Well, Internet Explorer 9 has been out for a short while now, and my verdict has jelled. Internet Explorer 9 is Microsoft's most recent browser, but unless you mess about with browser games it isn't exactly a blessing to the accounting business. It's been a couple of years since Microsoft has run out a full version upgrade of it's web browser. One would reckon that in years they would have done significantly better. This update is late and falls short. With the dawn of CSS3 and HTML5 something certainly needed to be done. In this article, we'll take a look at IE9 and try to understand how it will change the way accounting websites are designed.
Faster Graphics
The biggest improvement to IE9 is also the most useless to me as an accounting website designer. Still, in the interest of fairness and balance let's take a look at hardware acceleration. This feature is actually well executed... if you have a machine that will run it. If you have ever played a Facebook game like Farmville, you'll notice that your browser will likely encounter lag or a drop in frames per second (FPS) when you were viewing an area of the game that had a lot of activity. With hardware acceleration this lag or drop in FPS should be reduced or not even happen!
Got Vista?
This really ticks me off. We could use IE9 to it's full (if limited) potential and you may very well not be able to see the changes. IE9 doesn't support the XP operating system. This is a big deal from a web designers point of view. XP is more than 40% of the market so a LOT of users can't benefit from the browsers new functionality. Next in line was Windows 7 at around 26% and then Windows Vista at roughly 14% market share. It makes no sense that IE9 won't work with XP. There are more XP users than Vista and Win 7 combined!
Epic Fail
There's no way to be nice about this. IE9's CSS3 support is a HUGE disappointment. CSS is a "style sheet language" that allows document standards like fonts, colors etc to be defined with defaults and standards specific to that document. Unlike Hardware Acceleration CSS3 offers a lot of new opportunities in improving the look and feel of your accounting websites. IE9 has completely failed to deliver on CSS3 support. At best it could be called "partial support", but given Microsoft's resources and competitors the word "lame" seems more accurately descriptive. When Microsoft was boasting that IE9 works with HTML5 and CSS3, I was starting to think that Microsoft was getting with the times. Nope.
Shame on you, Microsoft!
Rating: 2 stars
Sheer performance makes IE9 a significant improvement from previous versions of Internet Explorer, but that doesn't do me a lot of good as a CPA website designer. I'm furious that they chose not to support XP; and they're not fooling anyone: this was a choice. The CSS3 support just made me wince. IE9 is only a marginal improvement, worth downloading and using if you're currently on IE8 but certainly not worthy of the fanfare it received and certainly not on par competing browsers with Firefox and Chrome.
I still don't recommend using Internet Explorer. It's ok for casual users, but for the rest of us it's still too dumbed down. Even if you have an OS that can run Internet Explorer 9 there's no rationale for using it when Firefox and Chrome are online and free. I'm continuing to advise my clients to download and use Firefox, but keep an eye on Chrome...
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