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The Russian press site of software giant Microsoft may have gotten a little overzealous today and posted a screen shot showing off the new UI for Internet Explorer 9. The preview builds have this far shown no evolution of the interface, but everyone was expecting some big changes come the beta. Immediately after the image was posted, it was pulled back down, but ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley managed to grab the image first.
What we're looking at here is a vastly different look for Microsoft's browser. Frankly, that's a good start as IE8 was starting to look ancient compared to other browsers. The window is much more minimalist. Toward the left there are back and forward buttons, then immediately to the right is a unified Search/URL bar. As we continue across the top of the window, we come upon the tab area, which is on the same level as the URL bar. We can assume this area will dynamically shrink the Search/URL bar as more tabs are open. It could get cluttered, but will offer more space for the web page.
There really isn't much more to the interface. The Home, Favorites, and Menu icons are over on the right, much like Chrome. The top of the window has the Windows Aero glass effect going on, also like Chrome. The Russian site also mentions "tear off tabs" which will be an extension of Aero Snap for viewing tabs in a split screen view. We're very interested to see how this browser looks when the bets is finally released. Sources have previously stated that should happen in September. What are your thoughts about the new Internet Explorer UI?
Image via ZDNet
Comments are closed on this article
diamondtrim
August 26, 2010 at 6:53am
As this screenshot is new I understand the excitement. What I do not understand is all this talk about a browser's ui. Except tabs, the changes have been minimal over time and they have not changed the ease of use of the browser by much. I think the trick is to offer the user an interface that is very easy to customize. Opera & Firefox are leaders in this aspect. Everybody else comes in second.
Nimrod
August 26, 2010 at 1:59am
Every time i try to open IE in W7 i get some dumas popup that i dont even bother to read. It just reminds about how much i hate IE so i close it and open another firefox window.I stopped paying attention to or even caring about IE a long, long, looong time ago. And no, ive never once looked back.And btw these comment boxes suck. No SP and all my right click functions are broken in it? Thats kind of an embarrassing fail for a site that belongs to MaxPC
publicimage
August 25, 2010 at 9:51pm
I'm liking the streamlined top, that would be great for netbooks where screen real estate is at a premium. I'm also fond of the oversized "back" arrow... it looks like that's becoming a constant across lots of MS software these days... WP7, Zune, . Although I was hoping they would "Metro" it up some more.
KJJBA
August 25, 2010 at 5:45pm
I'm suprised there is no integrated search bar that seems to be the worst part of chrome and I wonder if IE9 works the same as chrome search does
