Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) -2

First Look at the New Browser
IE9's interface hasn't changed from the Release Candidate. The new trimmed-down window header even still has the back arrow button clipped off to give space to the Web page. The tabs are squared off—I prefer the slightly rounded corners of the beta's, but Microsoft reps told me testers wanted more space for tabs, and moving the browser around the screen seemed snappier, though the PCMag.com home page seemed jumpy while I resized its window. The first time you run the new browser, you no longer have to go through a wizard for choosing search suggestions and other options, as you did for IE8—another welcome simplification. The first page you see is the "welcome to a more beautiful Web," which explains and demonstrates some of IE9's new capabilities.

Most pages displayed correctly, but occasionally I saw jumbled text, though this usually corrected itself when I scrolled down and back up on the page. This happened on a PCMag review page. And on one test machine, the browser occasionally just stopped responding, even preventing me from switching tabs. Not long after this, I encountered a "Not Responding" error, with the browser window going dim and the blue doughnut spinning. After IE9 recovered from this, I checked out typing in our Vignette content management Web app, and, as in the beta, the characters appeared with a delay after my typing—something not evidenced by Chrome.