Microsoft Provides Early Look at Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft on Wednesday showed off early work on Internet Explorer 9, a browser that will feature improved performance, new features, and the possibility of new standards.

Stephen Sinofsky, president of the newly renamed Windows and Windows Live division, took the stage at the company's Professional Developer's Conference (PDC), and said the company was looking at new standards like HTML 5, and noted how far behind IE is on the current ACID test, a test designed to expose browser flaws.

Microsoft has only been working on IE9 for about three weeks, so an actual release is not expected in the near future. But the new browser has already moved from a 20 to 32 on the Acid 2 test, though, this is, of course, not released code.

Sinofsky stressed how different sites and applications used different features. However, he displayed a chart showing how much faster IE9 is on Webkit.org's SunSpider performance test. It appeared to be very close to the current betas of the other browsers. Microsoft is also working on the Acid tests for compatibility, he said.

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