Leaked Video: Internet Explorer 9 UI With Acid3 Improvement And Fast Rendering

In a video floating around the web, is what purports to be the user interface of the upcoming Internet Explorer 9. It seems to confirm what the leaked screenshot earlier showed – a much simplified interface that feels closer to today's Chrome 6.0 and Opera 10.6 than the old style familiar IE and Firefox UI we all know. Seen in the video, is an IE barely recognizable to old-timers: just one toolbar, with an address-bar, browser tabs and 3 buttons. Other than the 3 buttons (home/favorites/settings), the navigation buttons (forward/back/reload/stop) are the only other elements present, with no hint of a search bar. The video shows the browser taking the Acid3 test and scoring 95 out of 100 to demonstrate standards support; and also various other demos that presumably prove IE9 is much faster with its GPU acceleration and a better HTML5 webpage rendering engine.

The above screenshot leaked previously has already been commented upon widely on the Internet. Windows Internet Explorer 9 is a browser version that Microsoft hopes will bring IE back into the reckoning for the browser wars. It has been almost a decade since Internet Explorer gained additional market share from competitors, so a lot rides upon the success of IE9. It will support current OSes Windows 7 and Windows Vista, but not Windows XP which will subdue adoption of the new version in the initial stages atleast.

Microsoft has not made an official announcement about when the final version of IE9 will be released, but the beta version seems set to release on 15th September. For now, a "Platform Preview" is available, along with many demos meant for standards compliancy testing, on the IE9 Test Drive site. You can view the leaked Internet Explorer 9 UI video below: