The Digital Sea

IE9: It still sucks.

So, I tried the release client for Internet Explorer 9. After maybe ten minutes of use, here’s what I noticed:

• First off, it took Windows 10+ minutes to install it and “required updates”. Almost as long as the current Windows Live crap.
• HTML5/CSS3 support is still pathetic. Try any HTML 5 pages that AREN’T made by Microsoft. Yeah, most of them don’t work, or they render ridiculously slow.
• It’s still slower than every single other browser. Period.
• It’s trying to convince me to turn off all my add-ons to speed up the browser. All TWO of them. Why? They never slow down Firefox or Chrome.
• After having it open a total of a minute or so, CPU usage stayed near 80% or more, constantly. That’s weird, I hadn’t done anything but scroll down on the “first run” page.
• MS is copying certain UI elements from other (better) browsers. Hidden menus, no bottom task bar, the new tab page, etc… Seriously, Microsoft, could you make it any more obvious?!
• Hey, that “New Tab” page looks familiar… Kind of like the one Chrome uses, except this one is ugly.
• New tabs, on average, take 5-10 seconds to open after a cold start of the browser. Even after that, they take more than a second. Firefox and Chrome open new tabs almost instantly.
• Menus are counter-intuitive, over-complicated, and poorly organized. Just like the rest of the browser.
• It’s still ugly.

That’s as far as I got. With the CPU usage staying around 80% or more, and my laptop’s temperature steadily increasing, I figured I should just exit. I never use IE anyway, and trying IE9 convinced me to keep using Chrome and Firefox.

Unless you enjoy using a browser that rarely works, and barely ever displays anything correctly, avoid it.