Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 Beta Released

Microsoft pompously announced the release of Internet Explorer 9 beta browser at the Beauty of the Web event held in San Francisco. The all new Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) boasts of a fresh user interface, support for latest web standards, hardware acceleration and a new rendering engine. Of course there's support for the HTML5 and CSS 3.0 standards for a faster and richer web browsing experience.

Here comes the tricky party - IE9 beta will work only on Windows Vista and Windows 7 based systems. So don't bother to download and install it on your Windows XP or lower OS based machine. Microsoft has added support for 33 different languages with the new IE9 beta that can be downloaded from here.

Cleaner look:

 
At the Beauty of the Web event, Microsoft Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch stated, "With IE9 we are unboxing the web-browser user experience by using the whole PC to browse and putting sites at the center of your experience." New IE9 sports a cleaner look and continues the current web browser design norm of keeping all tabs on top. The Address (URL) bar has been unified to enter website URL and also search with suggestions. By default, IE9 has Bing as the search engine but you can always change to choose Google, Yahoo or any other search engine listed for the browser.

Hardware Acceleration for HTML5:

With IE9, Microsoft brings hardware acceleration for graphics and text just like Google Chrome 6 and the recent Firefox 4.0 beta releases. Hardware acceleration means making the best of integrated or discrete graphics processor for displaying a website's graphics and text faster in the browser. With support for HTML5 standard, embedded video and audio elemental content can be rendered faster with the help of the system's GPU (graphics processing unit).

Basically, the embedded video and audio elements loaded websites act like your Windows PC applications and make the best of your integrated/discrete graphics.

Pinned Websites:

Web services like Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and others that you access frequently can be pinned to your Taskbar on Windows Vista or Windows 7. Once pinned, you can access the websites directly from the pinned location on your Taskbar. You can drag a tab or URL from the Address bar to pin on the taskbar. The Pinned Websites work just like the native Windows Applications and are pretty much similar to Opera Widgets that work even when the browser is not running. For multiple pinned websites, users can access them in the form of Jump Lists - one of the Windows 7 features. 

One Box or Unified Addressbar:

Microsoft has integrated the search box into the Address bar to call it One Box. It's the place where you can enter the URL of website, search for keyword, access the browser history or favorites from One Box. By default, the keystrokes fed in the One Box are kept private. This means a tighter control on your own data from the search providers.

Modern Web Standards Support:

Microsoft promises dramatic speed improvements with new optimized document-object model along with the web browser's new JavaScript Engine - Chakra. If you have a dual-core or quad-core based computer system, Chakra JavaScript Engine will make the best of all cores by parallel interpretation, compilation and execution of a website's code. Richer websites can be created since IE9 supports latest web standards like HTML5, CSS3, SVG and ECMAScrip5. Microsoft has been bashed badly over the incompatibility of Web Standards in IE6 since years but seems like the company has given tight reply to those complaints.

Smarter Download Manager:

IE9 boasts to be the first browser with SmartScreen feature integration. This SmartScreen feature checks if the files have any malicious code before downloading them and then accordingly, puts up the risk warnings if they contain any potential malicious code. Basically, the file is scanned for malware and verified if it comes from a trustworthy source. IE9 then uses reputation data to show potentially malicious files.

Add-on Performance Advisor:

Web browsers support add-ons that offer different functionalities to the user. While Firefox 4.0 betas are going big on the add-on manager, IE9 also sports an amazing feature for add-ons enthusiasts. The new Add-on Performance Advisor will point out the slower and sluggish add-ons that slow down your browsing performance. If any add-on takes more than 0.2 seconds to load, you will be given a choice to either let them run or quit them.

Hang Recovery:

IE9 sports yet another Google Chrome feature that has been dubbed as Hang Recovery. If one of your browser tabs crashes or hangs, you can still continue browsing on other tabs. Yes, it's practically the same in Chrome. The hung tab gets isolated and goes under automatic crash recovery. 

Compatibility View:
 
With the launch of the new browser and also updated web standards, it takes ages for majority of websites to stay universally compatible. To overcome the issue of viewing incompatible websites, use the new Compatibility View button to display the website in legacy document mode.

Several other features have been added and implemented in the IE9 beta which can be checked out at here.

IE9 is currently in the beta stage and Microsoft hasn't given any details about its release time. Surely there are several features optimized for users and also for developers. You may find several features and options overlapping other browsers like Firefox, Opera and Chrome. Download and install IE9 beta on your Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems. Let us know if you've spotted any severe bugs or wish to see a particular feature in the IE9.