17 March 2010 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

Microsoft unveils Internet Explorer 9 preview

Microsoft has unveiled a preview of the next version of its newest web browser, Internet Explorer 9, which focuses on performance and will include HTML5 integration.

Internet Explorer is the world's most popular web browser, though the Register reports that its market share is slowly falling due to strong competition from Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and other browsers.

Microsoft's dominance took another blow in Europe recently, when it was required by the European Competition Commission to offer Windows users a browser ballot screen providing a choice of alternative web browsers. But if the company's upcoming browser lives up to its early promises, Internet Explorer 9 may win back some of the straying flock.

IE9 was previewed at this week's Mix conference in Las Vegas, and it is available for download in its early form from the company's website. Although the preview version is not currently able to complete the Acid3 markup test - scoring only 55 out of 100 - Microsoft says it will continue to improve its features before the official launch.

The IE9 preview supports SVG graphics, which came as a surprise to some considering Microsoft's heavy promotion of its own Silverlight plug-in. However, a new Javascript engine has seen this version of IE9 boasting a higher performance than Firefox 3.6, according to the SunSpider benchmark, though it still lags behind Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera.

With its strong focus on hardware acceleration, IE9 has been judged to be at least six times better than the problematic IE8, but this may also mean that older versions of Windows will be unable to run the browser effectively. By using Direct2D for handling 3D graphics, the current preview of Internet Explorer 9 requires Vista SP2, Windows 2008 or Windows 7.