14 DAY TRIAL // As is the case year after year, Microsoft launched a range of testing releases for new and future versions of its products the past year, but as far as I’m concerned, one indisputably stands out of the crowd. I was thinking back to all the Beta development milestones produced by the software giant this past year, in an attempt to narrow it down to the single release that I would absolutely recommend users to test drive.
And the fact of the matter is that the answer is pretty obvious: Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Beta.
IE9 Beta dropped on September 15th, 2010 with the Redmond company promoting not just the next major iteration of IE, but also the promise of a more beautiful web, basing it on the new full hardware accelerated capabilities of the browser.
And apparently, I’m not the only one thinking that IE9 Beta is a must try piece of software. By the start of December 2010 the Beta development milestone had been downloaded over 15 million times since the mid-September launch.
Microsoft went on to push IE9 to the next stage, the Release Candidate (RC). However, there have been some pit stops along the way.
Following the Beta launch, Platform Preview 6 and PP7 were offered as new developer releases for early adopter to test the under-the-hood evolution of IE9.
Testers can swap the core of Internet Explorer 9 Beta for that of either PP6 or PP7, and get what I like to call a super-Beta, although it looks like Microsoft won’t be offering a Beta 2 Build.
Early 2011 will bring with it the availability of IE9 RC, and the introduction of a new feature dubbed Tracking Protection and designed to help end users take control over their privacy while online.
Not only is IE9 at the top of the user privacy protection game, but it’s also the best browser to protect customers against socially engineered malware, blocking 99% of all such threats.
Just ahead of Christmas, Microsoft refreshed the IE9 test Drive Center with a couple of new samples, giving testers fresh content to play with before the RC drops.
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Beta is available for download here.
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 7 (PP7) is available for download here.