Microsoft is planning to launch a beta version of its Windows Explorer 9 (IE9) browser in September.
Microsoft's chief operating officer (COO), Kevin Turner, did not specify an actual date, but did confirm the release month at the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting yesterday.
The browser wars are fickle. At the moment, IE8 remains top and is making improvements but just a few months ago it was appreciably losing ground, according to Net Application's analytics on its NetMarketshare website.
Though IE9's main competitor, Mozilla Firefox, has been losing market share, Google Chrome has been gaining. In reality, the movement is slight and often a move of less than one per cent is attributed as a significant swing.
In many ways, IE9 could be subtitled as the plumber's edition because it targets speed enhancements and further compliance with standards. Google's competing browser Chrome attracted much of its attention through its speed of execution when downloading web pages.
Microsoft is trying to improve on its dominant 60 per cent share of the market in several ways.
The most publicised change is the use of a faster JavaScript engine called Chakra. This is said to compile and run Java around five times faster than the current IE8.
Much of JavaScript's execution time is spent compiling code and optimising the engine, so it will probably have the biggest visual impact on the users.
Microsoft has also added speed by using APIs to allow more graphics processing to be passed onto the graphics cards, which are now small computers in their own right.
IE9 will also support Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), which use an XML format that has been supported in most of the browsers competing with IE8.
Another move into standards is Microsoft's adoption of HTML5, the latest iteration of the core language used to build web sites.
Given Microsoft's pole position in the browser wars, the changes may be a "me too" adoption of standards found in other browsers, but it will help it to hold on to its loyal user base.
