Microsoft has decided that the launch of a beta is something to celebrate. While setting the debut day for Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) beta, it has also planned a big party.
All is set to go off on 15 September at the Concourse Exhibition Centre in San Francisco, against the backdrop of a "Beauty of the Web" pageant. The media is being treated to a presentation praising the web developers and designers who are "reimagining the familiar".
Microsoft wants to make its voice heard because betas of IE's greatest competitors Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are also fighting for coverage in the media. Microsoft is playing its trump card by gathering the press together to hear what wonders IE9 will perform.
The new browser takes Microsoft deeper into the world of standards than ever before. In the past, the company has tended to add innovative elements into the browser and then try to get them adopted as standards. With IE9 this has changed.
Top of the list is support for the HTML5 but the main difference is an increase in processing speed. Products such as Chrome have made IE8 look slow and dated. Many of the changes in IE9 address the rendering speed of HTML and Java processing.
