Continuing the browser wars that got another kick recently with the launch of Chrome 10, Apple’s Safari 5.0.4 and Microsoft’s special version of Bing for HTML5-compatible browser users, the latter takes out the ace up its sleeve and releases Internet Explorer 9 today. The new version features a minimalistic presentation of the bar of icons and tools, thus continuing the trend previously set and followed by Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

Accelerated graphics are another important feature of the new version, along with users’ possibilities of safer and faster downloads with the new browser.A particularity noted by PCMag is that the new version of IE outperforms all other browsers in JavaScript speed.

“The significance of this release is really a by-product of our focus on all-around site performance, making the coding patterns that real-world developers are using in the wild for real-world sites faster,” said Gavin. “Our focus has been on hardware acceleration enabling rich performance of things like graphics, audio, video, and text through hardware acceleration using the power of the PC. With this seventh Platform Preview, we’re coupling that with incredibly fast JavaScript.”

Version 9 has been designed with the aim of addressing vulnerability issues seen in version 8 of the browser during the Pwn2Own hacking contest. “We appreciate ZDI’s practice of disclosing vulnerabilities directly to affected software companies and the opportunity to continually improve the security of Microsoft’s products,” Microsoft said.

According to a survey carried out by Net Application on latest Web browsers, it turns out IE 6 is on the top position, declassifying Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and so on. One possible explanation for this might be the increasing number of internet users in China.