IE 9 Beta Expected on September 15

A couple of months ago we'd seen Microsoft release a Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9. It was a freely downloadable tool that essentially was the back end of IE9 without the user interface of a browser. So, all it could do is run many of the tests that Microsoft had put on their "Test Drive" website. Today we're exactly a week away from Microsoft releasing its beta to the world, and we got some info straight from the horse's mouth. We spoke to Moorthy Uppaluri, General Manager, Developer Partner Evangelism at Microsoft India and this is the info he gave us:

• IE9 will have a interface update - Everybody's going minimalistic these days. Be it Chrome, Opera 10.6 or even the recent Firefox 4, everybody has compacted their top area to give the users more viewable space in the browser window. While Microsoft withheld the exact changes in design, they did say that Internet Explorer will get a facelift that will be shown to the world on September 15. We can only expect it to be in line with this simplistic design trend.

•  Speedier than before - We've heard and even experienced how the previous versions of Internet Explorer, including the recent 7 and 8, were slower than other browsers. Microsoft hopes to change that, thanks to their reworked Javascript engine, which seems to show performance that is at par or even better with some of its competitors. IE9 will also harness the power of the graphics chip in your computer to render content, thanks to its use of DirectX APIs built into Windows. In other words, GPU acceleration is coming IE. 

• Compliance to latest standards - Broadly speaking, we're referring to IE 9's compatibility with HTML5 and CSS3. As the world's webpages begin to move towards the latest web standards, Microsoft has shown commitment to adhere to standards set by the W3C. This move also hopes to ease the burden on web developers, who have to tune a single website differently for it to render accurately different browsers.

Will Internet Explorer 9 be able to turn those users' attention who have already switched over to alternatives? We will know on September 15, and will keep you posted.