Internet Explorer 9 Beta Review

Even though the arrival of Firefox and Chrome did a lot of damage to its reputation and popularity Internet Explorer has remained one of the most widely used web browser (simply because it is bundled with all versions of Windows). It was slow, ugly and was flooded with virus attacks. People were eagerly waiting for a better, safer option. That’s when Firefox was launched. It became very popular immediately and by 2008, about 20% percent of all the users switched to Firefox. Most people who stuck with Internet Explorer were ignorant about it. Later Google Chrome came out adding fuel to fire. I’ve seen web browser comparison charts without Internet Explorer. And some included it in the charts just to show how good the others are.
But Microsoft will not give up easily. Now they’ve come up with a NEW Internet Explorer. ‘Unleash a more beautiful web’. That’s what Microsoft has to say about the new IE 9.  I downloaded and installed it a few days after its launch.
As I launched the beta for the first time, I was welcomed by the addons -performance advisor which identifies addons that may be slowing down the browser and gives you the information you need to disable or fix it, directly from the Notification Bar itself. I disabled all of’em.
The new Internet Explorer is entirely different from the older versions which we are familiar with. The first thing you will notice is the absence of those old fashion menu bar and things like that on top of the window. The address bar and the search bar have now combined to form the ‘One Box’. So you'll only see what's essential to your browsing experience. I think MS took a few leaves out of Chrome’s book. The interface looks very good. The new IE responds a lot quicker than the previous ones and it also loads pages very quickly. Maybe not as quick as Chrome but still very fast. Tear Off Tabs is a feature in IE 9 that facilitates side by side comparison of two pages when needed. I found this very useful. Internet Explorer 9 has an integrated download manager and if you’re on Windows 7, you can pin websites to the taskbar for easy access.

Security and Reliability

They’ve improved the Smart Screen  Filter which is a security feature that protects you from phishing and malware.And most importantly it shows us warnings only based on the reputation of the files that we download. It is a very useful feature because IE was very annoying in the past, asking for a 1000 permissions to download a file. It offers private browsing which Firefox introduced a century ago. But still I’m happy to see that. Another feature they seem to have adopted from Chrome is tab isolation. With tab isolation, website crashes are isolated to individual tabs, not entire browser windows. If a site crashes on one tab, the rest of the browsing session isn't interrupted; instead, you keep browsing, undisturbed.

What’s advanced?
Internet Explorer 9 uses the Chakra Javascript engine.A distinctive feature of the engine is that it compiles scripts on a separate CPU core, parallel to the web browser. The engine will also be able to access the computer's graphics processing unit (GPU), in particular for 3D graphics and video.
Internet Explorer 9 introduces support for modern web standards, including:

• CSS3
• HTML5
• SVG
• ICC Color Profiles
• DOM L2 and L3
• ECMAScript5

Some cons

• It doesn’t run on XP. Only Vista and 7 are supported.
• It’s difficult to know whether the page is loading or not. The only indicator is the spinner on the left corner of the tab which is useless at certain situations.
• Not as quick as the competitors at times.
• Nothing very special in it to bring back the users who migrated to FF and Chrome (but a lot of reasons to stick with it :) ).
• Tabs are crammed.

With about 2 million downloads in just 2 days, it is proving to be a very good start for Internet Explorer 9. And this is just the beta version. I expect something even better from Microsoft in the near future.
Download
Download Internet Explorer 9 Beta from here 
Benchmark Results
Acid3 Test
1.Google Chrome
2.Internet Explorer 9 beta
3.Mozilla Firefox

SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark

1.Google Chrome
2.Internet Explorer 9 beta
3.Mozilla Firefox

The HTML5 test

1.Google Chrome
2.Mozilla Firefox
3.Internet Explorer 9 beta

 

PCLinuxOS - “The user friendly Linux”

The lack of user-friendliness of Linux has always been an issue that kept the common man away from it. The most common distros like Ubuntu,Debian are not user friendly at all. They makeup for it in other departments but one cant recommend it for newbies. The introduction of KDE solved the issue somewhat but many people still found it difficult to use and it had many stability issues too.

 

I found the PCLinuxOS (KDE) during my search for a user-friendly Linux distribution. I initially tested it on a virtual machine. I was very impressed by its looks and feel and I installed it onto my hard drive for further inspection. Officially forked from Mandriva Linux, this distro is a boon for newbies and the less geeky friends. It is just a matter of getting used with the interface. The interface is neat and good looking. All the primary apps except OpenOffice package (maybe due to its large size) are built into the OS. It works like Linux but feels like Windows and I didn’t experience any stability issues. If you’re new to the computer world or you want to try Linux for the first time, then this is the distro for you. When compared to most other distros, this one is much easier to use and understand. The installation procesure is easy and it can be tweaked according to your needs without entering a 1000 commands. I tried to alter a few basic settings and I could do it very easily. I couldn’t find anything complicated at the basic level. Of course it’s a Linux distro and you will face problems as you dig deep into it :-).

It comes with a good package of apps for the desktop user. Internet apps far outnumber the others in the main menu. They seem to be well aware of the needs of a desktop user. OpenOffice is a big package and it is more than one fifth the size of the OS image itself. That’s probably why they left it behind.

Mint is another distro popular for its friendly interface. It is based on Ubuntu and Debian (hence uses deb format whereas PCLOS uses rpm.the format has nothing to do with performance though) which makes it even more attractive. But in my opinion PCLOS is easier to configure and use. There are people who think otherwise.

You may give both the distros a try on a virtual machine and choose the one that suits you. If you don’t have time and energy for all that take my word and install PCLOS. It’s a decision you will never regret. All my geek friends have only good things to say about PCLOS. They cant be wrong.

 

Integrate Wikipedia To Google Search

Googlepedia is an extension for firefox and chrome that can dramatically change your searching experience. It displays the relevant Wikipedia article along with your search results on google. The search page will be divided into two equal parts. One portion shows the search results and the relevant Wikipedia article is shown on the other. You can expand or shrink the article as you wish. Clicking the links in the Wikipedia article will trigger new Google searches, so you can dig deep into the topic. But you should always use the built in search box in Firefox(located at the top) and the omnibox in chrome (the combined search and address bar ie. the address bar itself) to get the results in this manner. I highly recommend this extension as all it does is place a very relevant Wikipedia article in place of those boring Google adwords.:)

The complete list of features are below

* Turns internal Wikipedia links into Google search links
* Uses Google's I'm Feeling Lucky(tm) feature to find relevant articles
* Links images directly to their full-sized versions
* Removes Google AdWords
* Can be expanded to take the full width of the page
* Uses your local language Wikipedia based on the Google language
* Hide button to disable Googlepedia
* NEW Firefox 3 support

Download

Googlepedia for Firefox

Googlepedia for Chrome