Reviews have begun to pour onto the internet from people who are testing out Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 9 Beta released last week. Some are giving the browser high ratings, while others have dismissed it at too unstable in this early release.
The one thing everyone seems to agree on, however, is that the majority of “new” features in IE9 have been, um, borrowed from other browsers… not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Here’s a rundown of the features that Microsoft’s competitors incorporated into their browsers first:
New tab popular sites – Though Microsoft has expanded upon this one by incorporating website’s favicons, this feature is definitely straight out of Google’s browser. The quick snapshot of eight of your most visited pages looks almost identical to Chrome.
Download manager – The ability to look back through downloaded files is strikingly similar to the download manager Firefox has had for the past several years.
Tab Location – IE9 puts the focus on the webpage by placing the tabs at the very top of the window, another very Chrome-like feature
Integrated address & search bar – Both Chrome and Firefox have had this, but again Microsoft has built upon the idea by adding weather results. Maybe other real-time information will be added once the browser goes gold.
Tear-off tabs – The ability to drag a tab into a new browser window of its own or into another browser window has been available in Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. IE9 does improve this one as well with the ability to “pin” the site to the taskbar in Windows 7.
Navigation Buttons – The back and forward buttons in IE9 have been re-designed with a larger back button that is designed just like Firefox’s default look.
“Full” hardware acceleration – While Firefox and Chrome have both incorporated hardware acceleration into their latest releases, it is not yet a default feature and must be manually enabled.
And finally, just for good measure, one original feature that Microsoft has added is a notification that pops up when an add-on is slowing down the browser with an option to disable the offending software. We wouldn’t be surprised to see other browsers incorporating this in the near future.
Have we missed anything? Let us know in the comments below.
