Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 9 RC 229
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate. The new RC build includes a Tracking Protection feature, which gives users the option to control what third-party site content can track them when they're online, as well as a new ActiveX filtering option, which allows users to turn on/off ActiveX plug-ins. Best of all, Microsoft has addressed what was arguably the biggest complaint with the new version: if you want your tabs on a separate line from the address box, there's now an option to turn that on from the right click menu at the top of the browser. At the same time, IE9 RC is significantly faster than the beta version. Furthermore, many site rendering issues have been fixed, although we can't say that it's working perfectly. Last but not least, the new build includes hundreds of bug fixes."
Does it support... (Score:3, Interesting)
...OGG and VP8 out of the box now?
Excellent (Score:2, Interesting)
Power users may not want it, but that is not important. What is important is that average users at home now have access to a secure and well performing browser. No more shitty toolbars or Active X crap, just a fast browser that works.
I don't like the limited space for tabs, but people who use IE are generally not the types to have a large amount of tabs open at once.
Mention should also be made of the security aspects. IE and Chrome are the two most secure browsers by far. They are the only browsers to fully support WIC and to make use of ASLR and DEP. Firefox 4 has support for DEP but not ASLR or WIC, nor does Opera.
People are going to bash Microsoft because they are Microsoft, but they have really done a good job here.
Re:When can I get the final version? (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean one of these [wikipedia.org]?
"The in gear acceleration times are 50-70 mph in 5.6 seconds, quicker than BMW's 330i which takes 6.0 seconds. 20-40 mph in 2.4 seconds is as quick as the Lotus Elise 111R. Despite this the Fabia vRS can achieve better than 6.2 L/100 km (46 mpg-imp; 38 mpg-US). If driven carefully some drivers have experienced MPG rates of 65-70 mpg over long periods. The Fabia VRS has a top speed of approximately 130 mph (210 km/h)."
Nothing wrong with that I'd say?
Re:What's MS up to? (Score:5, Interesting)
It hooks into the .Net APIs that are on the client OS. I'm thinking about it in terms of a lot of the applications that I have dealt with over the last couple of years. They all seem to be built in .Net, and leverage IIS and SQL. The client workstations all need .Net and IIS for the application to work.
I think it is a lot like what Google is doing with Chrome. Google has a vision about what applications and services they want to offer via their platform. Rather than pin their hopes on "browser vendors" to adopt specific ways of doing things, Google made their own browser. That browser supports the functionality that Google devs need.
Re:What's MS up to? (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft is a company made up of hundreds of development groups working on hundreds of products in a dozen divisions.
Most of the people who are on those teams care about the work they're doing, care about the products they release and want to release the best products possible.
So, relative to IE9, what it Microsoft up to? If I had to guess, a hard-working team of engineers, program managers and test engineers are busting their asses to make the best browser they can. They care more about standards than I'd hazard a guess most people on Slashdot do, and they want to make something that gives the best experience there is on the web.
There isn't some grand Microsoft conspiracy. IE6 wans't about vendor lockin, it was about needing to support scenarios that customers were asking for. The younger crowd on here may not remember it, but back in the late 90's, IE was the best browser out there. Microsoft's dev tools were pushing intranet development long before open source tools caught up. These days its easy to look at what people want to do with browsers and say "jeez, I can use XmlHttpRequest, and JSON, and *insert buzzword here* to do it". But in 1998, those technologies *didn't exist*. And, you may be surprised, people weren't any dumber than today. Developers wanted to be able to do the same things people are doing today, and Microsoft provided them. IE6 was a point on that path where they needed to support their corporate customers while trying to match advancing standards. For every web developer griping about standards, there were *paying* enterprise developers who needed the backwards compatibility.
So why does Microsoft need a browser? Because, frankly, developers need the controls. They need the network-level APIs. Lots of parts of Windows need to display HTML content, and no sane OS vendor will leave the security of their system and the functionality of core parts of it to a 3rd party. You could just as easily ask why Apple bothers with Safari!
Thinking it was some thing nefarious is just falling blindly into the anti-Microsoft FUD on places like Slashdot, and doesn't reflect the reality of how IE has progressed over the years.