Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate launched
Microsoft unveiled the Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate (RC) today during a launch event in San Francisco. After months of beta testing, Microsoft announced that IE9 Release Candidate is available for download and is feature complete.
The company is now focused on encouraging developers to build new websites and user experiences on IE9, said Ziad Ismail, Internet Explorer’s director of product management.
“The release candidate is a major milestone that signals it’s time for developers to start taking advantage of IE9’s features,” Ismail said. “Our focus with IE9 has been on creating the platform for the next class of Web experiences built around HTML5 and tapping into the power of the whole PC.”
Tracking Protection Lists, a new feature in the IE9 Release Candidate, function much like the “Do Not Call” telephone registry and enable people to control how their information is shared.
The IE9 RC introduces several features that build on those themes and on feedback from users. These include smaller changes like being able to close a tab without making it active – a small addition that users really care about, Ismail said.
IE9 has made changes to Pinned Sites, which enables users to take their favorite sites and place them directly on the Windows 7 Taskbar like any other application. “A pinned site is more than just a shortcut,” Ismail said. “We have already seen sites use this to create experiences that are always visible to the user and pull the users back into the experience with notifications as important things happen.”
According to hi5, a gaming and social entertainment site, to make use of IE9’s Pinned Site feature requires “a few lines of JavaScript and Pinned Site APIs”.
Another new feature in the Release Candidate is Tracking Protection, which Microsoft said gives users better control over how their information is shared across sites. Some content on websites can be used to track activity as people browse the Web.
Tracking protection in Internet Explorer 9 allows users to limit the browser’s communication with certain websites to help keep information private. This feature relies on Tracking Protection Lists that enable users to control how their information is shared, Ismail said.
Users can install Tracking Protection Lists from the organizations they trust, which today include companies like Abine, PrivacyChoice, TRUSTe, and EasyList.
The RC also expands support for Web standards and HTML5 and addresses a developer community request to add geolocation capabilities to the browser, effectively enabling websites to understand where a user is located, Ismail said.
“A better browsing experience combined with better sites really starts to deliver on the promise of what we set out to do with IE9, which is to deliver a more beautiful Web for users,” he said.
Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate launched << Comments and views
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