That's the new Internet Explorer 9 beta (with Google Chrome behind that; you can see my extensions through the transparent navigation bar). Wait a minute. That can't be Internet Explorer, because it's actually displaying the Bitts logo on top. And that can't be Internet Explorer, because it looks... good! Well it is Internet Explorer. It's the brand new beta released today and I'm going to go through all the details as well as my in-depth opinions.

First Impressions (Design & Speed)
The first impressions of a browser will almost always be speed and looks, and that's exactly what I want to talk about in this section. I really thought I would dislike the tabs immediately next to the address bar, but now that I've used IE9 I actually really like it. It's definitely a screen real estate saver. It's not going to be for everyone, particularly users with tons of tabs open at one time, but in my view it's a nice change throughout the entire selection of web browsers. Another thing I like are the three icons to the right of the window: Home, Favorites, and Tools. They aren't too subtle for you to not realize they are there, but not too prominent that they would be visually distracting. The Tools menu is simple and to the point as well. What I really don't like is the huge blue Back button on the top left. In fact it's so big, Microsoft couldn't even fit the damn thing on the bar, so it's cut off on the bottom. Just one more gripe: tab groups. I always appreciated how if there were two tabs open with related website addresses, IE would group them using a color to highlight them, but hated how much it actually stood out. Things appear to have gotten worse.

As for speed, start up time was definitely faster than Internet Explorer 8 in my tests, but slightly slower than Chrome.

Performance
As you probably know, one of the main focuses of Internet Explorer 9 is to catch up to the other browsers. For full performance details and statistics, you can view my battle between IE9 and Google Chrome right here. Keep in mind, this was between the IE9 Developer Preview and Google Chrome 5.0. Since then, Chrome has gotten a bit faster in 6.0 and IE9 has stayed about the same. I can tell you that in regular page loading tests, IE9 had no noticeable differences from Chrome for the most part. Some sites were faster than Chrome and some were slower. I find it particularly funny that IE9 was fairly slow in loading apple.com.

New Features

Courtesy: Engadget

I would love to tell you that the Download manager is my favorite feature, but since it's been in nearly every other browser for quite some time now, it's almost a joke that it's finally being added to Internet Explorer. I think my favorite feature is the ability to pin websites to the start menu and taskbar. Instead of pinning a tab in the browser window, this gives you an entire new window with the icon being that website's logo. It's definitely handy, and if you are looking to switch from Chrome to IE9, it's a pretty good substitute to having Gmail and Facebook extensions on your navigation bar. Plus, if the website supports it, opening a jump list on Windows 7 will give you individual actions for that particular site.

Tab management has improved as well. I really like that if playing a YouTube video, you can take the tab and drag it around or put it somewhere else or open a new window and the video keeps playing. This was first pointed out by Engadget, I tried it, and now I like it.

I also like the new Add-ons manager, search suggestions in the address bar, top visited sites on the new tab page, and just how easy everything is to access. In Internet Explorer 8, to be blunt, you could completely get lost. IE9 dramatically improves that experience.

Security
Not much really to discuss here. The SmartScreen filter detects and warns you of any possibly malicious downloads. I didn't test this because obviously I didn't want to take the risk of downloading a harmful file onto my PC, but I'd imagine it'd work just find for the average user. Also, the new notification bar at the bottom is nice and less disrupting, but I think for security purposes would be better at the top of the browser to make it easier to see.

Overall
I have to say, I'm definitely impressed with Internet Explorer 9. I think I might actually recommend it over Safari to be my #2 browser choice. Google Chrome is slightly in the lead, and with new releases every six weeks I'm sure they'll take no time catching up on IE9's advantages. I love Internet Explorer 9's increased HTML5 and CSS3 support and it received a 95/100 on the Acid3 web standards test. Plus, who could forget the simply elegant new UI, faster load times, and new features? It's a huge leap forward over IE8. Microsoft has proven that they definitely take the browser market seriously and with this beta, I'd say they are definitely still in the game.