Meanwhile, IE9 perhaps is the first version of Internet explorer that support supports HTML5, bringing it up to the level of Chrome and Safari as well as certain newer versions of Firefox. According to Microsoft, IE9 brings to the table expanded support for HTML5, but also hardware-accelerated graphics and text, and a new, evolved JavaScript engine, designed to boost the overall performance of the browser. Obviously, Microsoft has improved all aspects of Internet Explorer 9 since the browser was first introduced at PDC 2009. In this context, hardware acceleration is applied to both HTML5 and SVG.

So, Users should read the release notes for known issues and other information about the release. Microsoft plans to update the preview releases every eight weeks. This is mainly offered to get feedback from web developers. A beta will follow later on.

Developer Tools

The Platform Preview includes built-in Developer Tools. These tools help developers debug and understand the interaction between their sites and the browser. To open the Developer Tools, click the Debug menu and click Developer Tools, or press F12.

The status bar indicates when the page generates script errors. You can use the Developer Tools to get more information about and debug script errors.

For more information on the Developer Tools, go to the Internet Explorer Developer Center.

Document modes

You can force the Platform Preview into different document modes. To do this, click the Debug menu and select one of the Document Modes. You can also press Alt plus the numbers 5, 7, 8, or 9 to select IE5, IE7, IE8, and IE9 document modes respectively (for example, Alt + 7 for IE7). You can press Alt + 0 at any time to reset the document mode to the page default. The current document mode is shown for the currently viewed page at the left of the status bar. Information on Document Modes is available on MSDN, as well as on our blog.

Common Keyboard Shortcuts

Below is a list of available keyboard shortcuts for use in the Internet Explorer Platform Preview:

Ctrl + O: Open a webpage
F5: Refresh
F10: Home
F12: Developer Toolbar
Alt + 5: Force IE5 rendering mode
Alt + 7: Force IE7 rendering mode
Alt + 8: Force IE8 rendering mode
Alt + 9: Force IE9 rendering mode
Alt + 0: Reset Document Mode to the page default
Ctrl +/-: zoom in and out
Alt + ?: Help
Ctrl + S: Save Webpage As…
Alt + /: About

You can download the Internet Explorer 9 preview as below link

Download Internet Explorer 9 From IE TestDrive Website

Internet Explorer 9 Preview Download is a post from: TechieQuest

According to the IE Blog, the Javascript rendering is faster than the its predecessor Internet Explorer 8, IE8 rendering engine performance is poor compared to the other browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Safari. But the early build of IE9 is faster than IE8 and close to other browsers performance tested with Webkit SunSpider test. The chart below shows the relative performance of different browsers on the same machine running the SunSpider test.

IE9 will support Acid3, DirectX Direct2D and other standards, including CSS3 and HTML5. This should improve the appearance of fonts and performance of text animation without requiring changes to the sites themselves.

The most interesting feature they are working on in IE9 is the graphics acceleration, IE9 can use the graphics card for the rendering graphics and text using DirectX technology installed on windows systems. Graphics hardware acceleration means that rich, graphically intensive sites can render faster while using less CPU.

You can read more from the IE team on this topic here.

An Early Look at Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 is a post from: TechieQuest

Flash cookies (Local Shared Objects, LSO) are pieces of information placed on your computer by a Flash plugin, placed in central system folders and so protected from deletion. Flash is a separate application running on your system, there is no way to prevent it from storing those LSO’s on your disk. They are frequently used like standard browser cookies. Although their thread potential is much higher as of conventional cookies, only few users began to take notice of them. It is of frequent occurrence that -after a time- hundreds of those Flash-cookies reside in special folders. And they won’t be deleted – never.

With BetterPrivacy it is possible to review, protect or delete new Flash-cookies individually. Users who wish to to manage all cookies manually can disable the automatic functions. BetterPrivacy also protects against ‘DOM Storage’ long term tracking, a browser feature which has been granted by the major browser manufactures.

How does BetterPrivacy work?
BetterPrivacy finds the folder where your Flash plugin stores the LSO’s. Thus the first start of Firefox could be delayed for some seconds. Then BetterPrivacy does absolutely nothing until you close Firefox. At that time the addon will look at the LSO folder and if there are cookies existing it will show a popup. BetterPrivacy asks if you would like to delete the LSO’s at that time. You might decide to review every single LSO later at the next session. Otherwise you can choose to delete or even auto-delete on every Firefox exit.

You can download the latest version of BetterPrivacy from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623.

BetterPrivacy – Firefox Add-Ons to Remove Flash Cookies is a post from: TechieQuest

PdfIt extension allows user to convert current page to image file, or PDF format(image to pdf), during the page to image conversion process, user can apply some image filters( for example,rotate,reflection…,)

Pdfit runs on any platform: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Once installed, the “Pdf It!” menu item will appear at Browser>Tools menu and context menu.

To download, visit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7528.

Pdfit – Firefox Add-Ons that Converts Web Page to PDF is a post from: TechieQuest

Just enter the URL you want screenshots for and it gets added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then a group of volunteers use a small program to automatically make screenshots of web pages in their browser and upload them to Browsershots central server.

Refresh your “Website Overview” page to see screenshots as they are uploaded. It took about 1 hour to load all the screenshots. You can click the “Extend” button to extend the expiry time, this will reset the expiry time to 30 minutes.

You can also check out the recent screenshots made by Browsershots.

Browsershots is the most comprehensive free browser testing service I’ve seen. For more info, visits http://browsershots.org.

Browsershots – Test Your Web Design in Different Browsers is a post from: TechieQuest

An amazingly simple way to keep track of what you do on the internet. No need for folders full of bookmarks that you will never find again, or a jumble of tag words that confuse you more than help you find that page your looking for.

As you browse, WebMynd will keep a virtual copy of all the sites you visit on your hard drive and the text is sent to WebMynd servers for indexing. It keeps the index information for one week and allows you to see your most recently visited pages by clicking the WebMynd button on your toolbar. You can scroll left and right or view in thumbnail images to see the recent visited pages.

WebMynd also allows you to publish your pages to the OpenMynd collection to share with your friends and family. When you clicked on the publish button, it will save your page as a static image that you want to publish and share with everyone. It is fun to be able to flip through people’s pages to find something that catch your eyes.

For more information on WebMynd, watch the demo video.

You can download the latest version of WebMynd from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6416.

WebMynd – TiVo for the Web is a post from: TechieQuest

Skyfire is a free, downloadable mobile web browser that makes browsing on your phone exactly like browsing on your PC. Now, you can use the web from your mobile phone with unprecedented speed and simplicity.

On the start page, there are handy links to popular web sites. You can also bookmark your own favorites and as well as use your browsing history. You can even bookmark specific content on a web page to get exactly want you want in one click. When you do a search, the results are presented in easy to view tabs: web, images, and videos, and maps. Navigating is intuitive with full screen, thumbnails and zooming while resizing, at speeds comparable to your desktop PC web browser.

Skyfire improve your browsing experience on mobile phones. You can sign up to join the Skyfire private beta here. The private beta support only Windows Mobile phones in the U.S, soon it will support the Symbian platform.

SkyFire – Free Downloadable Windows Mobile Browser is a post from: TechieQuest

We take the best websites, selected by you and other del.icio.us users, add a powerful Google search engine and we get a free and easy way to find what we need and exactly where it is!

deliGoo allows you to search for specific content in your del.icio.us bookmarks. You can either search all of your del.icio.us bookmarks, within a certain user’s del.icio.us bookmarks or within a certain del.ico.us tag. It also allows you to create on your demand custom search engines on any del.icio.us tag.

deliGoo placed an additional button on the tools’ panel of your browser. To search, simply type in the user and/or tag you wish to search through and the term you are looking for, then click Goo! Results are displayed through Google Custom Search.

deliGoo is a great delicious search tool. The add-on is available for both Firefox 2.0+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+, you can download it from deliGoo homepage or Mozilla Add-Ons site.

deliGoo – Delicious (del.icio.us) Search Engine is a post from: TechieQuest

To assign one website to Fast Dial, right-click a thumbnail, and choose “Fast Dial > Set URL” from the context menu. Choose an URL and click “OK”. In a second or two the thumbnail image appears, later open sites just clicking the thumbnails.

You can change the thumbnails position by drag-n-drop. If you move mouse over thumbnail’s top-right corner, a panel of graphic buttons appears for you to zoom, refresh, clear or set the URL for the thumbnail.

Mouse-click and Keyboard shortcuts:

• Left click on a thumbnail title opens “Set URL” dialog.
• Middle click on thumbnail title runs thumbnail refresh.
• Left click on a thumbnail opens the website in current page.
• Middle click on thumbnail opens the website in a new tabs.
• Alt+number keyboard shortcut opens assigned site.
• When viewing zoomed image right-click to exit zoom mode, or left-click to open selected site.

You can customize the appearance of your Fast Dial page in Preferences.

You can download the latest Fast Dial Firefox extension from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5721.

Fast Dial – Add Shortcuts to your Firefox is a post from: TechieQuest

You can change the translation mode to display translation in address bar, display translation in pop-up window, or disable the translation.

To translate a word just select it with your mouse, the translation will appear in Firefox address bar or in a pop-up window. With the pop-up window, you can copy the selected word to the clipboard or search it in one of the search engines by clicking one of the icons such as Google, Yahoo, Answer.com, Flickr, YouTube or Wikipedia.

You can download the latest version of Quick TransLation from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5641.

Quick TransLation – Firefox Add-Ons is a post from: TechieQuest