Internet Explorer 9 Preview – Second Release

Microsoft quietly released its second update to the Internet Explorer 9 Preview. I gave an overview of the first release here if you want to get up to speed on how the original preview performed.

From a look and feel perspective, it looks very much the same. All of the usual toolbars and menus are absent so those eager beavers out there wanting to use this as their default browser should think again unless you like to do things the hard way.

Also, for those standards compliance pundits out there, the score against the Acid3 test has jumped from the original score of 55% to 68%. To their credit, Microsoft has indicated that this increase in score is largely due to a change in the ordering of the tests comprising Acid3 rather than taking credit for something that was perhaps a stroke of luck for them.

JavaScript Benchmarks

JavaScript performance has also improved to the tune of about 120ms over the original preview from 590ms to 473ms. IE9 is still some way behind Chrome and Opera which are both in the sub-300ms range but it seems that Microsoft is getting serious about the performance of script processing in its browser.

During the course of browsing my usual sites, this preview seems just as snappy as the original so Microsoft seem to be doing something right. Having said that, I have experienced a little choppiness but I think that has more to do with my crumby SSD needing a defrag soon.

Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for the next preview. Nothing too exciting at present but could throw the cat amongst the pigeons in terms of the fastest browser on the block. You can download the latest preview at the Test Drive website.