Five reasons to use Internet Explorer 9

Wondering whether to try the just-released beta of Internet Explorer 9? I've put the beta through its paces in a review for Computerworld. Here are five reasons IE9 is worth a try.

It's fast

IE 8 is slow and sluggish --- according SunSpider tests I ran a while back, it took about six times as long to complete SunSpider JavaScript tests as did its next slowest rival, Firefox 3.6.

It's sluggish no longer. Tests I ran on IE9 show that it's now faster than Firefox. It completed the benchmarks in an average time of 432 ms, faster than Firefox 4 beta, which completed them in 535 ms. It was still slower than Safari, Opera, and Chrome, but not by a wide margin: Safari completed them in 387 ms, Opera in 343 ms, and Chrome in 322 ms.


It's better-looking

IE9 features a cleaner-looking, stripped-down interface with tabs at the top. Gone are most buttons, menus, and controls. True, now all the browsers look basically the same, thanks to Chrome's interface innovation. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. And in IE9's case, it's a very good thing.

However, by default, a Bing toolbar is turned on, conflicting with the clean look. If you're not a fan of toolbars in general, or Bing specifically, it's easy enough to turn off.

It warns you about add-ons' performance problems

Add-ons can add a lot of overhead to browser load time and browsing time. Load down your browser with enough of them, and no matter the browser's basic speed, it can become sluggish.

IE9 has a very nice feature that automatically warns you via a pop-up when your add-ons increase load time and browsing time, and let you disable them. (If you want, you can later turn them on.) You can see the new tool in action, below. Other browsers, notably Firefox, would do well to follow suit, and develop tools like this as well.

It integrates with Windows 7

If you're a Windows 7 user, you'll find some useful features designed for that operating system. You can pin a Web site to the taskbar for easy launching, especially important in a world in which Web-based apps are replacing desktop apps.

When you launch a pinned site, IE9 automatically takes on the color of the site for its forward and back buttons, and displays the Web site's icon on the upper left of the browser.

In addition, developers can make use of the Windows 7 Jump List feature for pinned sites. So a news site, for example, could let people immediately navigate to a sports or technology section directly from the taskbar, without first having to launch the browser, and navigate.


It has a double-duty Address Bar

IE9 takes not just its new look from Chrome, but another innovation as well --- having the Address Bar do double-duty as a search box. So you can either type Web addresses or search terms. Microsoft calls it One Box. No matter what you call it, it's useful.

Source: blogs.computerworld.com

Rogue Antivirus Attack - Warning Microsoft

Microsoft is advising users to be wary of a rogue antivirus program that creates fake warnings that appear to come from the user's browser.

The program, called MSIL/Zeven by Microsoft, detects what browser is being used and then launches a page virtually identical to pages generated by Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox that warn users when they are about to surf to a malicious site.

A key difference is that there will be a place on the page for users to click to download an antivirus program to protect them.

"All the 'updates' point to a copy of MSIL/Zeven that promises to provide 'a new approach to windows detection,'" blogged Daniel Radu of Microsoft Malware Protection Center Dublin. "Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome do not offer such a solution when a Website is blocked. When installed, the product [Win7 AV] looks very genuine: It allows you to scan files, tells you when you're behind on doing your updates, and enables you to tweak your security and privacy settings. ... However, the features don't work; everything is there just to look nice, not to offer any kind of protection."

When another warning appears telling users about malicious files discovered on the machine, users are told the files cannot be deleted until they update. The idea is to get users to pay for the full version of the product, which has the ability to download updates, Radu wrote. However, these files "are totally bogus."

"If you decide to buy the product, this rogue opens an HTML window enabled with 'Safe Browsing Mode' and high strength encryption to 'help' and 'protect' you while completing your purchase," he blogged. "Of course, these features are totally worthless and don't actually do anything in the way of securing your credit card details."

The main page of the fake AV itself is designed to look similar to the Microsoft Security Essentials Web page, Radu noted.

"The people behind it have even copied the awards received by Microsoft Security Essentials and link to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center - pretty sneaky of them," he blogged.

Microsoft couldn't say much about the attack vector the mind or minds behind Zeven are using to infect people in the first place, but told eWEEK users should keep their computers protected with up-to-date antivirus.

Source: securitywatch.eweek.com