Upgrading from Internet Explorer 8 to Internet Explorer 9 went smoothly with no problems during installation. Internet Explorer 9 preserves most of the previous browser settings such as your home page and favorites. The installation re-enables “Suggested Sites” which I disabled in each of the previous browser versions. The “Suggested Sites” feature is a Microsoft “Web Slice” that offers to find other sites based on the browsing data the browser sends to Microsoft–such as your IP and the current page you’re browsing. It does a terrible job with”suggestions”, nearly always just barely in vague context with the current page. The “Suggested Sites” feature sends off your browsing history to Microsoft to make the ‘suggestions’, which smacks of privacy violation.
So, in exchange for your privacy, Microsoft gets to suggest where you should be browsing. I have never liked this feature, even if it actually worked. When used while InetDaemon.Com is the page currently loaded, it offered three different links on how to wire a phone jack in your home. Vaguely in the right ballpark, but not even close to what InetDaemon.Com contains–tutorials on the Internet and networking, not phones.
The “Compatibility View” icon, the Refresh icon and the Stop button are all fitted neatly into the URL/Address field. Nice and compact, but took me a few seconds to recognize them the first time I saw the browser.
The In Private Browsing, Phishing Filter and SmartScreen Filter functions have been moved under the “Tools > Safety” menu. Also added to the Safety menu is the “Active-X Filtering” option which allows you to turn off all use of Active-X controls and enable Active-X selectively on a per site basis. This is a good thing because Active-X controls have long been the hackers surest way to get into Windows computers. Nice that it took 9 versions to finally give users the ability to selectively enable or disable them based on the website you’re currently browsing, not to disable the technology entirely as was the case in the past.