Microsoft released its fourth and final Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9 for developers Aug. 4, as part of its ramp-up towards the browser's September beta release. This Preview features native JavaScript integration and fully hardware-accelerated HTML5, among other features.After previewing IE9 at the MIX 2010 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft has released preview versions of IE9 to developers roughly every eight weeks; the three previous Platform Previews have been downloaded more than 2.5 million times, according to Microsoft. The newest preview can be downloaded from this site."The fourth Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9, available now, shows the opportunity of fully hardware-accelerated HTML5," Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer, wrote in an Aug. 4 posting on the Windows Internet Explorer Weblog. "You can run new test drive samples that show modern SVG and native JavaScript integration in action... With this installment, you will find more performance and more support for the same markup." By integrating the JavaScript engine directly into the browser, apparently, IE9 achieves speeds greater than its predecessors.Microsoft also contributed 519 new tests to the standards bodies with Platform Preview 4, bringing the total number of tests contributed during IE9 development to 2,138.Despite a strong challenge from rival browsers such as Firefox and Chrome, Internet Explorer has managed to make incremental gains with regard to overall users. Net Applications estimated Internet Explorer's share of the browser market at 60.74 percent (a slightly increase from June's 60.32 percent), followed by Firefox with 22.91 percent, Chrome with 7.16 percent, Safari with 5.09 percent, and Opera with 2.45 percent.User adoption of Internet Explorer 8 has been on the rise, even as the respective shares for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 continue their decline. Over the past few months, Microsoft executives have positioned the latter two versions' slide as a natural trend they encourage. Despite that, Microsoft currently intends to support Internet Explorer 6 through April 2014, despite concerns from some quarters over its security and relevance.But Internet Explorer's privacy policies have also raised some users' hackles--particularly after an Aug. 1 article in The Wall Street Journal that alleged company executives had killed the Internet Explorer team's initiative to create software that counteracts common tracking tools; the concern, apparently, was that such programming would interfere with the company's online-ad selling operation.In response to that controversy, Microsoft issued an Aug. 1 posting on The Windows Internet Explorer Weblog, insisting that "browsing the Web is fundamentally an information exchange" and that "your Web browser offers information in order to get information." That posting also called attention to Internet Explorer's InPrivate Filtering, which allows users to regulate their privacy settings.
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