Internet Explorer 9 has been under development for the past year, going through a number of platform previews, two betas. After a year-long wait, Microsoft finally hit the latest Release Candidate milestone with Internet Explorer 9.
The latest HTML5-compliant browser from Microsoft brings a number of speed improvements over previous versions of IE, including a refreshed UI. Internet Explorer 9 comes with a number of improvements and new features, including pinned websites that integrate with the Windows 7 taskbar, jumplist support, a new tab layout page, a redesigned notification system to alert users of downloads and add-ons, a SmartScreen filter, tracking protection and a ton more features.
The new JavaScript engine, Chakra, brings Internet Explorer 9 to the top of the class of the top browsers in terms of speed. Compared to other browsers, Internet Explorer 9 outperforms in JavaScript benchmark results. IE9 also includes hardware acceleration to help improve overall speed.
In the early betas, Microsoft demonstrated some of the new components of IE9, including a tab tear-off Windows Aero-style snap feature. The ability to compare two websites side-by-side makes it easy to compare products on the web with IE9.
Download links for Internet Explorer 9 leaked a few hours early, as spotted by Winrumors.com:
Windows 7 (x86 version)
Windows 7 (x64 version)
Windows Vista (x86 version)
Windows Vista (x64 version)