Microsoft hopes IE9’s clinch the standards will help arrest IE’s dropping market share of recent years.
IE9 will be the most standards-compatible version of IE in Microsoft’s history. Thanks to HTML5. Support for HTML5 has been expanded to include HTML5 video and audio elements, 2D graphics using the highly-anticipated Canvas element, and there’s support for embedded fonts using Web Open Font Format (WOFF).
IE9 has something for building and delivering rich graphics and internet applications using web standards and fast, hardware-accelerated rendering. IE9 will also run Google’s open sourced WebM video codec plus the closed and proprietary H.264 from Microsoft, Apple, and others. IE9 also features a new script engine, Chakra that uses hardware to boost performance to within 50 milliseconds of Safari, Opera, and Chrome on Sun Spider benchmarks.
The beta version of IE9 will be finally unveiled on September 15.