IE9: Microsoft Strikes Back

After pretty much ignoring Internet Explorer for the last few years, I'm surprised to find myself using the latest and greatest version this morning. And so far? I like it.

The first thing I did once I got the new browser beta up and running was to check out my own site, where I've got a pretty good idea of what previously didn't work well (or at all) in IE. What I found surprised me:

What Works

• Surprisingly, Canvassa! IE9 runs my little HTML5 Canvas game quite well, in fact.
• My resume looks great. The only advanced feature it doesn't do right is liquid columns, but that's relatively minor, really.

What Doesn't Work

• My portfolio doesn't work. Time to revisit some of that code.
• The new "pinning a webpage as an app" functionality doesn't look very good for my site yet; I need to figure out what <meta> tags to include to make it look better.

Everything else seems to be working well. The new developer tools are nice, addon-disabling feature was pretty sweet, and the minimal browser chrome gets out of the way on my tiny netbook screen and lets the Web shine through. Overall, I've got to hand it to the IE team: this is a great step in the right direction, and I for one welcome the return of the Browser Wars... because Competition = Innovation.