7 ways to improve IE9

  1. Links dragged to the desktop should just create old-school shortcuts and not site-mode IE as well, whereas those dragged to the taskbar OR start menu should create pinned sites.
  2. Once Silverlight is available in 64-bit, please allow me to choose 64-bit IE as my default and stick to it. e.g. Pinned sites only open in 32-bit IE. Also, pinned sites should allow me to use plugins/addons other than Flash/Silverlight as well. Currently, my finger-print login system (DigitalPersona + Authentec) works on regular IE9 (both versions) for site logins but not in pinned sites / site-mode which is really annoying. I understand the performance concerns behind this design, but atleast allow me to choose to turn that on.
  3. IE now finally allows me to drag links to a new tab directly. However, it is not smart enough to recognize non-hyperlinked site addresses and allow me to drag or right-click them to open new tabs (Firefox 4 does this). IE has Accelerators for a while now, so why do they not work in this case. At least let me drag text to the address bar.
  4. The title of the active tab should be shown in the IE9 window title bar. At least make this an option. As it is the tab bar does not have enough room to show it and hovering over tabs to see the tool-tip for the title is both clunky and not possible using Touch.
  5. The chrome (glass) part of the IE9 frame around the address + title bar can be shrunk ever so slightly. There is a tiny bit of glass between the windows close/restore/min buttons and the address bar that is unnecessary. They should not be on the same row of course (no room for tabs) but just reduce that little gap.
  6. The little white strip separating the tab/address bar from the page is really annoying and distracting, especially on dark-themed sites. For a browser that wants the frame to recede and the sites to shine, this strip is really annoying. There are other ways to differentiate the active tab in a tab group (not distinct enough right now anyway), e.g. similar to how Office 2010 highlights active tabs in the ribbon, by extending a little color bleed upward into the frame above the tab.
  7. The new notification bar is much better than the one in IE8. It could be made even better by emulating the Windows 7 notification area/system tray behavior. It’d be really great if, like that system, the IE9 notification bar dimmed over time if it were ignored. It doesn’t have to go away entirely (good reasons for that) until the user browses away or closes the tab etc., but it can certainly get out of the way more by dimming.

Also, a little tip, because I see people complaining about not being able to close inactive tabs without switching to them first:

You can right-click on any tab and close it from the context-menu without switching to it. I’d rather not have the close-tab button replicated on every single tab when the tab area is already somewhat smaller with IE9 (I use a 12-inch screen on high-DPI because I have a HP touchsmart tx2 tablet). For touch control, you can press and hold on a tab or do a one-two tap (tap with one finger, then quickly with another without releasing the first tap) to get the same context-menu for closing tabs. Of course, there should also be a keyboard shortcut to do the same. If you know of one, please let me know.

Tags: ie9