Microsoft has released a "Test Drive" version of the forthcoming Internet Explorer (IE) 9 browser, featuring improved CSS3 and HTML5 support.
The IE9 preview seems aimed mostly at the developer community—it has no user interface to speak of—and may be an attempt to earn back fans. IE has been losing market share among all Internet users for more than four years, but these losses are particularly acute in the developer community.
There is even a debugger that lets you compare how IE9 renders a page versus earlier versions.
The IE9 preview supports some HTML5, including video and audio tags and supports CSS3 selectors. IE9 also promises better SVG support than earlier versions of the browser. And it does, in fact, include more complete support for the CSS border-radius attribute than either Firefox 3.6 or Safari 4.0.
But IE9 still only scores a 55 on the Acid3 test, which measures how well a browser manages certain web standards. This, however, is a huge improvement for Microsoft. IE 8 only manages to score a 12 on the Acid3 test, and IE7 cannot even load the test page. But IE9 still has a long way to go compared to Firefox 3.6 which scores a 94 on the test, and Google Chrome and Opera 10.10 which both score a perfect 100.
