Microsoft will be completing the finishing touches for Internet Explorer 9 Beta, and plans to make the new version of the browser available in September. The announcement was made by Microsoft COO Kevin Turner during his keynote address at the annual Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting on July 29th.
The new version of their popular browser will focus on the HTML 5 standard and feature a new download manager, but further details are still being kept under tight wraps. When asked by the press for details beyond the beta release date, company spokesmen gave the standard, “We do not have any additional information at this time” response. So, for now we will just have to wait and see what trickles out over the next few months.
Microsoft would also name a release schedule for the final build. As it stands now, Internet Explorer 9 isn’t expected to be completed until September 2011–that’s if the company mimics the timeline it used for Internet Explorer 8. One of the more interesting tidbits regarding IE9 is how it lacks support for Windows XP. Even with the operating system being nine years old and having two successors, it still accounts for 68% of all Windows versions in use.
Microsoft also continues to improve the performance, reliability and scores on standard browser tests such as Acid3. At last look with IE9PP3, Microsoft scored 83 out of 100 on the Acid3 test. With the popularity of Chrome and Firefox, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more “borrowed” features in the IE 9 beta version. Microsoft is definitely up against some tough competition with their web browser, and needs to make some strides to gain back some of their share of users that have been lost over the past few years.
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