My Blog: Internet Explorer 9 RC released: Everything you need to know

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Internet Explorer 9 RC released: Everything you need to know

The Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate is now available. For all intents and purposes, this means IE9 is feature complete. Small changes might occur, but it's mostly bug stomping from here on out. Download it, give it a whirl; it might just be the first IE browser that's actually enjoyable to use.

Download Squad got its grubby mandibles on the RC a few days ago, which means we can show you around all of the major new features -- and some of the smaller, less-obvious, but equally neat changes too.

Internet Explorer 9 is all about cutting back to what made IE8 great, and unceremoniously ramming the offal through the waste disposal. InPrivate Browsing is still here, and InPrivate Filtering has donned its superhero leotard and returned as Tracking Protection. Color-coded tab groups remain, as does SmartScreen Filtering. The awful UI, though, and the barbaric JavaScript engine, are gone.

Microsoft has invested a lot of time, effort and money into Internet Explorer 9 and -- as you'll see after the break -- the results really do speak for themselves. IE9 desperately wants to be your steed of choice for the HTML5 revolution.

But has it succeeded?

Gallery: Internet Explorer 9 RC