# IE9 Beta



## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

Is anyone trying the IE9 Beta? I just downloaded it & can't figure out, if I have browsed several pages in one tab, how to go back to say the 3rd page back without having to hit the back button 3 times. In IE8 there's a little arrow next to the forward button that if I click it will show me the browsing history for that tab & I click whichever previous page I want. IE9 doesn't seem to have that.

_ Nevermind -- I can right-click on the back arrow & get the list of previous pages _


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## R0am3r (Sep 20, 2008)

HDJulie said:


> Is anyone trying the IE9 Beta? I just downloaded it & can't figure out, if I have browsed several pages in one tab, how to go back to say the 3rd page back without having to hit the back button 3 times. In IE8 there's a little arrow next to the forward button that if I click it will show me the browsing history for that tab & I click whichever previous page I want. IE9 doesn't seem to have that.
> 
> _ Nevermind -- I can right-click on the back arrow & get the list of previous pages _


I found it just as I refreshed the page to see your answer! So far, I like it but need to play some more.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Things are there . . . just moved around or hidden in some menu. . the only thing I haven't found is the title of the page in the left-upper part of the frame.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

I've been using it for two days now. They keep saying Microsoft "rethought" the UI, but I don't get it. Every button that was there in IE8 is there in IE9, as far as I can see. That said, things have been re-arranged a bit and the graphics are nice and "tight". As a result, you _can _see more of the page content than before, but it's not something they couldn't have done under IE8 as well.

Performance blow's away IE8's, but it's still not as fast as Chrome.

And since IE9 _doesn't_ run under XP, I won't be using it on either of my laptops, both of which run Chrome blazingly fast. According to Tech Republic, *74%* of work PC's still run XP, and apparently Microsoft wants to push them all to Chrome or Firefox, if they're looking to improve on IE8 performance. Great way to increase browser share! :scratchin

Those looking to try IE9 can download it here.

*EDIT:* Another study clarifies the number of business machines running XP is *61%*, with *30%* running Vista or 7. I guess the other *9%* are running Linux. Still means 7 out of 10 business desktops are unable to run IE9.


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## kfcrosby (Dec 17, 2006)

HDJulie said:


> _ Nevermind -- I can right-click on the back arrow & get the list of previous pages _


OR "LONG CLICK" the back arrow, does the same, just like Chrome


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## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

kfcrosby said:


> OR "LONG CLICK" the back arrow, does the same, just like Chrome


Thanks! I just tried that -- I like it better than the right-click.


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## Shades228 (Mar 18, 2008)

Steve said:


> I've been using it for two days now. They keep saying Microsoft "rethought" the UI, but I don't get it. Every button that was there in IE8 is there in IE9, as far as I can see. That said, things have been re-arranged a bit and the graphics are nice and "tight". As a result, you _can _see more of the page content than before, but it's not something they couldn't have done under IE8 as well.
> 
> Performance blow's away IE8's, but it's still not as fast as Chrome.
> 
> ...


Now find the study that shows how many companies are still using IE6. Companies have the slowest adoption for new technology. I bet most companies won't even start looking at Win 7 until a new service pack comes out.

Latest and greatest=people at home or people in the web industry.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

I installed IE9 Beta this morning on my Win 7 Machine. Definitely an improvement over IE, but not enough to push me away from Chrome or Firefox. Main reason happens to be Adblock and Xmarks (with password sync) extensions.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Shades228 said:


> Now find the study that shows how many companies are still using IE6. Companies have the slowest adoption for new technology. I bet most companies won't even start looking at Win 7 until a new service pack comes out.
> 
> Latest and greatest=people at home or people in the web industry.


I actually reverted back to XP from 7 on both my dual-core 1.6 ghz CPU laptops, each with 1.5 gig of memory. XP runs faster and there's no app I need I can't run. And Chrome under XP is a thing of beauty. I keep 7 on my desktop simply to stay abreast of changes.

If I was still running an enterprise IT dep't with 2-3 year old machines, no way would I spend the money or resources to upgrade to 7. There's simply no ROI. Just my .02.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Shades228 said:


> Now find the study that shows how many companies are still using IE6. Companies have the slowest adoption for new technology. I bet most companies won't even start looking at Win 7 until a new service pack comes out.


It's worse than you think.

In my day job, I deal with plenty of corporations, and most are still on XP and IE6. Many of these companies are making profits by cutting expenses. Guess what IT is? It's an expense that must be controlled. Thanks to old internal legacy websites, IE6 still is out there in the corporate world because they don't want to spend the time to rebuild those legacy websites.

The good part is that Microsoft is insisting that sales be discontinued for XP, and if companies have a need to run XP, there is a XP compatibility mode that can be installed.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Mark Holtz said:


> It's worse than you think.
> 
> In my day job, I deal with plenty of corporations, and most are still on XP and IE6. Many of these companies are making profits by cutting expenses. Guess what IT is? It's an expense that must be controlled. Thanks to old internal legacy websites, IE6 still is out there in the corporate world because they don't want to spend the time to rebuild those legacy websites.
> 
> The good part is that Microsoft is insisting that sales be discontinued for XP, and if companies have a need to run XP, there is a XP compatibility mode that can be installed.


I think what most companies are doing is buying new machines with 7, but not updating older machines. If I'm right, it will take another couple of years before the scales tip to 7.

Re: maintaining IE6-only compatible web sites, that's just reckless stupidity, IMHO. In this day and age, if it has the power, I think the SEC should mandate that publicly-held companies must upgrade, and fine companies that don't comply, especially financial institutions. To me, the IE6 issue is just as serious as the Y2K issue was. Just my .02.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Steve said:


> I think what most companies are doing is buying new machines with 7, but not updating older machines. If I'm right, it will take another couple of years before the scales tip to 7.


Not necessarily. When Vista came out, many companies aggressively downgraded those machines to XP. For large-scale deployments, it's easier to create a master image then to upgrade the machine.


Steve said:


> Re: maintaining IE6-only compatible web sites, that's just reckless stupidity, IMHO. In this day and age, if it has the power, I think the SEC should mandate that publicly-held companies must upgrade, and fine companies that don't comply, especially financial institutions. To me, the IE6 issue is just as serious as the Y2K issue was. Just my .02.


You are being generous with the word "maintain". Some of these sites were set up years ago before IE7 was released, and continue to work fine under IE6. What we computer types consider "broken" and what the non-computer types consider "broken" is two different things. Often, it's the non-computer types who control the purse strings, and sometimes you don't get the upgrade funding until those that control the purse strings are directly affected.

It's not Windows or Internet Explorer that I'm talking about either. It also affects other products as well. Some of our customers are locked down to a specific version of our software for various reasons. Some of those versions are so old, I've nicknamed them "mold" versions.


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## njblackberry (Dec 29, 2007)

Steve said:


> In this day and age, if it has the power, I think the SEC should mandate that publicly-held companies must upgrade, and fine companies that don't comply, especially financial institutions. To me, the IE6 issue is just as serious as the Y2K issue was. Just my .02.


You're kidding, right? The SEC mandate what browser companies should use? How about what version of Oracle, SAP and SQL Server.

I'm sorry - that is not a rational statement.

BTW - I upgraded our multinational, $40bn company to IE7 last year, and we will go to IE8 (or 9) with Windows 7 in the next two years. It is possible, but a government mandate on what browser companies should use is just silly.

Maybe Google could buy the SEC and mandate Chrome.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

njblackberry said:


> You're kidding, right? The SEC mandate what browser companies should use? [...] Maybe Google could buy the SEC and mandate Chrome.


Not at all what I'm saying. _Forcing_ folks, especially some customers, to use a knowingly insecure browser to access financial data is fiscally irresponsible in this day and age. It's something that should be an addendum to Sarbanes-Oxley, IMHO.


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## njblackberry (Dec 29, 2007)

What you wrote is


> I think the SEC should mandate that publicly-held companies must upgrade, and fine companies that don't comply, especially financial institutions


That IS what you said. I disagree.

Bringing SOx into the discussion doesn't help, as Sarbanes Oxley didn't exactly help in the financial meltdown, did it? Nope.

It is government regulation run amok. And linking a browser - one which is still patched - into it is a bad argument.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

njblackberry said:


> What you wrote is
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That's pulled out of the context in which I said it. I tried to set it up properly to indicate the server should be updated, but probably didn't do a good enough job. Here's what I wrote.



Steve said:


> *Re: maintaining IE6-only compatible web sites*, that's just reckless stupidity, IMHO. In this day and age, if it has the power, I think the SEC should mandate that publicly-held companies must upgrade, and fine companies that don't comply, especially financial institutions.


My point is about continuing to maintain a server app (web site) that _requires _you to use an insecure browser client.


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## njblackberry (Dec 29, 2007)

So now we are taking about regulating web sites and not the browser itself?


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Mark Holtz said:


> [...] It's not Windows or Internet Explorer that I'm talking about either. It also affects other products as well. Some of our customers are locked down to a specific version of our software for various reasons. Some of those versions are so old, I've nicknamed them "mold" versions.


Ya. Last company I worked for had lots of those "moldy" apps as well.  Some of those systems weren't just internal, and were used by customers to directly input their information into our back-end systems. If any of those were found to be insecure, we made it job 1 to institute whatever changes were necessary.

Again, what I'm mainly ranting about are financial institutions that still use back-end systems that require some B-B customers to use IE6 to access. It's those systems that need to be revamped, so that more secure browser versions can be used instead.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

njblackberry said:


> So now we are taking about regulating web sites and not the browser itself?


Not just "now", and not all web-sites. Just financial transaction sites, e.g., run by publicly traded companies that require their customers to use IE6 to access them. I thought I said it in post 11, but I guess I didn't make it clear enough, because I allowed you to misunderstand me. My bad.


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## njblackberry (Dec 29, 2007)

I think I understand you correctly - I just disagree (and nothing more).

BTW - I don't any of the web sites that I use (and we use online banking and multiple brokerages) require IE6.

Are there any examples of publicly facing financial services websites that require IE6?


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

njblackberry said:


> I think I understand you correctly - I just disagree (and nothing more).
> 
> BTW - I don't any of the web sites that I use (and we use online banking and multiple brokerages) require IE6.
> 
> Are there any examples of publicly facing financial services websites that require IE6?


I know at least one bank that still has a legacy B-B application that requires their business customers to maintain IE6 on some of their workforce machines, just for particular use of that program.

You're right. It's not an issue for general consumers, tho, thank goodness!


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## Shades228 (Mar 18, 2008)

The main reason IE6 is still dominant in corporations is because of custom made applications that were made when IE 6 was the latest and greatest. Now to update those to be compatible with newer versions costs money companies don't want to spend. When Microsoft decided to extend XP life they extended IE 6 because it was the default browser. They need to decide to end IE6 support or companies have no reason to update.

Now that sites are making it so IE 6 can't even access them, or in a minimal function, it's even more incentive to keep it in a company as well.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

We tried going to IE8 on our client systems, but our payroll company's employee self service site (where they can look at paystubs, check their available PTO etc) has scripts that still aren't IE8 compatible.

And our payroll company isn't a small one, 75% of the Fortune 500 use them, along with about 100,000+ other companies.

There are a few situations we have like that, but it's enough that we can't go to IE8. 

We can't force companies to go to Windows7 and IE9. Eventually, I think they'll have to. But the Government can't even do it themselves. In 2007 the IRS was still using systems from the Kennedy Administration. I know these are the big mainframes not the desktops, but still.


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## Steve (Aug 22, 2006)

Shades228 said:


> The main reason IE6 is still dominant in corporations is because of custom made applications that were made when IE 6 was the latest and greatest. Now to update those to be compatible with newer versions costs money companies don't want to spend. When Microsoft decided to extend XP life they extended IE 6 because it was the default browser. They need to decide to end IE6 support or companies have no reason to update.
> 
> Now that sites are making it so IE 6 can't even access them, or in a minimal function, it's even more incentive to keep it in a company as well.


I'm pretty sure for the reasons you stated, Microsoft has committed to supporting IE6 (along with XP) until 2014! :eek2: I suppose the silver lining is they're addressing customer needs, but I know earlier this year, Secunia was still reporting 24 unpatched IE6 vulnerabilities, so that's the black cloud.


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## Hansen (Jan 1, 2006)

I like IE9 in a lot of ways but one thing I miss is the standalone search box. The combined box leaves things messy when you pull down the menu to see recent websites. Hopefully, someone will come up with a hack to bring back the standalone search box.


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## njblackberry (Dec 29, 2007)

Windows XP extended support ends in April 2014. That's why IE6 is extended until then.
After April 2014, no more patches for XP or IE6. 

And that's why companies should be looking at Windows 7 and IE8/9. If they are not, they have a very unpleasant surprise ahead of them.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

njblackberry said:


> Windows XP extended support ends in April 2014. That's why IE6 is extended until then.
> After April 2014, no more patches for XP or IE6.
> 
> And that's why companies should be looking at Windows 7 and IE8/9. If they are not, they have a very unpleasant surprise ahead of them.


A lot of companies got an unpleasant surprise when their XP SP2 machines stop receiving patches in July. Lot of scrambling to install SP3 which tells you just how woefully inadequate IT is in even large corporations.

Microsoft has made it almost absurdly easy for IT to adopt Windows 7 and still use IE6 & IE8 or IE9 on a machine. I have timed it and I can setup up virtual XP and make IE6 available in the Windows 7 program menu so that a user doesn't even have to start the virtual machine in around 15 minutes. Microsoft provides the XP license for FREE.

This eliminates the IE6 excuse for anyone who truly wants to move to 7.

I think the biggest obstacle right now is pure economics. Windows 7 is arriving in the corporate marketplace as a product of attrition... when PC's or laptops are replaced they are Windows 7 machines by default. This actually tends to accelerate the adoption of Windows 7 after IT guys and their money people see the benefits.

I recently had a client experience a break in and they had to replace 10 machines. All came in as Windows 7. All had to have IE6, accomplished thru Virtual XP. After less than 60 days I received an inquiry as to the cost of migrating all their machines to Windows 7. The resident IT guy clearly saw the benefits to him and both the CEO & CFO received replacement machines and liked them. They have decides to move half of their remaining machines to Windows 7 in October and the remainder in December.

Momentum is building in Microsofts favor. Traditionally, larger IT departments don't move to a new OS until SP1 is released, which should happen in the first quarter. The SP1 for Windows 7 though will contain no surprises, it is basically a roll-up.

Another factor that is starting to rear its extremely ugly head is the impact of drastically slashed IT expenditures. After 2 years of this economic mess, corporate and even small business IT infrastructure is starting to show the strain of poor maintenance, extended usage cycles and ignored upgrades.


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## mystic7 (Dec 9, 2007)

It's still buggy and a bit aggravating. You see this thing we type our comments into? Doesn't work properly all the time, for one thing. Also, some quicktime audio doesn't display properly and can't be played. It's not as easy to clear cache, temp files, browsing history as it is in IE8. I wanted to like IE9 for the HTML5 but I had to get rid of it for now.


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## njblackberry (Dec 29, 2007)

Larry - tell me about it. Fighting (like crazy) to keep Office 2010 in the 2011 budget.

XP SP3 wasn't a real problem - we knew about it, and pushed it out globally over several weekend. Not an issue. 

I refuse (and it is my call) to allow XP to be run under Win 7 - that is a BAD solution as people will be spinning up their own virtual machines, with no AV, firewall or patching. A bad idea. If you need IE6, we can supply it via Citrix. 

Nonetheless, I like IE9


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## naijai (Aug 19, 2006)

I like IE9 so far but miss the status bar at the bottom of the screen and the fact that the address bar keps everything in the history including ad pages that are blank


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

naijai said:


> I like IE9 so far but miss the status bar at the bottom of the screen and the fact that the address bar keps everything in the history including ad pages that are blank


Right click on the top bar on the screen and you can add the status bar back to your screen.

Larry


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

And now it seems, not only will it require Windows 7, the final version will also require SP1.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/ne...9-to-require-windows-7-sp1-due-in-1h-2011.ars


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Why do I get that funny feeling that the install of SP1 will also install IE9 automatically?


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## naijai (Aug 19, 2006)

LarryFlowers said:


> Right click on the top bar on the screen and you can add the status bar back to your screen.
> 
> Larry


Thanks for the help


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

dpeters11 said:


> And now it seems, not only will it require Windows 7, the final version will also require SP1.
> 
> http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/ne...9-to-require-windows-7-sp1-due-in-1h-2011.ars





Mark Holtz said:


> Why do I get that funny feeling that the install of SP1 will also install IE9 automatically?


More likely IE9 will be offered during the SP1 installation much as IE8 was offered. Due to corporate browser applications, browser upgrades are rarely required except when an OS changes.

Windows 7 SP1 is NOT going to contain any feature changes. It is strictly a roll up of existing fixes. SP1 will almost be a psychological Service Pack designed to accomplish to things.. provide IT managers with a tool to simplify Windows 7 installs and provide the "trigger" to begin the corporate upgrades.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Ok, so looks like I need to retract my statement. Microsoft did say it would require SP1. But now they are saying that it needs certain fixes that can be done individually, and it will install them if necessary. It will require a reboot if it has to install them.

As for SP1 being more of a "psychological" service pack, is this strictly true? I thought there were some hotfixes that it will provide that either aren't publicly available, or are available as a manual (not in Windows Update) that hasn't gone through regression testing.


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