Internet Explorer 9 has been designed to view a broad range of web pages and to provide certain features within the operating system, including Microsoft Update. During the heyday of the browser wars, Internet Explorer superseded Netscape only when it caught up technologically to support the progressive features of the time.
Internet Explorer 9, presently development, will have complete or nearly complete support for all CSS 3 selectors, border-radius CSS 3 property, faster JavaScript, embedded ICC v2 or v4 color profiles, and hardware accelerated rendering using Direct2D and DirectWrite. Microsoft has confirmed that Web Open Font Format (WOFF) will also be supported. WOFF is "a strong favorite" for standardization by the Web Fonts Working Group of W3C.
Microsoft has continued to downplay the importance of passing the Acid3 test, but speculation that IE9 would support the SVG W3C recommendation was ignited when Microsoft announced they had joined the SVG Working Group. At MIX 10, the first IE9 Platform Preview was released, which featured support for CSS3 and SVG, a new JavaScript engine called Chakra, and a score of 55/100 on the Acid3 test, up from 20/100 for IE8. On May 5, 2010, the second IE9 Platform Preview was released, which featured a score of 68/100 on the Acid3 test and faster performance on the WebKit SunSpider JavaScript benchmark than the first IE9 Platform Preview. On June 23, 2010, the third IE9 Platform Preview was released, which scores 83/100 on the Acid3 test and introduced support for <audio>, <video>, and <canvas> elements and WOFF. On Aug 4, 2010, the fourth IE9 Platform Preview was released, which features a score of 95/100 on the Acid3 test and a faster JavaScript engine than the third IE9 Platform Preview. The final build of IE9 is expected to be released in 2011. Support for the HTML5 video and audio tags was also promised. Some industry experts predict that Microsoft will release IE9 as a major out-of-band version that is not tied to any particular version of Windows.According to the Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive page, the system requirements for IE9 are Windows Vista SP2 (with Platform Upgrade and IE8) or Windows 7. On Aug 12, 2010, Microsoft announced that the IE9 Public Beta would launch on September 15, 2010 at a special event in San Francisco linked to the idea of 'beauty of the web.' It was also confirmed that the browser would only function with Windows Vista and Windows 7. On Sept 15, 2010, Microsoft launched the IE9 Public Beta.