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FOR GOOGLE CHROME DOWNLOAD
Review:
Google Chrome has matured from a lightweight and fast browsing alternative into an innovative, standard-bearing browser that people love. It's powerful enough to drive its own operating system, Chrome OS. The browser that people can use today, Chrome 20, offers highly competitive features, including synchronization, autofill, and standards compliance, and maintains Google's reputation for building one of the fastest browsers available.
Chrome 20 represents a major milestone for the browser, but those expecting to see dramatic changes in major version-point updates will be disappointed. For a while now, Google has been pushing features over what it calls milestone numbers in a rapid-release cycle, which means that as soon as new features are usable in the beta version of Chrome, Google will likely push them to all users in the stable edition.
Installation
Chrome's installation process is simple and straightforward. If you download the browser from Google's Web site, it will ask you if you'd like to anonymously submit usage statistics to the company. This can be toggled even after the browser is installed by going to the wrench-icon Preferences menu and choosing Options, then Under the Hood, and checking or unchecking Help Make Chrome Better. Depending on your processor, the installation process should take less than 2 minutes.
Interface
Google's Chrome interface has changed remarkably little since its surprise debut in September 2008. Tabs are still on top, the location bar (aka Omnibox) dominates the minimalist design, and the browser has few visible control buttons besides Back, Forward, and a combined Stop/Reload button. Although some users may not like having the tabs on top, we find it to be aesthetically preferable because it leaves more room below for the Web site we're looking at.
One change has been to remove the secondary Page Options button and combine it with the Preferences wrench icon to create space for extension icons to the right of the location bar. As it currently stands, it could be better organized. Some controls, such as page zoom, are readily available. Others, such as the extension manager, are hidden away under a Tools submenu.
Chrome's extensions are fairly limited in how they can alter the browser's interface. Unlike Firefox, which gives add-on makers a lot of leeway in changing the browser's look, Chrome mandates that extensions appear only as icons to the right of the location bar. The benefit is that this maintains a uniform look to the browser, but it definitely limits how much the browser can be customized. Chrome doesn't support sidebars, either, although other Chromium-based browsers (such as Comodo Dragon) do offer the feature. There is an option in Chrome's about:flags, a series of experimental features, that lets you move the tabs to a sidebar.
Settings pages get their own tab, rather than a dialog box. If you sign in to more than one Google account, you'll see the profile icons in the upper left corner on the tab row.
Even with its limitations, the interface design has remained a contemporary exemplar of how to minimize a browser's screen footprint while keeping the browser easy to use and versatile.
Features and support
Chrome 20's features are accessible from the Preferences menu via the wrench icon on the right side of the navigation bar. It offers a complete range of modern browsing conveniences. The basics are well-represented, including tabbed browsing, new window creation, and a private browsing mode that Google calls Incognito, which disables cookie tracking, history recording, extension support, and other browsing breadcrumbs.
Chrome is based on WebKit, the same open-source engine that powers Apple Safari, Google's Android mobile platform, and several other desktop and mobile Web-browsing tools. However, Chrome runs on a different JavaScript engine than its WebKit cousins, and there are other changes as well.
Along with hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, there have been interesting security improvements. You can now delete Flash cookies from inside Chrome, which makes sense given that Chrome comes with Flash built in, and there's a new Safe Browsing protection against downloading malicious files. Chrome's Web app support now includes the ability to launch Web apps from the location bar. This gives keyboard jockeys a bit more power to avoid mousing around, more readily apparent in Chrome OS but nevertheless good to have in the regular old Chrome browser.
There's Native Client, too. Also known as NaCl, it's open-source technology that allows C and C++ code to be securely run in the browser. It basically lets software run within two protected sandboxes, which will theoretically cut down on browser-based threats dramatically. When completed, NaCl will enable Web apps to run as smoothly as programs that are hosted on your hard drive.
Besides allowing you to disable JavaScript, Chrome will automatically block Web sites that are known to promulgate phishing attacks and malware threats or be otherwise unsafe. The usefulness of this depends on Google's ability to flag Web sites as risky, though, and so it's recommended to use an add-on like the Web of Trust extension or a separate security program to block threats.
Chrome also offers a lot of privacy-tweaking settings. In the Options menu, go to the Under the Hood tab. From here, you can toggle and customize most of the browser's privacy and security settings. Cookies, image management, JavaScript, plug-ins, pop-ups, location information, and notifications can be adjusted from the Content Settings button. This includes toggling specific plug-ins, such as the built-in Adobe Flash plug-in or the Chrome PDF reader (which is deactivated by default).
Chrome offers malware scanning on Web pages to include downloads, and the precaching tool for loading sites in your search results early now works with the Omnibox location bar.
Print preview, formerly a small but glaring hole in Chrome's feature list, is now present in the Windows and Linux versions. Chrome stable for Mac still doesn't have the feature, which is powered by the PDF reader that comes built into Chrome.
Chrome's tabs remain one of the best things about the browser. The tabs are detachable: "tabs" and "windows" become interchangeable here. Detached tabs can be dragged and dropped into the browser, and tabs can be rearranged at any time by clicking, holding, dragging, and releasing. Not only can tabs be isolated, but each tab exists in its own task process. This means that when one tab crashes, the other tabs do not. Though memory leaks are a major concern in Chrome when you have dozens of tabs open, we found sluggish behavior and other impediments weren't noticeable until after there were more than 30 tabs open. That's not an immutable number, though, and different computers' hardware will alter browser performance.
You can sync tabs and their browsing histories to other computers and devices such as Android and iOS in Chrome 20.
Some of the basics in Chrome are handled extremely intuitively. In-page searching works smoothly. Using the Ctrl-F hot key or the menu option, searching for a word or phrase will open a text entry box on the top right of the browser. Chrome searches as you type, indicating the number of positive results and highlighting them on the page.
Account syncing is another area where Chrome does well. Using your Gmail account, Chrome will sync your themes, preferences, autofill entries, passwords, extensions, and bookmarks. You can toggle each of those categories, too. Extension syncing has been the roughest of the lot.
Chrome has multiple user account support. This means that you can now have multiple people, or at least multiple Gmail accounts, running in Chrome simultaneously. However, it's not "people-secure," meaning that although your data might be secured on Google servers, once an account is logged in to Chrome, you don't have to re-enter your account data. Anybody with access to Chrome on your computer can see your stuff.
The intuitive New Tab page allows you to create custom categories by dragging and dropping apps and bookmarks, and includes navigation arrows on the left and right edges of the page that become more visible on mouse-over.
Like Firefox, Chrome gives broad control over search engines and search customizations. Though this doesn't sound like much, not all browsers allow you to set keyword shortcuts for searching, and some even restrict which search engine you can set as your default. Chrome comes with three defaults to choose from: Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
The Chrome extension manager, bookmark manager, and download manager all open in new tabs. They allow you to search their contents and throw in some basic management options like deletion, but in general they don't feel as robust as their counterparts in competing browsers. For example, URLs in the bookmark manager are only revealed when you mouse over a bookmark, and you must click on one to get the URL to permanently appear. That's an extra click that other browsers don't require.
Two other low-profile but well-executed features in Chrome are auto-updating and translation. Chrome automatically updates when a new version comes out. This makes it harder to revert back to an older version, but it's highly unlikely that you'll want to downgrade this build of Chrome since this is the stable build and not the beta or developer's version. The second feature, automatic translation of Web pages, is available to other browsers as a Google add-on, but because it comes from Google, it's baked directly into Chrome.
Chrome is also a leader in HTML5 implementation, which is uneven because of the continuing development of HTML5 standards. This will become more important in the coming months and years, but right now it doesn't greatly affect interactions with Web sites.
Performance
Based on the open-source WebKit engine and Google's V8 JavaScript engine, Google Chrome debuted to much fanfare because of its rocketing rendering speeds. More than three years down the line, that hasn't changed, and the stable version of Chrome remains one of the fastest stable browsers available. The less stable versions, with their more recent improvements and bug fixes, are often faster.
You can see CNET's most recent benchmark tests that included Google Chrome; while that particular version of Chrome didn't do too well, the browser has seen a lot of changes since that test and you definitely should not discount it.
Note that to effectively use hardware acceleration, you must make sure that your graphics-card drivers are up-to-date. Nevertheless, Chrome remains one of the fastest browsers available, and its rapid version update rate ensures that it is consistently competitive. It finally has extended hardware accelerated graphics to older Windows and Macs courtesy improvements to WebGL support and changes to Canvas2D.
Conclusion
It's hard to tell which is faster, user adoption of Chrome or its development. Certainly the two are linked, and due in no small part to Google's ability to lay claim to the "fastest browser" title, even when it may not be strictly justified. The rest of Chrome's appeal lies in its clean, minimalist look, and competitive features that justify its still-increasing market share. Chrome is a serious option for anybody who wants a browser that gets out of the way of browsing the Web.
FOR MOZILLA FIREFOX DOWNLOAD
Mozilla Firefox has undergone an enormous rebirth over the past two years. Since Firefox 4 debuted in March 2011, the browser has been hell-bent on improvements. These have come in large part on the rapid-release cycle, which sees a new version of Firefox every six weeks. Many people like them, but a vocal minority has pooh-poohed the increase in version numbers. That's hardly a legitimate complaint in a world where mobile apps also update silently and effectively, but the transition for Firefox hasn't been an easy one.
As you can see, Firefox is on version 15 at the time of this review. As a point of comparison, Chrome is currently on version 21 even though it only launched in 2008. The benefit, of course, is a browser that is safer and sleeker, with fewer problems because bugs get fixed on a regular basis.
The Firefox that you can download now is in the same speed category as its competition; offers many similar features (stronger in some areas and slightly weaker in others); includes broad, cross-platform support for hardware acceleration and other "future Web" tech and standards; and is a must-have for Android users (download for Android).
Firefox 15's big claim to fame is locking down memory leaks caused by add-ons, long browsing sessions, and heavy tab usage. The company released data showing huge gains in recovering memory with 150 tabs open, so you're likely to see big gains with only 50 tabs.
On the performance side, Firefox 15 now has Google's SPDY protocol on by default. That means that Web sites that support it, such as Google.com and Twitter.com, will load faster and safer. SPDY is safer because it forces SSL encryption for all connections.
It's important to point out that there are four versions of Firefox available at the moment, and this review only addresses the stable branch, intended for general use. Firefox's other channels -- Firefox beta (download for Windows | Mac | Linux); Firefox Aurora, analogous to Google Chrome's dev channel (download Aurora for Windows | Mac | Linux); and the bleeding-edge, updated-nightly Firefox Minefield (download for all versions) -- are respectively progressively less stable versions of the browser, and aimed at developers.
Installation
Firefox installs quickly, your connection and hardware notwithstanding. There are no pop-ups asking you to register, and although an infobar link to Mozilla's Know your rights page at about:rights does appear, it's unobtrusive.
We're big fans of Firefox's rapid-release cycle. Initially wonky implementation has given way to a mature automatic update process. If you're on Windows, you'll be asked to agree to the User Account Control only when you install for the first time. Thereafter, the browser updates silently.
If you're installing Firefox for the first time, or installing after wiping all profile data, the browser will open to the new about:home Start page. It hosts a Google search box in the middle, and links to Downloads, Bookmarks, History, Add-ons, Sync, Settings, and Restore previous session at the bottom.
If you're updating Firefox from an older version, it checks your add-ons to see which ones you installed and which ones come from third-party vendors, such as security suite makers. The browser will ask if you'd like to disable any of these third-party add-ons. On top of that, all third-party add-ons are blocked from autoinstalling. Instead, you'll be presented with the option to allow them or block them on a per-case basis. This puts Firefox squarely on the side of the user.
We recommend that you set up Sync at this point, because it will allow you to synchronize and backup all your settings, add-ons, and personal browsing data. If you're extremely concerned about your data, you can set up Sync to work with your own server.
Careful Firefox observers will notice that the browser no longer ships with a separate icon for Safe Mode. Simply hold down Shift; when you click on the Firefox icon to open a box, you will be allowed to customize which settings carry over to Safe Mode.
Note that people coming to Firefox from version 3.6 or older ought to be prepared for a lengthier install time because of the significant code changes since then.
Firefox automatically installs a Windows 7 taskbar icon if you choose it as your default browser. Uninstalling the browser does not leave behind any icons or folders if you choose to remove your settings at the same time.
Interface
As PCs continue to be rocked by mobile devices, many traditional desktop programs have found minimizing interface chrome to be popular. Google's Chrome browser kicked off this trend in a big way, allowing Web sites to shine through, and while other browser vendors have done their best to go minimal differently, it's hard to not acknowledge the lineage.
Firefox does a good job of taking the concept of minimal and putting its own spin on it. It has small navigation buttons the same height as the location and search bars. The Home button has moved to the right side of the location bar. Tabs are on top for heightened visibility and maximize space given to the Web site you're viewing, while on Windows the control menus are hidden behind the orange Firefox button in the upper left corner.
Menu options have been spread across two columns, and while nearly all the submenus have been redesigned, the hot keys remain the same for a gentle learning curve. In fact, the menu redesign makes it much easier to get to bookmarks, add-ons, and history, as they now all live on one Menu pane. The Menu button is not available to Mac users, to keep with the Mac OS X theme.
In addition to the major changes to the menu, smaller changes have greatly improved usability. For example, there's now a Get Bookmark Add-ons link in the Bookmarks submenu. The History submenu now has Recently Closed Tabs and Recently Closed Windows sections.
Tabs are on top by default, and while the forward and back navigation buttons haven't moved, the stop and refresh buttons are now attached to the right side of the location bar, next to the bookmark star. When you're typing a URL, the Go button appears at the end of the location bar as an arrow. While resolving a URL, the box changes from the Go arrow to an X for the new Stop button. It might be hard for some to see since the traditional stop-and-go colors of red and green have been removed. You can customize the Firefox skin with the restartless Personas add-ons.
Right of the location bar lives the traditional search box, with its drop-down list of search engines. Above that on the tab bar there is a new button that lists all your open tabs, and you can add a button to access the Panorama tab-grouping feature. If you don't see the button, you can add it by right-clicking on the interface and choosing Customize, then dragging and dropping the Tab Groups icon next to the List All Tabs button. We don't consider many customizations to be essential, but this one is. The combination of tab grouping and Firefox's robust tab-memory management means you can keep open tabs around much longer than other browsers.
The Status bar that lives at the bottom of the interface is now hidden by default, again in keeping with the minimalist philosophy and the competition. There's a new Add-on bar as well, also hidden by default, to which extension icons can be added if you want to keep add-on icons easily available but out of the way of the main interface.
One of Firefox's singular strengths is its capacity for customization, which remains unparalleled and which is accessible even to novice users. While competing browsers do offer add-ons and extensions, Firefox remains far ahead of all of them in interface customization. And so, if you don't like the new interface, it's quite easy to revert it to an older style -- or just about any other look -- using add-ons and themes.
Features and support
Firefox is one of the most progressive major browsers available, an early adopter if not always an innovator. Its features cover the range of browsing essentials, from allowing you to heavily customize your browser while respecting your privacy, to giving developers the tools they need, to supporting the technologies that are driving the future of the Web.
One of the most important features in the modern Firefox is Sync. Sync smoothly synchronizes your add-ons, bookmarks, passwords, preferences, history, and tabs, not only with Firefox on other computers, but also with your Android version of Firefox. It's easy to set up, and if you're concerned about privacy, you can change sync to work with your personal server instead of Mozilla's. Firefox encrypts your data before sending it over an encrypted connection to its servers, where it remains encrypted. Mozilla says that the company would not be able to access it even if somebody there wanted to.
Tabs are a big part of browsing, and Firefox has the best tab management around. Thanks to recent memory-management improvements, you can now comfortably scale from two or three tabs to more than 100 without seeing a major performance hit over time. The aforementioned Panorama lets you group them out of sight until needed, and when you restart Firefox only the last open tab will become active. The others, while visible, won't load their content until you click on them. Panorama's groups let you label them which keeps organizational problems to a minimum.
The overall idea is to make it easier to switch from one tab to another, to group or regroup related tabs, and to get a global view of what's going on with your tabs. It's potentially a big improvement in browser usage, compared to aiming a mouse at a skinny tab, cycling through a list with Ctrl-Tab keystrokes, or pecking at a drop-down menu to reach the tabs that overflowed off into the deep.
Switch to Tab is a minor feature but incredibly useful. Open a new tab and start typing the name of an already-open tab, and the URL will appear in the drop-down with Switch to Tab beneath it. Select that one, and the new tab closes and you're whisked to the pre-existing tab. It's a great trick for cutting down on the amount of time it takes to sift through 45 open tabs, and removes the chance of accidentally having the same tab open twice or more.
You can also drag tabs around to reorder them, pin them as permanent "app tabs" next to the Menu button, or rip them off into their own windows.
Firefox add-ons have long been the brightest feathers in the browser's cap. While there are other more important browsing developments going on to close observers, add-ons remain important to the vast majority of people. The most popular Firefox add-ons have millions of users. The browser supports modern restartless add-ons, which install without needing to reboot the browser, as well as the legacy add-ons that helped drive its growth.
The add-on manager lets you search for add-ons without going to the external Mozilla Add-on Web site. You can create collections of add-ons to share in the Get Add-ons tab, navigate backward and forward through add-on searches, and as mentioned in the Installation section, it blocks add-ons from installing without your approval.
The Bookmarks and History menus, and Download Manager, leave a bit to be desired. They're not bad, but it's clear that they could use some redesigning when compared to the competition. We'd like to see them appear in their own tabs, as they do in Chrome, instead of in separate pop-up windows.
The location bar -- or as Mozilla calls it, the Awesome Bar -- retains familiar features, such as the options to search your history and bookmarks and to tap into your default search engine to provide you with quick results, without having to use the search box.
The "identity block," the colored left-most section of the URL, has been given a refresh to better call out the Web site you're on. The URL bar itself now changes the text color of the URL you're on so that the domain is black, for easy identification, while the rest of the URL is gray. This sounds small but is important, since it's a strong visual cue to help you avoid getting spoofed.
Also on the security front, Firefox was an early adopter of Do Not Track, which indicates via a header notification that you want to opt out of targeted advertisements. However, it requires that the Web site you're viewing, and therefore that site's developers, respect the header itself. While this is great for future-proofing the Web, not many Web sites have taken notice of it. That doesn't mean it won't eventually have a big impact, but that time is not now, and it's better to install an add-on like Adblock Plus or Do Not Track Plus to get more complete ad-tracking protection.
The Content Security Policy blocks one of the most common types of browser threats, cross-site scripting attacks, by allowing sites to tell the browser which content is legitimate. Though CSP also places the burden on the sites' developers, it's backward-compatible and aimed mostly at well-known sites hosting immense volumes of data and content.
Another security improvement is the implementation of HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). This prevents your log-in information from being intercepted by telling Firefox to automatically create a secure connection to a site's servers.
Under the hood, Firefox supports full hardware acceleration across all platforms, which means that the browser draws on your graphics card to speed up complex rendering. You'll see dramatic HTML5 support, including for high-definition WebM video, and broad support for the HTML5 canvas, video, audio, geolocation, drag and drop, and form tags. OpenType fonts are supported, as are CSS3 and newer JavaScript values. WebGL and hardware acceleration give the browser a massive boost, which we'll discuss in the Performance section below.
A new Web Developer menu collates tools for building and debugging Web sites in one location. One such is the ScratchPad tool, which browsers like Opera and Chrome have had for some time. It allows developers to test JavaScript and CSS before implementing it. The Web console feature also has a new autocomplete option and can have its location customized. Another dev tool, unique to Firefox, is a 3D visualizer called Tilt, that lets developers see in real time how their code will render on the site.
Firefox is on the cutting edge of the next generation of Web standards, and that benefits you immensely by offering faster rendering times of Web sites that can do more.
Performance
Firefox 15 introduces a series of memory-management improvements that dramatically increase the stability of the browser. These changes, covered by the internal Mozilla moniker MemShrink, basically mean that the browser can handle a huge number of tabs and add-ons longer than before. Firefox 15 is eminently stable.
As mentioned earlier, the browser's overall performance has been greatly improved by tying performance to the graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware acceleration. This allows the browser to shove certain rendering tasks onto the computer's graphics card, freeing up CPU resources while making page rendering and animations load faster. The tasks include composition support, rendering support, and desktop compositing.
JavaScript plays a major role in the modern Web, and changes to the JaegerMonkey engine combined with the GPU acceleration give the browser some serious juice. Ongoing improvements in browser technology make regular browser testing a challenge, but March 2011's browser benchmark battle placed Firefox 4 ahead of Chrome 11 and Internet Explorer 9. It wouldn't be surprising to find that Chrome and Firefox currently test much closer to each other because of their regular updates.
CNET Labs will have an update to our performance benchmarks in the coming weeks. For now, our most recent numbers are from March 2011, when Firefox 4 was released.
One interesting publicly available benchmark is JSGameBench from Facebook, which looks to test HTML5 in real-world gaming situations. JSGameBench hasn't posted new results since April 2011, but the ones it did post gave strong marks to the Firefox 4 beta both with and without WebGL. The stable version of Firefox 4 also did well in JSGameBench tests once it was released.
Note that to effectively use hardware acceleration, you must make sure that your graphics card drivers are up-to-date.
Browser benchmarks are a notoriously fidgety lot, and often come up against legitimate complaints that they look at too narrow a set of features -- such as checking only JavaScript rendering times. In hands-on use, at least, Firefox 15 can more than hold its own. It's not clear that it's enough to counter the past three years of Chrome decisively winning the fastest-browser PR campaign, but that may no longer be the point. All five major browsers are now similarly fast at JavaScript tests, and you may want to start looking at other criteria to determine which browser is best for you.
Firefox has plug-in crash protection, which prevents plug-ins like Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime, and Microsoft Silverlight from causing the browser to drop dead. If one of them crashes, simply reload the page.
Conclusion
Firefox is in an unusual position as the modern Internet stands on the precipice of the second phase of the digital age. As the world prepares for high-powered, always-connected smartphones to dominate, one of the most competitive and forward-thinking browsers comes from an independent nonprofit company.
Firefox's open-source approach and recent developer tools improvements means that the people designing your favorite sites will come back for more, while Mozilla's investment in pushing open Web standards means that the Web has a powerful, noncorporate advocate. Despite the heavy competition from Google, Microsoft, and Apple, and as long as it avoids stagnating, Firefox will have a bright future ahead of it.
FOR OPERA BROWSER DOWNLOAD
Review:
The second-oldest browser currently in use, Opera debuted way back in 1994 and continues to attract attention. Its feature-phone version claims more than 160 million users worldwide. While desktop Opera isn't quite as heavily used, it has developed a reputation as a leader on feature development, and can hold its own against the big four.
Opera covers the basics with tabbed browsing, mouse-over previews, a customizable search bar, advanced bookmarking tools, and simple integration with e-mail and chat clients. Mouse-gesture support, keyboard shortcuts, and drag-and-drop functionality round out the essentials.
Installation
Installing Opera is a fast and short process, taking less than 2 minutes. Many of Opera's built-in features require creating a MyOpera account, but the browser will only prompt you to do so when you use them for the first time -- it's not required to browse.
Tap the Options button on the first install screen to reveal configuration tweaks. Besides changing the browser's default language and install path, you can also install for just the currently signed-on user, or choose to install Opera directly to an external device. It's a great, simple way to create a portable version of Opera for a USB key.
Interface
Opera's interface keeps the same look that debuted in Opera 11, with a condensed menu button in the upper left corner, tabs on top, and a translucent status bar on the bottom that hosts buttons to reveal Opera's Panels, and to activate Link and Turbo. The bottom right corner of the status bar sports a dedicated zoom slider.
The bookmarks bar appears by default just below the navigation bar, and
on all but significantly older computers users should see links to show
all bookmarks and show Top Sites on the left.
The status bar remains hidden by default, which would be acceptable if there was another way to view a link's URL before clicking on it. Chrome manages a small pop-up at the bottom of the browser, but since Safari doesn't, we recommend forcing the status bar to appear for safety reasons. It's never a good idea to click blindly on a link, and it's unfortunate that the default Safari encourages this behavior. The status bar can be forced to appear from the View option on the menu bar, which is also hidden by default. You can force show the menu bar at the top of the Preferences menu, or by hitting the Alt key.
Features and support
Safari 5 comes with a new way to look at paginated stories and galleries, some helpful lesser feature improvements, and the promise of Extensions. As noted earlier, though, Apple has decided to not include many options that Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, and even Safari's cousin Chrome have.
The official late summer street date for the new Extensions gallery leaves many questions up for debate. Apple has said that the new framework restricts which extensions can be installed to those that have been approved by Apple. It's not clear at this time if or how that system will be different from the add-on networks supported by Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox, but given Apple's heavy hand in content control on the newly renamed iOS, it's not unreasonable to expect the company to take that approach as well with Safari Extensions.
Apple has created a Safari Developer Program
to guide, and perhaps curate, extension development, and to that end
has allowed users to toggle on the Extensions menu from the Advanced tab
under Preferences. This will add the Develop menu to the menu bar, from
which you'll need to click on Enable Extensions. Extensions can be
added from one of the unofficial Safari Extensions collections,
and managed from the Extensions tab that should now appear in the
Preferences windows. At the time this review was written, most
extensions had been ported from Google Chrome since both browsers share
the same rendering engine.
The most interesting new feature in Safari that's ready to use is the Reader button. This button appears at the right side of the location bar when you load a site with pagination, such as a multipage article or gallery. Hitting it will open an overlay window that combines all pages into a single, scrollable format and tints out the site beneath, including ads and other distractions. Any embedded pictures or videos remain viewable, although, like the text of the story, they lose their site-specific formatting in favor of the Reader's defaults. Reader also comes with five buttons at the bottom of the frame that appear only when you mouse over them. You can zoom in, zoom out, e-mail the page, or print the page in its Reader format.
Reader is a more limited version of the code used in the Readability bookmarklet. What's innovative about the Safari version is that Apple decided to include it at all, but because it's such an obvious feature to include in a Web browser, it wouldn't be surprising to see others follow suit. Besides reactivating formatting options such as font size, what's keeping this feature from being really impressive is a lack of sharing beyond e-mail. It'd be great if you could use it to immediately share an article on Twitter or Facebook.
HTML5 gets a lot of love in Safari 5, pushing the browser to the top of the list of HTML5 browser versions that aren't in beta or development. Safari now supports HTML5-based full-screen video playback, video closed captioning, geolocation, drag and drop, forms validation, HTML5 Ruby, EventSource, and WebSocket. But in an odd turn from Apple, the HTML5 demo Web site is restricted to Safari browsers only.
Safari now comes with local searches enabled from the location bar, so
as you type your query you can see how it relates to your history and
bookmarks. However, there's still no location-bar-based Web search,
something that Firefox, Chrome, and Opera have had for varying but
lengthy amounts of time. Safari has also added Bing search to its
default search engine options, but again, its competitors have allowed
full search engine customization for a long time.
Although its search abilities may not be up to par with the competition, Safari has begun to introduce a modicum of tab customization. The Tab window in Preferences gives you far more customizations than before, including opening into a new tab, some control over the tab focus on new tabs, and confirmation before closing multiple tabs. Safari 5 does not offer a session manager; it also doesn't natively respect your default browser for opening links. To change this, you'll need to go to the General tab under Preferences and change the default Web browser setting.
These deficiencies certainly won't kill Safari, but they're odd ones to leave out.
Performance
Safari's performance has definitely been improved, and it remains the browser's strongest selling point, in part because of the hardware acceleration (only in the Windows version, read more about hardware acceleration here) and DNS prefetching. Part of that is because of the improvements made to the Nitro JavaScript engine.
On a Windows 7 x86, running on an Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 at 2.53GHz,
with 3GB of RAM, Safari notched an average of 465.5 milliseconds over
three cold-boot runs on the SunSpider JavaScript test. The current
stable version of Chrome released today, version 5.0.375.70, scored
525.19 ms. The disparity between the Mac versions was far greater. On a
Mac OS X 10.6.3, running on the same Intel chip as the Windows 7
computer but with 4GB of RAM, Safari 5 completed the SunSpider tests in
351.7 ms. Google Chrome took 498.67 ms. Though the developer's version
of Chrome comes in at 356.9 ms on the Windows 7 computer, indicating
that Safari's benchmarks can be not only achieved but surpassed,
Safari's the only stable public version with these numbers.
Conclusion
Speed is important, but it's not the only judge of a good browser. With the exception of the unique Reader feature, Safari 5 does more to bring Apple's browser into line with other browsers than actually trailblazing, and even with the improvements made to this version, Safari still lacks many of the small but useful features competitors offer. For raw JavaScript speed, Safari is at the head of the pack for now, but Apple's focus on other user needs remains less than exemplary.
There's a greater emphasis on Web standards and security than before. The SmartScreen and cross-site scripting filters throw up a red warning page when you're about to visit an unsafe site. There's also domain highlighting, which grays out the name of the URL you're looking at except for the domain itself. This sounds simple, but effectively draws attention to spoofed site URLs. There's also a compatibility button so that sites designed specifically for IE 7 and earlier can still be viewed.
IE 8 lacks a default "smart" location bar that many other browsers have, but you can search your history and most visited pages from there. Also, the installation process still requires a reboot--unimpressive, to say the least. Drawbacks aside, there's no reason to not upgrade if you're an old fan of IE, and there's even a few things in IE 8 for new users.
The bottom line:
Internet Explorer 9 is surprisingly competitive across the board. Zippy
browsing speeds, minimalist layout, and innovative features make this
not only the best version of IE to date, but will catapult Internet
Explorer back into the browser wars. The one big drawback? You must have
Windows 7 or Vista to use it. XP users are stuck on IE8. Forever.
Review: The sound bite on Internet Explorer 9 will be a variation of "it doesn't suck," yet the changes to the browser go far deeper than that glib comment can reflect. Microsoft engineered a campaign, starting last year, to change the browser's image with both developers and casual users that was similar to the way that it got people on board with Windows 7. Frequent developer previews, devoid of features showed Web developers what the browser could do. It was only with the launch of the first beta that Microsoft added the interface. By then, the browser had already made an impact with developers because of its standards support and in-page rendering speeds, and much of the buzz coming from them was positive.
Installation
3 Microsoft has split the installer for IE9 into four versions, depending on your operating system, so be sure that you download the correct one. Different versions are available for Windows 7 x86, Windows 7 x64, Windows Vista x86, and Windows Vista x64, and Microsoft's site ought to autodetect your OS. While not the most convenient download, it's not the kind of thing for which we would dock the score.
What is a major problem with the IE9 installation process is that the browser will not work on Windows XP, which still has about 40 percent of the worldwide computer market a year and a half after Windows 7's release. There is no version of IE9 for Windows XP, and there never will be one.
Installing Opera is a fast and short process, taking less than 2 minutes. Many of Opera's built-in features require creating a MyOpera account, but the browser will only prompt you to do so when you use them for the first time -- it's not required to browse.
Tap the Options button on the first install screen to reveal configuration tweaks. Besides changing the browser's default language and install path, you can also install for just the currently signed-on user, or choose to install Opera directly to an external device. It's a great, simple way to create a portable version of Opera for a USB key.
Interface
Opera's interface keeps the same look that debuted in Opera 11, with a condensed menu button in the upper left corner, tabs on top, and a translucent status bar on the bottom that hosts buttons to reveal Opera's Panels, and to activate Link and Turbo. The bottom right corner of the status bar sports a dedicated zoom slider.
The navigation bar and its associated buttons and extension icons are a
uniform height, keeping the browser's chrome, its interface, to a
minimum. It's a polished look, and one that most browsers offer today.
The search box, located in its default space to the right of the
location bar, can be removed. That and further interface customizations
can be made by right-clicking on the navigation bar and selecting
customize.
The influence of the radical interface changes that Google Chrome introduced in 2008 can be seen here, from tabs on top to the extension icons, yet Opera's personality does still come through enough to have a different vibe and feel from Chrome. A red Opera "O" logo button in the upper left corner reveals options and menus, while a wrench icon on the New Tab page allows you to customize Opera's forward-thinking Speed Dial.
Features and support
The five major browsers have been liberally borrowing features and innovations from each other for years, yet Opera has developed a reputation for showcasing some of the more interesting browser developments first. That's fallen off a bit in version 12, which showcases more catching up than trailblazing leadership.
Quirky features such as Widgets, Unite, and Voice have been killed off, which means that there's less bloat in the browser. But no doubt that those executions were performed also because of a lack of user interest.
Opera 12's hardware acceleration, which is when the browser uses the graphics processor to render animations faster and more smoothly, is still a work in progress. It's in the browser, but you must manually activate it for now.
Many changes in Opera 12 that pull it closer to parity with the competition. These include separate processes for plug-ins like Flash and QuickTime, so that when the plug-in crashes, the browser doesn't burn up with it; a lightweight add-on structure powered by HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS emphasized for extensions and now themes; and redesigned location bar security badges that are easier to read.
This isn't to say that Opera can't compare, because it holds up well. It's just not quite as innovative in this version as in the past. You still get tab stacks, a way to group tabs and cut down on tab clutter; tab pinning; and Opera Link for syncing Bookmarks, Speed Dial, Notes, and passwords to other instances of Opera, including Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. Sadly, there's still no tab sync in Opera.
There's Growl and multitouch trackpad support on Macs, support for some HTML5 including next-generation video and audio codec WebM, geolocation compatibility, Web Workers, App Cache, and Web fonts. The Web Open Font Format (WOFF), which Opera co-sponsored, hasn't yet been added, although Opera expects it will be soon. And Opera 12 has added HTML5 support for controlling local media hardware, such as Webcams, from Web sites.
One of Opera's lesser-known features is its integrated mail client. It's a reasonable alternative to Outlook, offering many similar features. It can handle importing mailbox files from Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Netscape, and Eudora, supports POP3 and IMAP, and quickly synced with Gmail when we added our account.
There are other features in Opera, including tab previews, newsgroups support, a built-in session manager, and a fantastic array of customizations that rival Firefox. Of all the browsers out there, Opera ships with a massive feature set and is an excellent choice for users who want something fast and robust but just a bit old-school right out of the box. However, aside from the integrated mail support, much of what Opera offers can now be found elsewhere.
Performance
Full benchmarks will be added here as they are completed, but preliminary results indicate that Opera 12's page-load times remain comparable to its competitors on publicly available benchmark tests. Short version: It's an extremely fast browser. And although rumors persist about Web site incompatibility, we've yet to encounter any major site that Opera had problems with.
Conclusion
Opera is in firm grip of the fifth-place slot in the race to be the world's most-used browser. It doesn't have the backing of a major corporation like Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, or Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and it lacks the massive, open developer's community of Mozilla's Firefox. What it does have are a fantastic combination of speed and built-in services, and a mobile base that's enormous.
What's missing is a compelling argument for adoption beyond a dislike of the other four. As much as we enjoy our time using Opera, it doesn't surpass the competition -- it only matches it.
Opera's latest beta is blazing:
The influence of the radical interface changes that Google Chrome introduced in 2008 can be seen here, from tabs on top to the extension icons, yet Opera's personality does still come through enough to have a different vibe and feel from Chrome. A red Opera "O" logo button in the upper left corner reveals options and menus, while a wrench icon on the New Tab page allows you to customize Opera's forward-thinking Speed Dial.
Features and support
The five major browsers have been liberally borrowing features and innovations from each other for years, yet Opera has developed a reputation for showcasing some of the more interesting browser developments first. That's fallen off a bit in version 12, which showcases more catching up than trailblazing leadership.
Quirky features such as Widgets, Unite, and Voice have been killed off, which means that there's less bloat in the browser. But no doubt that those executions were performed also because of a lack of user interest.
Opera 12's hardware acceleration, which is when the browser uses the graphics processor to render animations faster and more smoothly, is still a work in progress. It's in the browser, but you must manually activate it for now.
Many changes in Opera 12 that pull it closer to parity with the competition. These include separate processes for plug-ins like Flash and QuickTime, so that when the plug-in crashes, the browser doesn't burn up with it; a lightweight add-on structure powered by HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS emphasized for extensions and now themes; and redesigned location bar security badges that are easier to read.
This isn't to say that Opera can't compare, because it holds up well. It's just not quite as innovative in this version as in the past. You still get tab stacks, a way to group tabs and cut down on tab clutter; tab pinning; and Opera Link for syncing Bookmarks, Speed Dial, Notes, and passwords to other instances of Opera, including Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. Sadly, there's still no tab sync in Opera.
There's Growl and multitouch trackpad support on Macs, support for some HTML5 including next-generation video and audio codec WebM, geolocation compatibility, Web Workers, App Cache, and Web fonts. The Web Open Font Format (WOFF), which Opera co-sponsored, hasn't yet been added, although Opera expects it will be soon. And Opera 12 has added HTML5 support for controlling local media hardware, such as Webcams, from Web sites.
One of Opera's lesser-known features is its integrated mail client. It's a reasonable alternative to Outlook, offering many similar features. It can handle importing mailbox files from Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Netscape, and Eudora, supports POP3 and IMAP, and quickly synced with Gmail when we added our account.
There are other features in Opera, including tab previews, newsgroups support, a built-in session manager, and a fantastic array of customizations that rival Firefox. Of all the browsers out there, Opera ships with a massive feature set and is an excellent choice for users who want something fast and robust but just a bit old-school right out of the box. However, aside from the integrated mail support, much of what Opera offers can now be found elsewhere.
Performance
Full benchmarks will be added here as they are completed, but preliminary results indicate that Opera 12's page-load times remain comparable to its competitors on publicly available benchmark tests. Short version: It's an extremely fast browser. And although rumors persist about Web site incompatibility, we've yet to encounter any major site that Opera had problems with.
Conclusion
Opera is in firm grip of the fifth-place slot in the race to be the world's most-used browser. It doesn't have the backing of a major corporation like Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, or Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and it lacks the massive, open developer's community of Mozilla's Firefox. What it does have are a fantastic combination of speed and built-in services, and a mobile base that's enormous.
What's missing is a compelling argument for adoption beyond a dislike of the other four. As much as we enjoy our time using Opera, it doesn't surpass the competition -- it only matches it.
Opera's latest beta is blazing:
FOR APPLE SAFARI DOWNLOAD
The previous version of Safari for Windows dramatically changed the
nature of the browser from something of an unfinished curiosity to an
alternative with seriously quick chops. It lacked many of the
customization features that define most other browsers, but certain
unique default features, such as the visually impressive, Cover
Flow-inspired Top Sites and history viewing, made it worth checking out
for more users besides just browser enthusiasts and jaded reviewers.
Though Safari 5 continues the push for speed, able to surpass (by some
tests) bleeding-edge JavaScript engines from Google and Opera, Apple
continues to place feature development farther down the totem pole of
importance. That doesn't mean that new features have been ignored.
There's the new Reader option that streamlines how you read articles,
broader support for HTML5, default support for searches on Bing, and
performance improvements. However, the biggest new feature of them
all--Extensions--won't be available until later this summer according to
Apple, and depending on what you're looking for in a browser, Safari
can be seen as lacking many helpful options.
Installation and setup
Safari 5 is easy to install, although the time it takes to run the installer feels longer than its major alterna-browser competitors of Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. It updates using the Apple Software Updater, which may opt you in to other Windows-based Apple programs when it detects an update. Safari does not come with an uninstaller, and so it must be removed using the default Windows Add/Remove Programs tool or a third-party remover.
Interface
Safari's interface hasn't changed much from Safari 4. Navigation remains on top in this version, with Back and Forward buttons, the location bar, the search box, current page menu, and preferences menu. Whereas both Safari and Chrome are based on WebKit, Safari has opted to keep its tabs below the navigation bar and retain its brushed gray interface. It will look the same on Windows XP or Windows 7, since there's no real support for Aero Glass. In many ways, it's not as minimal as Chrome or Opera, and feels a bit older because of it.
Installation and setup
Safari 5 is easy to install, although the time it takes to run the installer feels longer than its major alterna-browser competitors of Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. It updates using the Apple Software Updater, which may opt you in to other Windows-based Apple programs when it detects an update. Safari does not come with an uninstaller, and so it must be removed using the default Windows Add/Remove Programs tool or a third-party remover.
Interface
Safari's interface hasn't changed much from Safari 4. Navigation remains on top in this version, with Back and Forward buttons, the location bar, the search box, current page menu, and preferences menu. Whereas both Safari and Chrome are based on WebKit, Safari has opted to keep its tabs below the navigation bar and retain its brushed gray interface. It will look the same on Windows XP or Windows 7, since there's no real support for Aero Glass. In many ways, it's not as minimal as Chrome or Opera, and feels a bit older because of it.
The status bar remains hidden by default, which would be acceptable if there was another way to view a link's URL before clicking on it. Chrome manages a small pop-up at the bottom of the browser, but since Safari doesn't, we recommend forcing the status bar to appear for safety reasons. It's never a good idea to click blindly on a link, and it's unfortunate that the default Safari encourages this behavior. The status bar can be forced to appear from the View option on the menu bar, which is also hidden by default. You can force show the menu bar at the top of the Preferences menu, or by hitting the Alt key.
Features and support
Safari 5 comes with a new way to look at paginated stories and galleries, some helpful lesser feature improvements, and the promise of Extensions. As noted earlier, though, Apple has decided to not include many options that Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, and even Safari's cousin Chrome have.
The official late summer street date for the new Extensions gallery leaves many questions up for debate. Apple has said that the new framework restricts which extensions can be installed to those that have been approved by Apple. It's not clear at this time if or how that system will be different from the add-on networks supported by Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox, but given Apple's heavy hand in content control on the newly renamed iOS, it's not unreasonable to expect the company to take that approach as well with Safari Extensions.

The new Reader feature in Safari streamlines both single and multipage stories into a more legible format.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
The most interesting new feature in Safari that's ready to use is the Reader button. This button appears at the right side of the location bar when you load a site with pagination, such as a multipage article or gallery. Hitting it will open an overlay window that combines all pages into a single, scrollable format and tints out the site beneath, including ads and other distractions. Any embedded pictures or videos remain viewable, although, like the text of the story, they lose their site-specific formatting in favor of the Reader's defaults. Reader also comes with five buttons at the bottom of the frame that appear only when you mouse over them. You can zoom in, zoom out, e-mail the page, or print the page in its Reader format.
Reader is a more limited version of the code used in the Readability bookmarklet. What's innovative about the Safari version is that Apple decided to include it at all, but because it's such an obvious feature to include in a Web browser, it wouldn't be surprising to see others follow suit. Besides reactivating formatting options such as font size, what's keeping this feature from being really impressive is a lack of sharing beyond e-mail. It'd be great if you could use it to immediately share an article on Twitter or Facebook.
HTML5 gets a lot of love in Safari 5, pushing the browser to the top of the list of HTML5 browser versions that aren't in beta or development. Safari now supports HTML5-based full-screen video playback, video closed captioning, geolocation, drag and drop, forms validation, HTML5 Ruby, EventSource, and WebSocket. But in an odd turn from Apple, the HTML5 demo Web site is restricted to Safari browsers only.

Apple hasn't activated Extensions in Safari officially, but it has provided you with a workaround.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
Although its search abilities may not be up to par with the competition, Safari has begun to introduce a modicum of tab customization. The Tab window in Preferences gives you far more customizations than before, including opening into a new tab, some control over the tab focus on new tabs, and confirmation before closing multiple tabs. Safari 5 does not offer a session manager; it also doesn't natively respect your default browser for opening links. To change this, you'll need to go to the General tab under Preferences and change the default Web browser setting.
These deficiencies certainly won't kill Safari, but they're odd ones to leave out.
Performance
Safari's performance has definitely been improved, and it remains the browser's strongest selling point, in part because of the hardware acceleration (only in the Windows version, read more about hardware acceleration here) and DNS prefetching. Part of that is because of the improvements made to the Nitro JavaScript engine.

On Windows, users get the visual indicators for
multiple tabs, but there's still no support for jump lists or recently
viewed sites.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
Conclusion
Speed is important, but it's not the only judge of a good browser. With the exception of the unique Reader feature, Safari 5 does more to bring Apple's browser into line with other browsers than actually trailblazing, and even with the improvements made to this version, Safari still lacks many of the small but useful features competitors offer. For raw JavaScript speed, Safari is at the head of the pack for now, but Apple's focus on other user needs remains less than exemplary.
INTERNET EXPLORER FOR WIN XP DOWNLOAD
nternet Explorer 8 addresses just about all of the major concerns
that users and critics have had with the world's most used browser.
Whether they get answered in a way you like is another matter.
There are several new and interesting features. Web Slices lets you save
predefined sections of a Web page for at-a-glance viewing. Instead of
going to a traffic Web site for updates, the latest commuting news comes
to you. Similarly, Accelerators make repetitive tasks one-click
behaviors, for instance finding directions or blogging. InPrivate
browsing introduces a cache and history on-off switch, while related
tabs are color-coded and automatically reorganized as you open them.
There's also tab sandboxing, which means that when a tab crashes, IE
itself won't, and it even tries to resurrect the page that crashed.
There's a greater emphasis on Web standards and security than before. The SmartScreen and cross-site scripting filters throw up a red warning page when you're about to visit an unsafe site. There's also domain highlighting, which grays out the name of the URL you're looking at except for the domain itself. This sounds simple, but effectively draws attention to spoofed site URLs. There's also a compatibility button so that sites designed specifically for IE 7 and earlier can still be viewed.
IE 8 lacks a default "smart" location bar that many other browsers have, but you can search your history and most visited pages from there. Also, the installation process still requires a reboot--unimpressive, to say the least. Drawbacks aside, there's no reason to not upgrade if you're an old fan of IE, and there's even a few things in IE 8 for new users.
INTERNET EXPLORER FOR WIN 7 AND WIN VISTA DOWNLOAD
Review: The sound bite on Internet Explorer 9 will be a variation of "it doesn't suck," yet the changes to the browser go far deeper than that glib comment can reflect. Microsoft engineered a campaign, starting last year, to change the browser's image with both developers and casual users that was similar to the way that it got people on board with Windows 7. Frequent developer previews, devoid of features showed Web developers what the browser could do. It was only with the launch of the first beta that Microsoft added the interface. By then, the browser had already made an impact with developers because of its standards support and in-page rendering speeds, and much of the buzz coming from them was positive.
Installation
3 Microsoft has split the installer for IE9 into four versions, depending on your operating system, so be sure that you download the correct one. Different versions are available for Windows 7 x86, Windows 7 x64, Windows Vista x86, and Windows Vista x64, and Microsoft's site ought to autodetect your OS. While not the most convenient download, it's not the kind of thing for which we would dock the score.
What is a major problem with the IE9 installation process is that the browser will not work on Windows XP, which still has about 40 percent of the worldwide computer market a year and a half after Windows 7's release. There is no version of IE9 for Windows XP, and there never will be one.
Microsoft is clearly taking a page from Apple here, a company that has
used forced obsolescence to its advantage. It's a big risk for Microsoft
customers, though, who are used to support for older hardware and
software. We love Windows 7,
and will be extremely happy when the majority of Windows computers are
running it, but hardball tactics over hardware acceleration are not the
way to go--especially when competitors have demonstrated full hardware
acceleration on Windows XP.
After installing, Internet Explorer 9 also requires either a reboot or for you to shut down all your open programs. This indicates that the very manner in which the browser interacts with Windows 7 and Vista has been changed, probably for the better, but nevertheless it's an annoyance.
Interface
The browser interface has undergone an enormous change, following the trend of minimizing the layout to maximize screen space. Microsoft takes an approach interestingly different than its competitors, which placed the tabs above the location bar. In IE9, the tabs reside by default on the same row as the location bar, although you can switch this via a context menu. However, if you choose the Show Tabs on a Separate Row option, the tabs will move below the location bar--not above it, as Chrome, Firefox 4, and Opera have them.
The problem with tabs on the same row as the location bar is that when you have more than five or so tabs open, the combined location bar and tab bar feels cramped in a way that other minimalist interfaces avoid. It may work for some people, but the experience suffers from an otherwise unnecessary shortening of the location bar and a limited amount of space available for tabs. If you only have a handful of tabs open at a time, you might not mind. It quickly becomes difficult to distinguish multiple tabs.
Besides that drawback, IE's new look is quite usable. The stop and
refresh buttons have been shrunk to take up as little space as possible
while still being visible. They now live on the right side of the
location bar, inside the bar itself along with the search drop-down menu
icon. It's a bit curious that Microsoft didn't combine Stop and Refresh
into one, as other browsers have. The cramped location-and-tab bar
could use all the extra space it can get.
The location bar isn't the only part of IE9 that's gone back to basics. Notifications, such as the pop-up blocker or session recovery warnings, now appear at the bottom of the browser window. They're designed to avoid "grabbing your focus," which means that they won't prevent you from continuing to browse. They actually accomplish that task well, although they do pull your attention from the top of the browser to the bottom, which is distracting.
Most items in the Command bar, such as print, page controls, and safety controls have been collapsed into the redesigned Tools menu. Only Tools, the Home button, and the Favorites button retain their own top-level icons. As with other browsers, the status bar is hidden by default, although it and the Command bar can be re-exposed by right-clicking on the Tab bar.
The new Tools menu is highly usable, as well, with a clean and simple layout. The Internet Options menu, on the other hand, could desperately use some font resizing and reorganizing, because it remains a chaotic mess of choices that are hard to read and harder to find.
Firefox fans will no doubt enjoy that IE9 has a larger "back" button than "forward," mimicking Mozilla's browser interface, but browsers have cribbed interface designs from each other since the 1990s. Getting into an argument about which browser had a specific look first is asinine.
Features and support
4 Internet Explorer 9 is crammed with new features and redesigned older ones, and impresses on all counts in this category.
One of the interesting concepts implemented by Microsoft is a reversal of the current trend to make the browser the operating system. Internet Explorer comes with some natural-fitting Windows 7 integration. In IE9, you can pin specific sites to your Windows 7 desktop taskbar. Click and hold on a tab, and drag it to the taskbar. The site's favicon will become the pinned site icon.
Pinned sites by default recolor IE9's Aero glass-style interface based
on the color schemes in the site's favicon, which is a neat little
trick. If coded properly, a site can customize the jump list links,
integrate player controls for streaming media sites such as Pandora, or
have a counter display the number of unread e-mails in your Web mail
account. Any site developer can implement the feature by using
Microsoft's pinned site API.
The browser has had tab sandboxing since IE8, and improves on the feature in version 9. The tab sandbox prevents a crashed individual tab from taking down the entire browser. In IE9, you can enact Chrome-style "tab ripping" so that you can drag a tab to create a new browser window, but it also integrates smoothly with the Aero Snap feature in Windows 7 by dragging the tab to either side of your monitor. This is useful for looking at two sites simultaneously. Tab sandboxing will not only prevent a single tab crash from taking down the whole browser, but IE9 will ask if you want to resurrect the tab, too.
A new "New Tab" page lets you resurrect closed tabs and previous browsing sessions, as well as provide large versions of your most frequently visited Web sites' favicons for quick access. It feels a bit empty because of the large amount of white space, and it lacks deep customization, but it's a step in the right direction and behaves like Opera's Speed Dial and Chrome's Most Visited Sites. One neat little exposure of personal browsing data is that mousing over a site's favicon tells you in general terms how frequently you visit that site.
Annoyingly, IE9 lacks a radio button in the Tools menu to make about:Tabs, the new tab page address, your default home page. You can type it in manually, which is certainly easy but not effortless and makes the page just a bit harder to reach if you want it to be your default new browsing session page.
From the about:Tabs page, you can also resurrect a previous browsing
session, restore closed tabs, or switch to the trackless InPrivate
browsing.
Also taking a page from its competitors, Microsoft attempts to rebrand the location bar by bolstering it with search features. Internet Explorer's "OneBox," as the company is calling it, combines the search box with the location bar. You can navigate to a site, search for sites, or look at browsing history or favorites. You can also change search providers at the bottom, which is a slick merge of the old search bar functionality into the location bar. By default, the OneBox won't remember your keystrokes. If you let it, though, you'll get additional search suggestions.
Notifications in IE9 have taken on an entirely different look. Small and minimalist, they appear at the bottom of the browser and don't stop you from browsing.
The new Download Manager incorporates reputation-based security, to accelerate the pace at which you can install a new download if not speeding up the download itself. This means that well-known files, such as installers from trusted vendors, will cause fewer warnings if any to pop up. The robust download manager is a long-desired, long-missing feature, and we're extremely glad to see it finally make it into IE9.
So, there's a lot that brings IE up to speed with its competitors. There are also some exciting new features that are forward-thinking. Among the most notable enhancements are the new ActiveX filter, expanded support for HTML5 and "future-tech" standards, and advertiser tracking protection.
Like the Firefox 4 version of the "do not track" feature, it will prevent Web advertisers from tracking your behavior using a header-based solution. Unlike Mozilla's implementation of the protection, IE9 uses both the header and customizable blacklists. If you go to the Gear menu and then the Safety submenu, there's an option for tracking protection. Clicking it opens the Manage Add-ons window and defaults to the new Tracking Protection tab, from which you can add sites that you want to block.
Once the feature has been enabled, simply start browsing. If you go back to the list after checking out a few sites, you ought to see that the list has auto-populated. The configurable number below the main list allows you to set your tolerance for being tracked. If you set it to three, for example, the tracking protection will wait until it sees a tracker on three or more sites before blocking it. It's actually incorporated into the browser the same way that add-ons are. Microsoft allows you to create custom lists of advertisers to block, and share them with other users via the Internet Explorer Add-on Gallery.
Also new is an ActiveX filter, which you can use to block all ActiveX
content and then selectively activate it on a per-site basis. For people
unfamiliar with why ActiveX technology is potentially dangerous, to
function it requires full access to the operating system that the
browser is running in. The new ActiveX filter gives you the ability to
restrict ActiveX on a per-site basis, with a toggle in the location bar.
If you go to the Gear menu and then the Safety submenu, you can block
all ActiveX content with one click. Then on the right-side of the
location bar, click the circle with a line through it to allow ActiveX
content to load on a per-site basis.
IE, long known for its struggle with standards compliance, has made serious strides in the other direction. HTML5 receives a lot of love from IE in the beta, including support for the < video >, < audio >, and < canvas > tags, and better support for DOM, CSS3, and ECMAScript5. While this may sound like alphabet soup to some, the importance can't be understated: when browser makers split on how to render code, it can make a single site look odd or function improperly across browsers. Other specific HTML5 and "future-Web" support in IE9 includes support for the geolocation feature, HTML5 semantic tags, CSS3 2D transforms, and the WebM video codec.
The default maximum temporary Internet file size has been increased to 250MB from 50MB, which means that while your cache will be significantly bigger on disk, IE can store more data locally and make it that much quicker to load Web content.
Performance
As discussed earlier, the browser's performance has been greatly improved by the addition of graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware acceleration. It allows the browser to shove certain rendering tasks onto the computer's graphics card, freeing up CPU resources while making page rendering and animations load faster. These tasks include composition support, rendering support, and desktop compositing.
JavaScript plays a major role in the Web, and Internet Explorer 9's new Chakra engine combined with the GPU acceleration gives the browser some serious rocket fuel. We'll update this section with CNET's performance benchmarks as they become available, although initial results show that Internet Explorer 9 testing competitively.
One interesting publicly available benchmark is the new JSGameBench from Facebook, which looks to test HTML5 in real-world gaming situations. While not the fastest in the group, even without WebGL implemented IE9 was performing toward the faster end of the chart.
The browser also appears to be eminently stable, and over multiple days worth of real-world browsing did not crash once. For Internet Explorer, that is an amazing accomplishment.
Browser benchmarks are a notoriously fidgety lot, and often come up against legitimate complaints of looking at too narrow a set of features--such as only checking JavaScript rendering times. In hands-on use, at least, the browser feels fast enough to keep up with Chrome. Future-proofing IE will almost certainly require WebGL support, which Firefox and Chrome already have incorporated, but for right now IE is able to hold its own.
Conclusion
Internet Explorer spent years languishing, and the developments in this version are more like a ringing denouement of the process that began in IE7 to return the browser to respectability. There's no doubt that this is the best version to date of Microsoft's browser, which makes it almost shameful that the company couldn't find a way to extend support for it to legacy Windows XP users.
All that being said, the browser is fast and highly usable, and even enjoyable to use. It might not be enough for die-hard fans of other browsers to switch, but IE is now a respectable choice on the browser market.
After installing, Internet Explorer 9 also requires either a reboot or for you to shut down all your open programs. This indicates that the very manner in which the browser interacts with Windows 7 and Vista has been changed, probably for the better, but nevertheless it's an annoyance.
Interface
The browser interface has undergone an enormous change, following the trend of minimizing the layout to maximize screen space. Microsoft takes an approach interestingly different than its competitors, which placed the tabs above the location bar. In IE9, the tabs reside by default on the same row as the location bar, although you can switch this via a context menu. However, if you choose the Show Tabs on a Separate Row option, the tabs will move below the location bar--not above it, as Chrome, Firefox 4, and Opera have them.
The problem with tabs on the same row as the location bar is that when you have more than five or so tabs open, the combined location bar and tab bar feels cramped in a way that other minimalist interfaces avoid. It may work for some people, but the experience suffers from an otherwise unnecessary shortening of the location bar and a limited amount of space available for tabs. If you only have a handful of tabs open at a time, you might not mind. It quickly becomes difficult to distinguish multiple tabs.

The interface isn't the only part of IE9 that's
gone back to basics. Notifications, such as the session recovery
warning shown here, appear at the bottom of the browser window and won't
"grab your focus" and prevent you from continuing to browse.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
The location bar isn't the only part of IE9 that's gone back to basics. Notifications, such as the pop-up blocker or session recovery warnings, now appear at the bottom of the browser window. They're designed to avoid "grabbing your focus," which means that they won't prevent you from continuing to browse. They actually accomplish that task well, although they do pull your attention from the top of the browser to the bottom, which is distracting.
Most items in the Command bar, such as print, page controls, and safety controls have been collapsed into the redesigned Tools menu. Only Tools, the Home button, and the Favorites button retain their own top-level icons. As with other browsers, the status bar is hidden by default, although it and the Command bar can be re-exposed by right-clicking on the Tab bar.
The new Tools menu is highly usable, as well, with a clean and simple layout. The Internet Options menu, on the other hand, could desperately use some font resizing and reorganizing, because it remains a chaotic mess of choices that are hard to read and harder to find.
Firefox fans will no doubt enjoy that IE9 has a larger "back" button than "forward," mimicking Mozilla's browser interface, but browsers have cribbed interface designs from each other since the 1990s. Getting into an argument about which browser had a specific look first is asinine.
Features and support
4 Internet Explorer 9 is crammed with new features and redesigned older ones, and impresses on all counts in this category.
One of the interesting concepts implemented by Microsoft is a reversal of the current trend to make the browser the operating system. Internet Explorer comes with some natural-fitting Windows 7 integration. In IE9, you can pin specific sites to your Windows 7 desktop taskbar. Click and hold on a tab, and drag it to the taskbar. The site's favicon will become the pinned site icon.

Developers who take advantage of the options
available to them for Pinned sites can customize the Windows 7 jump list
for their site when pinned, or add in special features, such as an
unread count for Web mail or media player controls for streaming audio
and video sites.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
The browser has had tab sandboxing since IE8, and improves on the feature in version 9. The tab sandbox prevents a crashed individual tab from taking down the entire browser. In IE9, you can enact Chrome-style "tab ripping" so that you can drag a tab to create a new browser window, but it also integrates smoothly with the Aero Snap feature in Windows 7 by dragging the tab to either side of your monitor. This is useful for looking at two sites simultaneously. Tab sandboxing will not only prevent a single tab crash from taking down the whole browser, but IE9 will ask if you want to resurrect the tab, too.
A new "New Tab" page lets you resurrect closed tabs and previous browsing sessions, as well as provide large versions of your most frequently visited Web sites' favicons for quick access. It feels a bit empty because of the large amount of white space, and it lacks deep customization, but it's a step in the right direction and behaves like Opera's Speed Dial and Chrome's Most Visited Sites. One neat little exposure of personal browsing data is that mousing over a site's favicon tells you in general terms how frequently you visit that site.
Annoyingly, IE9 lacks a radio button in the Tools menu to make about:Tabs, the new tab page address, your default home page. You can type it in manually, which is certainly easy but not effortless and makes the page just a bit harder to reach if you want it to be your default new browsing session page.

Following up on a report from earlier this year
that toolbars and other add-ons were a major source of instability in
Internet Explorer, IE9 keeps a stern eye on your add-ons and will warn
you when one is unnecessarily slowing down your browser.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
Also taking a page from its competitors, Microsoft attempts to rebrand the location bar by bolstering it with search features. Internet Explorer's "OneBox," as the company is calling it, combines the search box with the location bar. You can navigate to a site, search for sites, or look at browsing history or favorites. You can also change search providers at the bottom, which is a slick merge of the old search bar functionality into the location bar. By default, the OneBox won't remember your keystrokes. If you let it, though, you'll get additional search suggestions.
Notifications in IE9 have taken on an entirely different look. Small and minimalist, they appear at the bottom of the browser and don't stop you from browsing.
The new Download Manager incorporates reputation-based security, to accelerate the pace at which you can install a new download if not speeding up the download itself. This means that well-known files, such as installers from trusted vendors, will cause fewer warnings if any to pop up. The robust download manager is a long-desired, long-missing feature, and we're extremely glad to see it finally make it into IE9.
So, there's a lot that brings IE up to speed with its competitors. There are also some exciting new features that are forward-thinking. Among the most notable enhancements are the new ActiveX filter, expanded support for HTML5 and "future-tech" standards, and advertiser tracking protection.
Like the Firefox 4 version of the "do not track" feature, it will prevent Web advertisers from tracking your behavior using a header-based solution. Unlike Mozilla's implementation of the protection, IE9 uses both the header and customizable blacklists. If you go to the Gear menu and then the Safety submenu, there's an option for tracking protection. Clicking it opens the Manage Add-ons window and defaults to the new Tracking Protection tab, from which you can add sites that you want to block.
Once the feature has been enabled, simply start browsing. If you go back to the list after checking out a few sites, you ought to see that the list has auto-populated. The configurable number below the main list allows you to set your tolerance for being tracked. If you set it to three, for example, the tracking protection will wait until it sees a tracker on three or more sites before blocking it. It's actually incorporated into the browser the same way that add-ons are. Microsoft allows you to create custom lists of advertisers to block, and share them with other users via the Internet Explorer Add-on Gallery.

Internet Explorer 9's ActiveX filter in action.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
IE, long known for its struggle with standards compliance, has made serious strides in the other direction. HTML5 receives a lot of love from IE in the beta, including support for the < video >, < audio >, and < canvas > tags, and better support for DOM, CSS3, and ECMAScript5. While this may sound like alphabet soup to some, the importance can't be understated: when browser makers split on how to render code, it can make a single site look odd or function improperly across browsers. Other specific HTML5 and "future-Web" support in IE9 includes support for the geolocation feature, HTML5 semantic tags, CSS3 2D transforms, and the WebM video codec.
The default maximum temporary Internet file size has been increased to 250MB from 50MB, which means that while your cache will be significantly bigger on disk, IE can store more data locally and make it that much quicker to load Web content.
Performance
As discussed earlier, the browser's performance has been greatly improved by the addition of graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware acceleration. It allows the browser to shove certain rendering tasks onto the computer's graphics card, freeing up CPU resources while making page rendering and animations load faster. These tasks include composition support, rendering support, and desktop compositing.
JavaScript plays a major role in the Web, and Internet Explorer 9's new Chakra engine combined with the GPU acceleration gives the browser some serious rocket fuel. We'll update this section with CNET's performance benchmarks as they become available, although initial results show that Internet Explorer 9 testing competitively.
One interesting publicly available benchmark is the new JSGameBench from Facebook, which looks to test HTML5 in real-world gaming situations. While not the fastest in the group, even without WebGL implemented IE9 was performing toward the faster end of the chart.
The browser also appears to be eminently stable, and over multiple days worth of real-world browsing did not crash once. For Internet Explorer, that is an amazing accomplishment.
Browser benchmarks are a notoriously fidgety lot, and often come up against legitimate complaints of looking at too narrow a set of features--such as only checking JavaScript rendering times. In hands-on use, at least, the browser feels fast enough to keep up with Chrome. Future-proofing IE will almost certainly require WebGL support, which Firefox and Chrome already have incorporated, but for right now IE is able to hold its own.
Conclusion
Internet Explorer spent years languishing, and the developments in this version are more like a ringing denouement of the process that began in IE7 to return the browser to respectability. There's no doubt that this is the best version to date of Microsoft's browser, which makes it almost shameful that the company couldn't find a way to extend support for it to legacy Windows XP users.
All that being said, the browser is fast and highly usable, and even enjoyable to use. It might not be enough for die-hard fans of other browsers to switch, but IE is now a respectable choice on the browser market.
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