Microsoft have released the final build of their Internet Explorer 9 web browser in an attempt to stem its steady loss of users to alternative browsers like Firefox and Chrome. IE9 features an enhanced user interface with the removal of unnecessary toolbars and the amalgamation of the address and search boxes into one field and the alignment of the address/search bar and tabs into one row. The new browser also offers impressive speed improvements and also great leaps in support for web standards like HTML5. Web standards are a common set of guidelines offered by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) that browser vendors and web developers are expected to adhere to to ensure a consistent experience across all software. Internet Explorer has been notoriously poor at this in the past, and Microsoft has sought to rectify their previous errors.

The improvement in web standards support will be welcomed with open arms by web designers such as us at Areatrade as it means less extra code is needed to ensure compatibility in all software. Microsoft has recently been calling for the small minority of users still stuck on version 6 of the software to upgrade to a newer version. Many IT departments have More >