Microsoft have released an update (as they promised they would) to the IE9 preview released earlier this year. There’s a number of underlying changes that result in improvements to performance and compatibility.
One high profile test is the ACID 3 test. IE9 preview 1 scored 55/100, in preview 2 this has increased to 68/100 so there’s progress being made. There’s also a bunch of new samples to show off the upgrades.
There’s still no serious UI, so don’t expect to be using this browser day-to-day, most importantly there’s not even a back button or shortcut. After testing a bunch of sites, it does seem incredibly responsive. This is likely due to the IE9’s javascript performance approaching that of the superfast market leader Chrome 5.0 beta.
The future looks bright for IE9, if Microsoft get it right, it should stem flow away from IE towards alternatives like Chrome (my browser of choice) and bring performance browsing to the masses.
More @ Windows Team Blog
Download @ IE9 Test Drive
