Microsoft has launched Internet Explorer 9, a new faster, more standards-compliant version of its web browser. The browser is tightly integrated with Windows… assuming you’re running Windows Vista or Windows 7. Internet Explorer 9 isn’t available for Windows XP.
The browser gets a high (but not perfect) score on the Acid3 web standards test and fares pretty well in other benchmarks. It also has built-in support for hardware graphics acceleration and new HTML5 web standards.
But the browser still trails behind Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera when it comes to most tests. Internet Explorer 9 is a big step in the right direction — and has some nifty features such as the ability to pin web pages and web apps to your taskbar. But I don’t know if that’s a good enough reason to switch from your current browser — unless your current browser is Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8.
You can find a download link and web demos which take advantage of the browser’s new capabilities at Microsoft’s Beauty of the Web page.
Just installed IE9 on Vista machine. Pages now take a full minute to load!!! Dreadfull.