Just after proclaiming Internet Explorer 6 needs to die, Microsoft is readying the launch of IE9, the newest version of its market-leading web browser.
Microsoft plans to debut the browser at the SXSW (South by Southwest Conference and Festivals) conference in Austin on March 14, and the browser will be available for download that same evening.
IE 9 does what no Microsoft browser has done before — embraces HTML 5. HTML 5 is the latest greatest version of HTML, the core coding language for the web. With HTML 5, rich media web sites with stronger animation are made possible.
A More Private Experience
One of the key new features in IE9 is Tracking Protection. This feature was originally planned for IE8, but Microsoft held off on executing the software that lets customers control tracking on web sites. Essentially, Tracking Protection lets consumers filter content in a page that may have an impact on their privacy.
Here’s how Tracking Protection works: Consumers can indicate what web sites they would prefer to not exchange information with. Consumers do this by adding Tracking Protection lists to IE. Anyone, and any organization, on the web can create and publish Tracking Protection lists.
In practice, this means that if you visit a news site, then a sports site, then some other web site, third-party advertisers can’t build a profile of browsing activity. Although there are many benefits to building those profiles, including driving more relevant, personalized content, Microsoft is responding to privacy concerns by giving consumers a way to block that tracking.
IE9 also offers InPrivate Browsing, another feature to help consumers control what their machine remembers about browsing sessions. InPrivate Filtering was a forerunner of Tracking Protection.
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