Dean ​Hachamovitc​h: IE9 Questions and Answers - The C9 Questions Thread

1) How many beta versions are you going to release until the final Internet Explorer 9 is released? Will there be any RC versions?

2) When do you expect Internet Explorer 9 final will be released?

3) Will there be a possibility to set popular sites permanently instead of changing them according to number of visiting?

4) Will there be a possibility to have more popular sites than 10? I can have 25 favourite websites in Opera now but there are only 10 popular websites in IE9 beta.

5) The Internet Explorer 9 Beta looks really good but there is a lot of unused space between adress bar and the edge of the monitor. Are you going to adjust it or interface is final?

6) Will there be a possibility to control Internet Explorer 9 by mouse gestures? I'm used to on it in Opera and I would miss it in IE9.

On a scale of possible to hahahah-never, how plausible is it for the IE9 interface to evolve to show a little more functionality while still being sleek and elegant (the way the Windows 7 evolved through some UI changes over its development cycle); my mockup at http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/500-words-into-the-future-10014052/why-ie9-is-too-simple-for-me-10018730/ is cheap and ugly, but I wonder if (data driven!) the stats on use of the Quick Access Toolbars in apps that have them support the idea of using something like that?

hi everyone!

i'd just like to point out a few easy-to-implement features that would make life much easier:

1. "copy image location" option on right clicking a picture. a few of my friends who blog and use forums went back to their old browsers bacause of that feature missing
2. the download manager should have an auto-clear option for finished downloads
3. you could easily fit another row of "your most popular sites"  

...and some bugs:

• CSS is really messed up. almost every site i visited had it's layout broken in IE9. even facebook
• ASP.net (and MVC) + IE9 not working at all. had to use firefox for development. there's just a message "IE cannot display the page"
• x86 version with ~5 tabs open used >600MB of RAM 
• some javascript image presenters and rich text editors don't work. when you click on a tag shortcut it won't put the tag on the current cursor location (it puts the tag at the beggining)

overall i'm digging the new browser, big improvement on IE8 and if the RTM gets some of the features mentioned + CSS/javascript errors fixed i could imagine a lot of users switch to IE9.

This is hard to explain, but it's a major reason why I don't use IE. I use WOT (Web of Trust) and in Firefox you can choose if you can see the icon or not, which you can do on IE, BUT if you hide the WOT icon, it disables it, and I can't move the WOT icon to the Menu toolbar, or anything.

Will this issue be resolved??

Will Internet Explorer have Spell Checker? If not, why not? I mean the technology is there, in Windows Live Writer or Office, for example. If I use spell-check add-ons, my broser is prone to become slower.

Do you plan to have IE score a 100 in the acid3 test?

The purpose of the IE9 UI is to let the site shine and the frame blend in to the backgound. THe result is good...until we make a slight customization, like enabling the favorite bar or the command bar. Those toolbars do not blend in nicely to the background, and the icons of the command bar are bright, unlike the new home, favorite, and tools icons. Why does the command bar have redundant buttons, shuch as the home button. This ruins the browser's consistancies. Power users, like me, are discorouged from enabling the command bar simply because of the inconsistancies.

Is it possible to restore the sitres that I deleated from the thumbnails in the new tab page?

I am unable to give feedback from teh IE9 browser even though I have connected my user account with my Live ID. I have live wave 4 installed.

The development cycles of the other browsers are very rapid. Google plans to release a stable version of Chrome ever six weeks. Do you think IE can "keep up"?

Are you anxious to see if Mozilla actually sends in a cake to the IE team when IE9 ships?

1.)  Now that the IE user interface is hardware accelerated, it would technically be possible to have hardware accelerated "windowless" mode of Silverlight and and Flash.  Though the plugins would have to be updated to work in concert with this, do you see this as being something supported in the future?

2.) Can we expect new APIs to have IE render to a Direct3D surface as to have hardware accelerated and GPU composable IE in our Direct3D based applications (ie WPF/Direct3D/etc)?  Something like the OLE IViewObject, but for D3D.

I don't understand how to do a search in IE9.

Using it on my Tablet PC, I type(on screen keyboard, and no quotes) into the address bar "phone" and I hit a google search page with the results for phone. I type in "ferrari" and I get sent directly to the ferrari homepage. But if I didn't want the ferrari site itself, I click the back button, and I don't get sent to the google results, I get sent back to the New Tab page.

@Charles:

Question 1

Why did IE team not  just copy Google Chrome's style Tabs? Currently, the IE9 design feels really cluttered and can't read my [Tab] titles.

I love Google Chrome style tabs because I can just move my mouse pointer to the *very* top of the screen without having to aim my pointer.

Question 2

Why is IE9 still NOT supporting [Ctrl] + [PgUp] and [Ctrl] + [PgDown] to switch between tabs?
I really hate that I can't use the *basic* simple keyboard shortcuts that all other Browsers seem to have.

Question 3

When IE9 is being worked on, did the IE team think about adding in AddOn support like FireFox?
No matter what, FireBug still is the #1 must-have web-developer AddOn.

Is HTML5 the only thing being focused on in IE9?

1)  Will platform previews continue after RTW release so we can see where your are heading for the next release? You seem to be about a 6 week or so window for the platform previews currently.

2) Any possiblity of smaller update window between releases? eg will we be liklty to see IE 9.1 or 9.5 that is smaller in scope but quicker to market?

1) The blue border of the IE developer element indicator is too hard to see.

2) IE developer is kind of fugly.

3) Wish to have a much simplier addon manager. I actually hope they are all exposed, like they will always show up on the toolbar, and only way to hide them is to click "disable" or "remove". And maybe show CPU and memory meter on each one of them (addon bar) if I turn on developer mode. If too much sceen spaces, entire toolbar panel can autohide (not individual addon). And they expend/show when mouse over. Prefer at bottom of browser, but. customizable to all 4 sides of browser.

4) IE6, 7, 8, 9 modes, Doc 5, 7,8,9 modes. They are so confusing.

5) Tabs don't have enough screen spaces.

6) My favorites no longer at left. In IE9, I kept clicking Home by accident, instead of my Fav.

Add

7) is jump this support really necessary? feels pointless to me. I have never used jump list. I only used WMP preview play button.

@Charles:I have three questions:

1. Why does my 'old' graphics card ATI Radeon 1950XTX (with Vista drivers) supports hardware acceleration for games but Windows Internet Explorer 9 Beta (beginning with Preview 3) refuses to use it?
2. Did the IE9 team think about usuability in terms of printing or resizing a webpage by using touch input?
3. IE9 has a new user interface. What do you think about consistent (or semi-consistent) user interfaces like MS Paint <> MS Office <>...? feature suggestion: I'd love to see the Office Backend integrated into IE9.

@andreasbalzer:

At #3 suggestion, You mean the same old Office Plugin that allows user to open Office files in web browser? Those are evil IMO, I am glad they no longer do browser plugin. I don't hate plugin, I hate how people use it and causing a lot of problems.

As for ribbon, it is too thick. But yeah, if toolbars are done in that way, the thickness is locked in. I agree. This is probably better. They could default MiniRibbon instead of expended ribbon.

IE9 compared to the last versions of IE is definitly a huge change to web developers.
It supports more standards than the others - and is more state of the art.
But: Those were CSS2.1 standards. The

The features implemented for usability (such as task bar integration) are rocking features - but they are necessarily needed because the favorites were not any kind of usable.

Wouldn't it be great if such standards were OpenSource instead of using a proprietary -ms vendor prefix? I mean, the heap is rising immediately for websites - depending on Apple and Microsoft.

Should we use thousands of meta-Tags to have our site compatible to all kind of operating systems? Please think about it...that's why the WHATWG was created.

Are you considering something like a "Ultra Mode" (looking at Maxthon) to support CSS3 in WebKit mode?

@danwellman: IE6 is dead. That's it. It's about 10 years old. Would you use a 10 year old mobile?

8 hours ago,stun wrote

Why is IE9 still NOT supporting [Ctrl] + [PgUp] and [Ctrl] + [PgDown] to switch between tabs?
I really hate that I can't use the *basic* simple keyboard shortcuts that all other Browsers seem to have.

Because it uses Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab, like ever other tab control in Windows since Win95 at least.

How difficult would it be to port large portions of IE9 to windows phone 7?

WP7 needs an awesome browser too!

Will we ever see some of the core features (CSS 3, HTML 5 and so on) make their way into some kind of Windows XP release or as developers do we need to prepare ourselves for another IE6 situation where a sizeable chunk of our customer base is stuck using outdated technology (meaning we're stuck developing outdated technology)?