First look at Microsoft's IE9 beta
Within just a couple of weeks of the third technology preview provided by Microsoft, the company has made the first beta of its new Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) web browser available to the general public today.
The first thing you'll notice about IE9 is the fact that it's very minimalistic. Many will say it looks reminiscent of Google's Chrome browser, but appearance is where the similarity ends - at least for now. Internet Explorer 9 aims to be Microsoft's response to everything the competition has innovated on for the last years, and which that has cost the company a sizeable share of its earlier market.
IE9 has been awarded praise for its slimmed-down interface (although in the case of toolbars, Microsoft switches them all off by default). Upon loading up the browser, you'll be invited to kill as many add-ons as you wish. Ironically, the browser self-diagnosed itself and told us its Live Toolbar was holding back boot up time by 2.72 seconds, out of 3.03 seconds total delay.
