I finally got around installing the first beta preview of Internet Explorer 9.  So far, I’m pretty impressed!

It is pretty fast.  Is it the fastest browser?  I got no idea, but it’s fast enough:  I don’t have the feeling of slow browser experience I had since IE 7.  Actually IE 9 even profile the start-up of its plug-ins and propose you to disable slow plug-ins.  I like this new Microsoft approach where they do blame the plug-ins when they do fail (e.g. the new driver model running in User Mode from Vista and after).

The whole site centric thingy isn’t that much of a change.  It’s following Google Chrome trend of removing the toolbar clutter, but compared to a vanilla IE 8, it’s not that different.

Now, one of the big new feature is support for HTML 5 and it does so blazing fast.  It’s like looking at a WPF application.  Among good examples are IMDB trailer gallery, the National Museum of China virtual visit, Web Viz Benchand Never Mind the Bullets (an online comic book).

There are a couple of other goodies, such as ability to pin a web site into Windows 7 task bar.

All around it’s a major version of Internet Explorer and the first beta is fairly stable:  I didn’t have any problems with it.  So I encourage you to try it out!