Microsoft platform strategy adviser Hong Choing explained that the main idea behind the IE9 is to get the browser out of the way of the content. In other words, the web content should be out front, while the browser takes up minimal space on the screen. The large bar of icons and windows and tools at the top of the browser has been reduced to a simple strip of space containing an address bar and little else. (Also see )

At the bottom of the screen you see a row of square icons for various web pages. You create these icon links yourself. When you go to a web page you like, you can just drag a piece of content by the address bar down to the bottom of the screen and "pin" it to the stripe of browser there. The icons themselves are dynamic. For instance, if you are on another page with a download completes on the page corresponding with the icon, the icon starts to blink. If the icon is for an e-mail page, a number appears over the icon showing the number of new e-mails in your inbox.

When you mouse over these icons they show a list of various parts of the website so you can go to a specific page with a single click. You can choose these items as well.

For the website developer, Choing says, it costs only a few hours of programming and a couple hours of testing to build the "pin" functionality into their site.

Microsoft borrowed a trick from Chrome by making the address bar double as a search box. You begin entering a search term, and the Bing search engine immediately begins pulling up real-time search results as you type. If the list of "guesses" contains the content you're looking for, you just click on it and you're there.