Microsoft offers sneak peek at Internet Explorer 9

At the Mix conference, held in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Microsoft took the wraps off a pre-alpha build of IE9 and offered the world a glimpse of the new browser. Calling the software it demonstrated the "Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview," Microsoft essentially created a lightweight frame just to showcase the current progress of IE9 in terms of its rendering and JavaScript engine.

What's clear about IE9 is its commitment to complying with existing standards, as well as for new standards such as HTML5 and CSS3. Microsoft is forthright about its previous poor showing on the popular ACID3 test for browsers, but points out that the IE9 Platform Preview already scores 55 out of 100, a clear improvement over IE8's dismal 20.

Microsoft is positioning IE9 for the future.  In an interview, Dean Hachamovitch, IE general manager emphasized IE9's focus on HTML5. He said, "We saw that HTML5 will enable a new class of applications. Those applications are going to stress the browser runtime in ways today's websites don't." Indeed, IE9 has "HTML5 through and through." Hachamovitch's demonstration at Mix involves H.264-encoded HTML5 video.

Beyond its compliance to standards, IE9 promises to be a game-changer in terms of its potential for blistering performance. One aspect involves tapping into the GPU to assist in the rendering of graphics and media elements on the page, to be assisted by a new JavaScript engine that Microsoft engineers refer to as "completely rewritten." Indeed, the new engine can utilize the multiple cores on a modern CPU.

Before you get too excited though, it will probably be some time yet before IE9 is officially released. However, at least one rival is impressed by the efforts so far. Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering at Firefox backer Mozilla, sent out a tweet, "IE9 looks great, very glad to see it. Congrats to the IE team!"

In the meantime, the IE9 Platform Preview can be downloaded here. It requires IE8 to be installed, but coexists with it.

For more on this story:
- check out the article at CNET News
- check out the article at PCMag.com
- check out the article at Computerworld 

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