Internet Explorer 9 BETA OUT NOW!

I got invited to Microsoft Malaysia’s (@MS_Msia) event announcing the beta release of its newest web browser, the Internet Explorer 9.

After a night of beer, wine and nibbles (chicken drummets were nice!), Mr Jonathan Wong (@armchairdude) the APAC Internet Explorer Lead of Microsoft explained the few key features of the new IE 9.

Two Major things I like in the IE9:

(1) Seamless integration with Win 7 – You can dock/snap it along the side (like any other window in Win 7), among other things.

(2) Pinning – This is the best part. You can PIN a bookmark to the task bar. Not only that, IE9 is smart enough to re-skin the window based on primary colours in the pinned site’s favicon. Cool and useful. Me likes!

Some other key features:

• Hardware Acceleration – The browser allows you to have new graphic capabilities and improved performance thanks to Hardware accelerated text, video and graphics.
• HTML5/CSS3 Support – the boon of most web developers/designers is the fact that IE is most non-compliant, especially CSS wise. Meaning what works in every other browser breaks in IE. Not any more
• Clean browser User Interface – No more clunky toolbars on top, everything is streamlined to just one line – with the tab and menu.
• More Features – http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/#/productguide/top-features

On October 1st, Downloads for IE9 beta surpassed the 6 million mark just two weeks after its release. Not only that, Netmarket’s latest stats show that IE9 users accounted for 0.25% of the browser market. [source] Quite impressive for a new browser ey?

Interested to try it out yourself? Head down to http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/ and click the [Get the Beta] button on the top right. Have fun!