Internet Explorer 9 beta is now available and it includes a number of new features and improvements. One of the most important changes is that the toolbars have been moved to the bottom of the screen. This makes it easier to see what you’re working on, especially if you have a large browser window open. Another new feature in IE9 beta is the ability to show other toolbars in Internet Explorer’s main window. This can be useful if you want to quickly access some common tools or if you want to keep track of which tools are active in a particular web page. One other important change in IE9 beta is that it now supports drag-and-drop operations between different web pages and windows. This makes it much easier to transfer data between different web pages and browsers, whether you’re working on a project at work or you’re trying to share an online document with friends.
Always Show the Menu Bar
You’ll notice now that when you hit Alt or Alt+T the menu bar will be displayed but won’t stay on. If you like to always have the Menu bar displayed, we can do it with a hack to the Registry.
Remember before making any changes to the Registry create a Restore Point and / or back it up.
Make sure you’re closed out of IE 9, then open the Start menu and type regedit and hit Enter.
When the Registry Editor opens navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft and create a new Key and name it Internet Explorer.
Under Internet Explorer create another new Key and name it Main.
When you’re done the path will look like this.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
Highlight Main and create a new DWORD Value.
Give it the Value name AlwaysShowMenus and give it a Value data of “1” then click OK.
Now you can close out of Registry Editor, and open IE 9. When you first open it you won’t see the Menu Bar, so hit Alt or Alt+T again and it will come up and will always be there from now on anytime you launch IE 9.
Or like in this example we just want the Menu Bar showing and not the other ones. Keep in mind that the Menu Bar will always be displayed now, if you want to reverse it, go back into your Registry settings you created and change the AlwaysShowMenus Value to “0”.
Always Display Command, Status, and Favorites
With the new version of Internet Explorer, Microsoft is going for more of a simplistic interface. This might be welcome to some, but if you’ve been a long time IE user, you might miss the various toolbars. To display the Command, Status, and Favorites bar, simply right-click an empty area next to a tab and check which one(s) you want displayed. Then you might want to lock the toolbars as well.
Now anytime when you open IE 9 the bars you selected will show up.
This should work with IE 9 Beta 32 or 64-bit versions. Hopefully this will be fixed in the final release of IE 9.
Thanks to Vishal for figuring this out. He also has the Registry Script you can download for enabling and disabling the Registry Setting.
