Microsoft release IE9 Release Candidate

Microsoft have launched the release candidate (RC) of Internet Explorer 9 which features improved privacy features.

The release candidate will be the last pre release version for testing, before last minute bug fixes and final release.

Microsoft have said that IE9 is available in 40 languages and they are saying that progress has been made with performance and safety and privacy.

Dean Hachmovitch, Corporate Vice President for Internet Explorer said “With the Release Candidate, we've taken to heart over 17,000 pieces of feedback about IE9.” IE9 RC is faster now with many websites and Gmail, Office Web Applications are running better due to ‘scenario tuning' and network cache adjustments, with new compiler optimisations.

Hachamovitch continued in his blog post “”You'll also find that the RC of IE9 often uses megabytes less memory than the beta because of changes like delayed image decoding. We've also improved the performance of things many people do every day, like find on page, and made improvements which extend battery life.”

Technically, IE9 supports new web standards such as CSS3 2D Transforms, HTML5 Geolocation and a set of HTML5 semantic elements. It also allows accessibility to the HTML5 audio and video controls, allowing developers to experiment with new and emerging specifications through Microsoft's HTML5 labs. Hachamovitch said “With this Release Candidate we've added over a thousand new test cases for JavaScript and updated over fifty test cases based on community feedback. During IE9 development we have now submitted just under 4000 test cases in total for standards like HTML5.

Security receives an overhaul, with Tracking Protection, enabling users to adjust their privacy settings to a much finer level and other tools to enforce specific settings. Tracking Protection Lists are also offered which can block and allow third party content in order to control information users share with sites as they browse the net. IE9 also has a new download manager which shows download speed and notifications have animation applied.

IE9 also offers ‘pinning', which means all your favourite websites (like KitGuru) can be pinned to the taskbar. You no longer have to open the browser to get directly to a website.

KitGuru says: Let us know your views on the new Release Candidate. Any good, or rubbish?

Become a Patron!