Flickr Explorer
Flickr Explorer IBTimes

Microsoft's latest preview of Internet Explorer 9 has been released as development on its futuristic web browser is stepped up.

Though its public release is not till next year, Internet Explorer 9 is already hoped to win back market share from Mozilla's Firefox and Google Chrome as the latest preview known as 'Platform Preview 2' is impressing analysts and commentators alike.

"Our tests also revealed the second preview to be much more stable and scalable than the first -- meaning, it's better at getting faster when workloads increase." said Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews.

"With these releases, Microsoft gets developers trying out their products, which ultimately helps them put a better product on the market," said Sheri McLeish, an analyst with Forrester Research.

"A company as big as Microsoft does have the ability to get a million people hacking away on these applications and it serves them well."

Internet Explorer 9's biggest feature is support for 'Application Program Interface' which basically allows it to utilise hardware graphics acceleration, when combined with Vista or Windows 7.

The end result, is a very slick end product that can make the internet a far more graphical experience than it is.

The Platform Preview is also much faster than any other browser, apart from Opera on flickr explorer tests (see picture).

It however remains behind on SunSpider JavaScript tests where it trails Google Chrome by some way.

It can be downloaded here.