url on these forums.

(That's one of the major features I like in Opera: I can customise the UI pretty much the way I want it).

 

[Richard]

BTW, anyone using IE9 beta and Windows Live Mail (final - not the new 2010 beta)? Every mail I create/reply, pretty much click the "Send" button on the message itself, adds a "?" character at the very start. This only happens whilst writing in plain text format (the way God intended), HTML/RTF format works fine.

If I open the individual email file in notepad and remove the character it no longer shows up when opened in WLM but if I then click Send it re-adds it. It keeps adding one every time I click Send regardless of whether the mail already has one.

At first I thought it was the BOM but the encoding seems fine. I [strike]googled[/strike] binged for it but I can't find anything pertaining to that. I can't be positive but I think IE9 did screwed that up.

 

[Vadi]

I just found out you can expand the history list in the url bar, then it's not that bad - wondered why there were so few entries.

 

[willardjuice]

I just found out you can expand the history list in the url bar, then it's not that bad - wondered why there were so few entries.

How? This interests me. :smile:

 

[Silent_Buddha]

While I've been using a combined address/search box for oh... a long time this isn't a problem for me, but I can see why some people might not like it. Try this: go into Manage Addons and disable Bing or whatever from searching from address box, then download the Bing or whatever toolbar. It may not look that great but should be a reasonable workround for now.

I do think they should give the user the option to separate the two boxes and also provide tabs above/below. I'm in the 10% slot that has more than eight tabs open but even if I didn't, at my laptop's native res (1280 x 800) with 8 tabs it can only fit the first 4-6 characters of the page's title and that's after reducing the address bar to show Beyond3D's full url on these forums.

(That's one of the major features I like in Opera: I can customise the UI pretty much the way I want it).

That'd be somewhat useful but then just adds more clutter if I needed a toolbar for each search engine. I had 12 sites setup in the search box. Everything from search engines (Bing, Google) to stores (Newegg) to shipping companies (Fedex, UPS) to information sites (IMDB, Wikipedia), etc.

Absolutely fabulous to have instant search available without cluttering the address bar and it's categorized history. As well without having to install toolbars or have to first load the site then do the search.

Now I'm having to try to change my search habits to accomodate this idiotic change. Gah. Perhaps this is Microsoft trying to reduce their marketshare even more, as I'm now very tempted to ditch IE and try something else even though I don't want to deal with the hassle and headache of maintaining a 3rd party browser, as minor as it may or may not be.

And yeah, there's just not enough room for the tabs when it's shared by #$%#ing address bar. Even on a 30" monitor I quickly end up with miniscule tabs. And forget about using it on secondary monitor, a 24" in portrait view.

/sigh. I get the feeling they just went up to some high school kid and gave them 10 dollars to design the new UI. Absolutely no thought went into it, IMO.

Regards,
SB

 

[Vadi]

How? This interests me. :smile:

Open the drop down menu and click on the seperators with thte little arrows and labels.
I'd like it to always be expanded for history still.
I've found the history works well in IE and Chrome too, Firefox 4 beta seemed to be a mess.

About the tab bar - yes, if you use many search providers, a seperate search bar is needed.
I usually use the taskbar to switch to a tab when there are many open. Also the quick tab button is going to be added again I guess, since it's still in the options. The tab bar may not look very nice, when there are many tabs open though.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Bleh yet another horrible change. This time the save dialog.

I don't mind so much that it's no longer a popup window, but I hate that the default save option goes to some arbitrary folder. Does anyone know if there's a way to make it revert to previous behavior of "save as"? It's incredibly annoying to have to constantly use the drop down menu everytime I want to save a file.

It's incredibly ironic that their "simple browsing" or whatever initiative is resulting in over twice as many clicks to do the same things you could do in IE 7/8. End result is that browsing is no longer simple nor fast.

Regards,
SB

 

[Kaotik]

I dunno, I've used Downloads folder since XP times for 99% of my downloads, and it's not that bad IMO to go "save as" for the 1%

 

[Grall]

I dunno, I've used Downloads folder since XP times for 99% of my downloads

I'd use it more, except there's no easy way to reach it or decide where it should reside. Instead I make my own folder where it's OK for random crap to just pile up (and that is NOT on my 60GB SSD drive with only ~30% free space on it...)

 

[Kaotik]

I'd use it more, except there's no easy way to reach it or decide where it should reside. Instead I make my own folder where it's OK for random crap to just pile up (and that is NOT on my 60GB SSD drive with only ~30% free space on it...)

Hmh? At least on Win7 you can IIRC put the default "Downloads" folder anywhere you want and the link in Favorites of the Computer window takes you there?

 

[Malo]

Yeah Vista and Win7 you just target the common folders to where you actually want them to go. That's the easy thing about an OS reinstall now, all my docs, pic folder, music folder etc all on data drive or network and just retarget them upon reinstall.

 

[rpg.314]

Has somebody given it a try on an atom based machine? The last time I looked at an atom based machine I was disappointed at the web browsing speed. HW rendering could make atom based netbooks actually usable, IMO.

 

[Richard]

Yeah Vista and Win7 you just target the common folders to where you actually want them to go. That's the easy thing about an OS reinstall now, all my docs, pic folder, music folder etc all on data drive or network and just retarget them upon reinstall.

Exactly. I've been doing this since Windows 2000 but back then you had to edit the installation files and stuff. Up hill both ways, et cetera, et cetera...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I already have a download manager to automatically download files to a temporary holding folder. But for some things it's better to save the hassle and just download directly into a folder of your choice (anime torrents into the autostart folder on a network share for example). The new method is a pain in the rear.

It's not even that it's a large increase in the work required to accomplish the same thing, but just that fact that taken all together it's yet another thing the IE9 makes more complicated in the pursuit of a simplified experience.

If a simplified experience means it's going to take me 2-5 times as long to do things I used to do in the past, I wouldn't exactly call it a simplified experience.

It just reminds me of the same thinking that went into removing the column headers for sorting when not in "detailed view" in Windows Explorer. Yes, let's make it take about 5x longer to sort when not in detailed view to simplify the experience. /FU MS. I absolutely hate this new simplified UI direction everyone is taking now days.

Regards,
SB

 

[Tahir2]

Buggy, crashes with Flash and waits a few precious seconds before loading the page "instantly" giving the false impression of speed.

This is on a Vista laptop with 2GB RAM and a T2250 (1.73GHz) dual core processor.

One step forward and three back for me.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well, having used this for a few months now, I've been able to get used to most of the things I couldn't stand before, for example the address bar and tabs sharing the same line thus making both unuseably short. As well the still awkward placement of the favorites menu.

However, what remains horribly and uncomfortably missing is the seperate search window which functionality isn't even remotely replicated in the move to the address bar.

The main functionality I've been missing every single day I use the browser is the ability to type in one search term. Say, "Jessica Alba" for instance. With both version of IE you can type it in and get choose which service to search on, and that is the ONLY functionality reproduced. After that it goes horribly wrong. As in IE7 and IE8 with the search box, I could input that term and search on Bing. If I don't get sufficiently helpful links, with 1-2 clicks I can immediately search on Google. 1-2 clicks and I'm searching on Wikipedia, or IMDB, or any other search services I have configured.

It is immensely helpful when cross referencing search terms across multiple targetted information sources.

Thinking about it, however, they could kind of kludge it in there.

1. Stop replacing the search term with the URL for search service I chose.
2a. Put search terms into yet another category in the drop down. Sigh, more clutter, but at least it preserves somewhat the useability of both the actual history of URLs I've typed in as well as the ability to easily search a past term.
OR
2b. Just stop putting the search term or item anywhere in the drop down history.

It's so bloodly painful and annoying I've actually completely disabled being able to search from the address bar. As well I'm actually using the Favorites Bar for the first time ever as a ghetto replacement by putting links there for all search servies I use. But that is also hugely aggravating and hugely time consuming compared to previously as I have to wait for the page to load, then type in the search term. And the search term doesn't persist across multiple search providers for easy cross referencing. Yay for backwards progress. /sigh.

My god, I still can't believe the idiocy of the person who actually thought merging the Search box with the Address bar was a good idea. I swear they must have an IQ under 20 to think that would in any way, shape or form be some sort of improvement. ARGH.

And since that was one of my most used features of IE7/8, it makes me hate IE9 every single time I use it. Not just dislike, but actually hate enough that I can't even enjoy some good advances that they did implement.

Regards,
SB

 

[suryad]

I have yet to try any of the new betas of any browser, but can someone explain to me why 64 bit browsers is necessarily better over 32 bit? Surely its not performance or is it?

 

[Kaotik]

Meh, annoying bug, youtube videos don't work for me if I'm at youtube.com, sound just works, video doesn't.
All other flash stuff works fine, heck, even youtube works fine if it's embedded on some other site (despite the fact it streams from youtube using youtube player)

IE9 beta x64, the newer build & newest beta 64bit flash (happened on older beta flash too)

 

[Vadi]

The youtube thing started a few days ago for me. You can usualy get a picture by trying different video sizes and encodings.

 

[Grall]

You'd think Adobe would notice something like THE major online video site not getting a picture with their latest software version, and that they'd delay release to fix that issue before they annoy potentially millions of people, but nooooo... It's Adobe we're talking about here. They always go the extra mile to annoy people with bugs.