Styling web sites for different browsers has always been a hassle. Naturally web standards are some more or less common to one or another browser. Internet Explorer has always been one of the major browsers worldwide, but had its very own interpretation of "web standards". So when a new realease of the IE hits the beta state I always was very curious about how much less work I will have to do when styling future websites while adapting them to the extraordinary behaviour of microsofts browser.

Internet Explorer 7 had after several years of waiting PNG's with alpha channel supported. Internet Explorer 9, which is now out for beta comes with rounded corners (CSS3 border-radius), currently passes 95% of the ACID3-Test and utilizes Direct2D which gives very smooth browsing experience on websites were you zoom and drag a lot like bing maps or google maps.

Interestingly due to the new Direct2D implementation, google maps is even faster in IE 9 as in Google's Chrome 5 itself, which is still my favourite browser - but at least microsoft did a big step towards the future. Let's hope that the little style bugs disappear before the final release.

Links

• Internet Explorer 9 beta Download
• ACID 3 Test
• Direct2D Wiki Page
• Bing Maps
• Google Maps
• 54 amazing websites to try in IE 9