Pwn2Own is an annual contest that challenges hackers to find security flaws web browsers. The contest attracts hackers the world over since Read more…
ie
A week ago we told you about the expected arrival of IE9 Release Candidate on 10th Feb. Well, it is here now. Read more…
The next couple of weeks are going to be very exciting as two strong browsers are entering the warfield in their latest and most powerful avatars yet – The Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4 Release Candidate.
![Download the new IE9 Beta [Screenshots included]](http://www.techexplorer.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/IE9Readyapps.jpg "Download the new IE9 Beta [Screenshots included]")
Microsoft 
In our previous post, we discussed the some of the features of IE9 like the ability to pin web apps on the Windows 7 taskbar. This new feature will enable developers to make web-apps (or should I say, a special version of the site) that can be pinned to the taskbar with functions accessible using jumplists.
Internet Explorer 9 is claimed to be developed from scratch and offers full support to HTML5 and CSS3 technologies along with DirectX based GPU graphics rendering for HTML5 content.
As far as the UI goes, IE9 looks pretty classy. If you have noticed, Windows 7 taskbar buttons take the color theme of the application icon which looks very aesthetic and also helps distinguishing buttons. You will see similar effects in the ‘Forward’ and ‘Back’ buttons of the new IE9. The theme-ing is based on the colors of the favicon.
Microsoft will has released the first IE9 Beta along with IE9 ready apps like: CNN, eBay, Hulu, ZDNet, Amazon and IMDB. [images courtesy:ZDNet]
Ok I am still not sure whether this is authentic or not but it surely is exciting. A video showing the new user interface of the much anticipated Internet Explorer 9 has surfaced the Internet. To believe the video’s description, it is an actual IE9 Beta installation.
Just a few weeks ago, a leaked screenshot of IE9 created stir across the interwebs, specially among Microsoft fans. Now that the official Beta release is just around the corner, one needs a very strong reason to prove this video as fake. Have a look:
Well, what do you think? [src: Softpedia]
As of now, Microsoft has released 4 ‘platform previews’ of the upcoming browser Internet Explorer 9 that showcased some of the highly anticipated features backed up by super efficient Javascript engine named ‘Chakra’ and latest standards like HTML5 and CSS3. But, until now, major UI elements in those builds were mostly missing. We can suspect Microsoft to unveil it on the day of the first Beta release which is in about 3 weeks from now.
However, Microsoft Russia ‘mistakenly’ posted the interface screens on their press website with some hazy information about the new browser. Although it was taken down immediately, many sites have managed to capture a glimpse of what’s coming:
The interface looks hugely ‘inspired’ by Google Chrome and Firefox 4 with major changes like the absence of the title-bar, integration of address-bar and search-bar, slimmer menu bars, etc. IE9 is also expected to include a feature that will recognize ‘protected’ sites as windows applications which can be moved to the task-bar and can be treated independently.
The performance of the ‘platform previews’ definitely impressed me and it’s only about time Microsoft makes a super ergonomic UI for the browser that holds the greatest share in the market. Is it the dawn of the yet another major browser war? What do you think about the new IE9 interface?
Seems like Microsoft doesn’t want to mess up on anything with IE9 by making it as much compliant with the web standards. After CSS3 and HTML5, it’s VP8 to get Microsoft’s support. And this really matters because Internet Explorer has a significant user base and IE9 is going to be huge. For those who don’t know, VP8 is a highly efficient video compression technology, developed by On2 Technologies (now owned by Google).
WindowsTeamBlog confirmed today that IE9 will support VP8 video along with H.264. It read,
…we want to be clear about our intent to support the same markup in the open and interoperable web. We are strongly committed to making sure that in IE9 you can safely view all types of content in all widely used formats. When it comes to video and HTML5, we’re all in. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows.
Do notice the clause- ‘when the user has installed VP8 codec’. This means that VP8 support will not be out-of-the-box. However, what matters is the support for an evolving web technology. It surely goes without saying that IE9 will hence support WebM. For WebM, this is the time to rejoice as it has two giants, Google and Microsoft, on it’s side. We have covered a post on WebM where you can also find the download links to the nightly builds of major browsers supporting WebM.
