Internet Explorer 9 – Beta Released Today

Another short one for this evening.

It’s been plastered on all the major news websites so you would have to have been blind to have missed it. The beta release of Internet Explorer 9 has been released today with much fanfare from Microsoft.

Internet Explorer 9 Beta

Internet Explorer 9 Beta

I have to say that its performance so far has been fairly solid after having it open for nearly a full day on my computer and the ability to create bookmarks on the taskbar in Windows 7 with specialised jump lists for particular sites (such as Facebook).

Internet Explorer 9 - Facebook Bookmark Jump List

IE9 - Facebook Bookmark Jump List

I think this might put Microsoft back in contention in terms of modern web browsers with features such as hardware graphics acceleration, nearly a perfect score on the Acid3 test (the low down on this score can be found here) and blazing JavaScript speeds in the SunSpider test.

If you are keen to give it a try, you can grab the installer from here – it’s available for Windows 7 (x86 or x64) or Windows Vista SP2 (x86 or x64). After being backed into a corner by the competition it’s good to see that Microsoft still can bring in the goods after Windows 7, Office 2010 and its imminent release of Windows Phone 7.

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  1. […] websites offer extended functionality if you pin them to the taskbar in Windows 7 such as Facebook so it is good to see that Hotmail gives you a convenient way to see if there are any new messages […]

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