Microsoft has been at pains to point out just how slimline the IE9 interface is -- it's a whole six pixels more svelte than Chrome! -- but its minimalistic sparseness comes at a price: you need a magnifying glass to see the buttons, and almost everything is hidden behind at least two or three mouse clicks.
Fortunately, there's plenty of keyboard shortcuts:
Alt+C -- pop open the Favorites/Feeds/History window
Alt+X -- pop open the Tools (Cog icon) menu
Alt+Left/Right -- move back/forward through your history
Ctrl+L -- sets your keyboard focus to the One Bar (address bar), and selects the current URL (ripe for Ctrl+C!)
Ctrl+Shift+L -- if you have a URL in your clipboard, this shortcut loads it; if you have a text string in your clipboard, it searches your default search engine for it (very cool)
Ctrl+D -- add the current page to your Favorites (bookmarks)
Ctrl+B -- organize your Favorites
Ctrl+J -- opens the Download Manager
Ctrl+K -- duplicates your current tab
Ctrl+Alt+P -- pop open an InPrivate Browsing window
Alt+N -- give focus to the new bottom-hugging Notification bar (then Enter for the first button, or Esc to dismiss it)
F12 -- open the (fantastic) developer console (and once it's open, and has focus, Alt+7/8/9/Q changes the rendering mode)
All of the usual key combos work, obviously: Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+N, Ctrl +, Ctrl -, and so on.