By default, you would click the cog wheel, choose “Security, Browsing history” from Internet Explorer 9’s menu. Try pressing the Ctrl+Shift+Del keyboard shortcut to open the cleanup dialog immediately. Now just pick the items to delete (or leave the default check box states) and click the OK button to clean up the browsing data.

An important factor was the Web community’s engagement as the IE team took a more open and transparent approach across the nine platform releases of IE9. With the Release Candidate, for example, we took to heart over 17,000 pieces of feedback about IE9. We want to thank the millions of people who have installed and used Internet Explorer 9 during pre-release testing. The value of your feedback in developing the product is hard to overstate.

Microsoft has given an easy-to-use interface and built in additional security features. For example, IE9 features a Tracking Protection that summarizes which websites or ad frames store the user’s data. Via lists, you can choose individually which sites may access your data and which accesses you want to block.

Thanks to IE9’s support for the new HTML5 web standard, IE9 can now directly play videos and audio clips on websites without needing any additional application or plug-in. For many multimedia contents, the browser is now much more stable, as it has direct access to the Graphics processor (GPU).

Internet Explorer 9 is available for Windows 7 and Vista in 39 languages:
Get IE9 Final now!, or find out more at BeautyOfTheWeb.com.

Use the Google Chrome browser: There is a secret keyboard shortcut for formatless copying. To copy the plain text in Google Chrome, press the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+V instead of the regular Ctrl+V pasting shortcut. This tells the browser to ignore all formatting and paste nothing but the plain text.

On Monday, March 14th at SXSW, we’ll be celebrating the developers and designers who are making that beautiful web a reality. If you’re coming to SXSW, join us for free drinks and live music from Yeasayer, the Head and the Heart, and Fences at Austin City Limits Live. It’s a party you won’t want to miss.

As the Release Candidate of the new Windows web browser has been published recently, this lets you imagine that IE9 Final is going to be around this date as well. For European users, it is on 15 March, remember.

As reported, Microsoft wants to make it easier for the testers to switch from Beta to RC. If Windows Update is configured accordingly, the update is installed automatically. This avoids that many users continue to work with the beta version.

After the final version of Internet Explorer 9 is done, it will be sent to users of the test version as well via Windows Update. Internet Explorer 9 Final is scheduled for Q1/2011, so we can expect it before the end of March.

To test the compatibility of your own web site, you don’t have to install all browser alternatives and versions. Adobe Browser Labs makes your life easier. Just visit https://browserlab.adobe.com/, and click Try BrowserLab to create a free Adobe account.

At the top, click Test and enter the web URL. The website is then loaded in Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. To show all versions at once, click View, 2-Up. You can simulate more browsers and versions using the top left button.

https://browserlab.adobe.com/

Now Adobe has announced to extend its Flash player so users can control and delete Flash cookies. To achieve this goal, Adobe cooperates with all important browser creators. The first browser to support this will be Google Chrome in some weeks. That’s definitely a step in the right direction and was long-needed. You could also say: Quite late. Just now, at the time that Flash gets questioned more and more, Adobe thinks they’re capable to solve this necessary need. Sadly.

Google Chrome is the fastest browser and getting more and more popular as alternative to Internet Explorer and Firefox. Gmail users however miss the integration of their email account into the Google browser. The free “Google Mail Checker Plus” extension adds this feature and links Google Chrome to Gmail.

As soon as the Chrome extension “Google Mail Checker Plus” is installed, a red envelope icon appears on the right side of the address bar. The figure at the bottom right of the envelope shows the number of unread messages in your Gmail inbox. Clicking this envelope opens a popout window with all unread messages. You can read and reply to messages directly from this window. Sure, the add-on cannot replace your full-featured mail program; however it is ideal for accessing your Gmail account quickly.

Download for free: Google Mail Checker

When nothing works anymore in Internet Explorer, reset it with the following steps:

1. Press the Windows+R shortcut and enter the following command (watch out for upper- and lower case!):

   rundll32 inetcpl.cpl ResetIEtoDefaults

2. Click OK, then Reset.
3. Now reboot Windows.

Internet Explorer will now start with default settings. If opening IE still doesn’t work properly, you can retry the process, but check the “Delete personal settings” option.

Tip: You don’t want to enter the command manually? Download the corresponding FixIt solution from Microsoft’s website at support.microsoft.com/kb/923737.

Let’s take a look at the benchmark results.

The first test tries the new IE9 javascript engine “Chakra” with the SunSpider benchmark created by the Webkit team. Results are good, in fact we can see some progress, compared to IE8; and the final time 898ms is better than Firefox 3.6. The best browser in this test is Opera (381ms), followed by Chrome (423ms) and Safari 5 (451ms).

Here we go with the second test:

In this second test we are evaluating the flying images test proposed by Microsoft. The most important value to consider is the frames per second, and Internet Explorer 9 beta has obtained the best result of 60 fps. The other browsers are Safari 5 with 5 fps (the worst one), Firefox (9 fps), Opera (21 fps) and, Chrome (23 fps). Same results obtained with 100 and 256 images.

Finally, we’re running the well-known Acid3 test.

This test measures how well a browser can load elements like Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript. Internet Explorer 9 has still the 95/100 value of the Tech Preview 4, better than Firefox with 94/100, but less than Opera, Chrome and Safari with 100/100.

Concluding, even if IE9 is still a step behind Chrome or Firefox 4 we can really appreciate these results, considering that this is still a beta. There might be more improvements and progress in IE9’s final version. What do you think?

As promised and much anticipated, Microsoft has started the beta phase for Internet Explorer 9 during their Beauty of the Web special event. Ryan Gavin, IE business and marketing guy, is excited:

We are excited to see IE9 help enable a material step forward with one of the most important experiences on Windows, browsing your favorite sites.

In a first test run, I quite liked the speed that Internet Explorer now has. It is possible to load new tabs without noticeable delay, to navigate in web pages… — all without that old-fashioned feeling saying “IE is slow as usually.” The browser’s startup time is simply amazing. Also, when a browser add-on might slow down the IE launch, you are notified and can disable the corresponding add-on to keep IE speedy.

The installation wizard also got much simpler (yet takes as long as IE8). Overall, IE9 decreases the hole between Microsoft and the current browsers Firefox 4 Beta, Safari 5 and Chrome 6. Meet the new IE and get your own opinion!

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/home

The user interface integrates tighter into Windows 7. For example, tabs support jumplists and can dragged off the window. In all areas, I see ideas realized that other browsers use as well. Let’s look at some changes compared to Internet Explorer 8.

• The address bar and search box are combined into one single bar, like Google Chrome does.
• Previously 6 menus are consolidated into one single menu, easy to access.
• The Favorites icon is moving to the top-right edge as well as the home page button.
• To save more room, address bar and tabs now share one line. (I’m sure this can be reverted, in case you are using many tabs and want to give them their deserved space.)
• The new Internet Explorer 9 icon is lighter than its old IE8 equivalent.
• IE9 also supports Web Apps, much the way Google Chrome does. By dragging a Pin icon to the taskbar, you will create an application shortcut – handy for Web Apps like Gmail, Facebook or Remember the Milk that can be used without the full Internet Explorer browser controls.

The screenshot, accidentally published in advance by Microsoft Russia (and already taken down again), was confirmed as real by the news portal Neowin. The public Internet Explorer 9 beta is scheduled for September 15, 2010. The upgraded browser will provide support for the modern web standards HTML5, CSS3 and SVG2, and ships with a new Javascript Engine.

Once again, Internet Explorer is stepping up closer to its competitors, most notably Mozilla Firefox (its 4.0 Beta 4 was just released) and Google Chrome. I’m looking forward to see whether IE9 brings any new features that the others don’t have yet.

What do you think about the new user interface for Internet Explorer 9?

This event, Beauty of the Web, is going to take place in San Francisco on 15 September and marks the launch of the Internet Explorer 9 beta. The Technical Previews have received much positive attention, as they were downloaded more than 2.5 million times.

IE9 features many new functions, like for example support for hardware graphics acceleration, better web standards implementation, and a new rendering engine for Javascript. Internet Explorer 9 will also provide support for the new web standards HTML5, CSS3 borders, backgrounds and selectors and SVG 1.1 (second edition).

In the meantime, these documents have been made available to the public that had been classified Confidential originally. They talk about releasing Internet Explorer 9 Beta from August 2010 onwards. At this time, preparations at Microsoft’s OEM partners should begin, too.

However, the documents are dated 20 April 2010, so the information contained in them may well have changed in the meantime due to delays. Furthermore, there is an explicit note that these are preliminary plannings.

Possible dates for Release Candidates of Internet Explorer 9 have not yet been set, neither is there a date for its RTM. For both cases, decisions will be taken only after the beta.

Using Bing as your search provider is as easy as selecting it in the list and enabling it. Opera 10.6 for Windows, Mac and Linux are going to be released this summer.