Microsoft has released a beta version of Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft on Wednesday in San Francisco held an official presentation of the Beta version of the Internet Explorer browser 9. The release date of the full version of IE9 has not yet been reported, but experts warn: competitors are advancing on the heels and any delay in this matter will allow them to catch up with Microsoft.

The new version of the browser, which can already be downloaded from the Microsoft website, has a substantially recycled user interface, contains a number of functional innovations, as well as, according to developers, provides higher performance and safety. The browser is running Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems, RIA Novosti reports.

The interface changes are caused by the desire of developers for minimalism - Internet Explorer 9 outwardly similar to the Google Chrome browser.

One of the key innovations is the expanded support of the HTML5 standard. Among the presented browser functions is the ability to consolidate the web pages selected by the user on the Windows 7 tasks panel.

The browser’s increase in the speed of the browser has been achieved by supporting multi-core processors and hardware acceleration of displaying web pages using a graphic processor.

The built -in Internet Explorer 9 download manager contains a malware protection system that warns the user about potentially dangerous files.

Meanwhile, if in 2003 97% of the users of the World Wide Web preferred IE, today this figure reaches only 60%, in this regard the observer of the British television and radio corporation BBC .

The 9th version of IE will have to compete for a place under the sun with the latest incarnations of other popular browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox and Chrome from Google.

Chrome, for the first time appeared less than two years ago - in December 2008 - has pulled over 7.5% of the market to today. On Mozilla, which has recently launched a trial version of Firefox 4, there are almost a quarter of the browsers market.