Microsoft will open up on the next iteration of Internet Explorer in just a month from now, but of course, the biggest question of IE8’s successor remains unanswered, namely if a preview of Internet Explorer 9 is to be made available for download. Users have already been able to read that IE9 was planned to come into the spotlight at MIX 10 since December 11th, 2009, right here on Softpedia. At that time, however, the Redmond company hadn’t offered any official confirmation that it was to deliver additional details on the browser it showcased at the Professional Developers Conference 2009 in Los Angeles.

“Internet Explorer 9 at MIX10” is the title of a blog post published on the news section of the MIX 10 website. The article promises that Microsoft will make available additional details on IE9. The Redmond company’s web-centric conference in Las Vegas next month will also focus on additional RIA, mobile and Cloud technologies, including Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and Windows Azure.

The software giant has even managed to confirm four keynote speakers for the conference, namely Bill Buxton, principal researcher Microsoft Research, Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president, .NET Developer Platform, Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president and director of Windows Phone Program Management, and Dean Hachamovitch, IE general manager. MIX 10 is scheduled to take place between March 15-17th, 2010, in Las Vegas.

“As General Manager of the team, Dean Hachamovitch is responsible for the design, development, and release of Internet Explorer. We welcome Dean back to the stage as one of our MIX10 keynoters in Las Vegas next month. After all, what would our premier web conference be without a browser update!? Dean will talk about changes and improvements that have been made to Internet Explorer 9 since PDC09, and his talk is sure to include a couple of surprises,” a member of the MIX 10 team stated.

Microsoft first demoed IE9 at PDC 2009 in November 2009. At that time, the company showcased a very early development preview of the browser and outlined the major goals for the release. According to Hachamovitch, IE9 is on track to deliver better support for modern web standards, increased performance, especially when it comes down to JavaScript, and support for hardware acceleration. At PDC 2009, developers got only a demo of IE9, it remains to be seen whether MIX 10 brings with it the first downloadable Internet Explorer 9 bits. Maybe at least a functioning Alpha or Community Technology Preview – fingers crossed.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RTW is available for download here (for 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008).

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