No rabbits needed: Pull these IE9 tricks out of your hat

Here, presented for your entertainment (and for the benefit of anyone who values your productivity, organization, or creative flair), are five downright magical tricks built right into Internet Explorer 9.

Stash these tricks up your sleeve or in your hat, then pull them out as needed—and treat yourself (and anyone who's watching) to a truly astounding browsing experience:

1. The side-by-side presto. When you need to view two windows at once, use tear-off tabs. Simply grab a tab with your mouse and drag it to an edge of your desktop, and watch it mystically become its own IE9 window. Not quite sleight-of-hand, but it looks like it (details on this trick).

View tabs side by side

2. The "Gets them every time." Got a site you've come to depend on? Pin it to the taskbar—simply drag the tab. See how it's done.

Pin sites by dragging the tab to the taskbar

3. The Quiet Diversion. This trick has already been done for you. Expecting a pop-up dialog or alert but finding it virtually invisible? IE9 didn't make it disappear, but probably placed it in the Notification bar where you can deal with it only if you want to (full explanation).

New notification bar appears at the bottom of the window

4. The Hastened Hop (no bunny required). Pinned sites (see #2 above) can have Jump lists, too, if the site's creators have set things up for it. Just right-click on the site's taskbar icon and you'll see recently-visited pages which you can preview and hop-to, just as with other Windows 7 Jump lists. Learn more.

Jump List for a pinned site

5. The Mind-reading Navigator. Click the New tab button and IE9 knows what you're thinking, so to speak, displaying the sites you use most for your selection. Site-inspired color-coding and other choices make browsing faster and easier. Details on this little gem.

The New Tab Page intelligently displays frequently visited sites

Note—all of this is possible without the use of misdirection, stacked decks or other gimmickry. In fact, technically, it's not magic. It just seems like it sometimes.

Keith