This morning Microsoft released the beta of the long-awaited Internet Explorer 9. This is most likely their last ditch at reclaiming their ever decreasing user base.

Internet Explorer 9 is a completely different beast than before. Both the interface and the underlying engine has undergone a major overhaul. IE9 runs a lot faster, has a much smoother interface and better support for the up-and-coming HTML5 and CSS3.

However, let me first take the time to criticise (I like to do that): why does the IE9 beta installs OVER IE8 instead of being installed as a stand-alone product? That’s rather weird and inconvenient.

Anyway, the first thing that strikes me is the UI – it reminds me a lot of Google Chrome and looks a lot cleaner and smoother, focusing the users attention on the actual content instead of the browser. The icons are smaller and in my opinion it looks better.

I tried surfing around popular pages such as Facebook, Twitter, Google etc. And everything is really fast, I was pleasantly surprised. I don’t know how it compares to Chrome, but it feels on par with it, which is really impressive.

However, it does crash a lot. It is to be expected of a beta, but I ran into a rather large number of errors. Hopefully, they will have it all sorted out in time for the final release.

I haven’t yet tried out some actual coding, but it is supposed to have much better support for HTML5 and CSS3, which is a REAL relief! Just imagine what the web might look like in five years! I’m really looking forward to embracing the new technology.