Microsoft Flashes Bits Of Internet Explorer 9 To MIX2010 Audience

Microsoft has finally unveiled the Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview (IEPP) to a global audience which will help users understand what they can expect from the next version of Internet Explorer 9.

Don't expect a full-fledged browser though as there are no tabs, no address bar or back button. But everything else is included like the rendering engine, the snappy Javascript backend, better hardware acceleration and a host of developer tools.

Available at IETestdrive.com, the IEPP comes complete with a number of demos focusing on three aspects of contemporary web browsing; speed, HTML compatibility as well as graphics.

Microsoft has also chosen to include Sunspider results as well as ACID3 which demonstrate that the browser foundation is compatible with main web-based protocols but still has some catching up to do when it comes to Sun Spider's JS benchmark.

Both Chrome 5.0 and Opera 10.5 are still more than 50 percent faster than the IE9 MIX2010 version, which just edges out Firefox 3.7 Alpha2 Pre-release. Still Microsoft has done a pristine job with a six-fold decrease compared to IE8.

In a move that will surprise quite a few, Microsoft has announced that it will be supporting HTML5, the next major iteration of HTML. Interestingly, both editors of the main working HTML5 draft come from Apple and Google.