After a reasonable amount of time, Microsoft has decided to give the world access to the beta version of their newest web browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer 9. For the monster company that it is, Microsoft has had a deplorable record on browser development.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 was kept in the game a incredible amount of time, while the competition was innovating and improving. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, the prodigy wannabe, was a deplorable failure, succeeding at showing Microsoft’s stubborness to try and forcibly impose its own standards. Yet Microsoft had lost too much time with the rotting Internet Explorer 6 and the world had moved on without it.

Internet Explorer 8 was the browser that version 7 was supposed to be. It was launched as a stable, fast and fairly secure browsing solution and for a few moments it seemed to overshadow a Firefox that was ailing due to high memory consumption. Of course, it was hit behind by Chrome.

Now, Internet Explorer 9 (still beta) arrived and for the most part it seems to be a well-built browser. It is fast, it improves on the security solutions brought by Internet Explorer 8 and much like Firefox 4, it looks forward to HTML 5.

However, Microsoft returns to its stuborness in making incomplete products. Internet Explorer 9 fails at 95% the Acid3 standards test, the test which measures compliance with current standards. At the same time, its ECMAScript (JavaScript) engine still forces developers to think specific Microsoftian solutions and implement branches.

Yet as trends move towards dumping support for Microsoft browsers (today it is a webdev’s wet dream to stop thinking about Internet Explorer) and since Internet Explorer is no longer a part of Windows (at least in Europe), Microsoft still needs to clear its head and think to the future.

PS: bragging about new tags and SVG support is not exactly something to be proud of. Both Chrome and Firefox have showcased said support already. As Internet Explorer 9 is still beta, it only means Microsoft has decided to make the step in this catch-up game.