Internet Explorer 9 Developer Preview 7 Available for Download

Microsoft launches the seventh platform preview of its Internet Explorer 9 browser. You can get it at www.ietestdrive.com.  The Internet Explorer team has been tuning the JavaScript engine for more of the patterns we’ve found in real world sites.

You can also see new demos on IE Test Drive. Key demos for users to play focus on are: HTML5 Galactic, Shakespeare’s Tag Cloud and the HTML5 Sudoku Solver game.

Here’s a video of the changes in action:

With the new IE9 Platform Preview, the JavaScript performance of the browser by 345 percent since its introduction a year ago. IE9’s performance on the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark is now 234.6 milliseconds due to the reduction of code that isn’t used.

In a Nov. 17 blog post, Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Internet Explorer, said, “Over the last few weeks, we’ve been tuning the JavaScript engine for more of the patterns we’ve found in real world sites.” And he cautioned: “We’ve been consistent in our point of view that these tests are at best not very useful, and at worst misleading.”

For more information about the release, see HTML5, and Real World Site Performance: Seventh IE9 Platform Preview Available for Developers on the IE Blog.

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation