The IE9 public beta may already have hit more than 2 million downloads, but its future is as cloudy as ever I remember when I broke up with Internet Explorer. Microsoft had let IE go to seed, with no significant updates in the five years after IE6 shipped in 2001. A scrappy group of brilliant programmers, led by Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt, came up with a free program that supported — shock! — tabs inside the browser. Firefox started gaining street cred. Knocked out of its lethargy, in late 2006 Microsoft released IE7 (with — shock! — tabs inside the browser) and the Firefox team released Firefox 2. It took me all of two days to dump IE and start using Firefox, almost exclusively. Fast-forward four years and the Firefox folks have brought dozens of important new features to my desktop. I’m also using Chrome frequently, and it’s even more innovative than Firefox — simply brilliant. Meanwhile, Microsoft has brought a bunch of … uh … er… let me see if I can think of a single innovation I use that debuted with IE7 or IE8. I’ll get back to you on that. Microsoft released a stable beta version of Internet Explorer 9 last week, and I’ve been taking it through its paces. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised to see that IE9 catches up with most of the innovations in Firefox 3 and Chrome 6. I’ve been even more surprised to see that IE9 actually includes a few new, useful features. The official Exploring IE blog reports more than 2 million downloads of the IE9 beta in the first two days. You, too, can join the fray by starting at Microsoft’s Beauty of the Web site, an extended advertising experience. Although it isn’t wise to run beta software on a production PC (and if you have crucial add-ins, don’t install a beta version, please), you can pick up Firefox 4 Beta 6 at the Mozilla beta site. Chrome’s latest, which isn’t as stable as the others, can be obtained at the Chrome 7 Canary Version download site. Microsoft deserves heaps of praise for embracing HTML5, the last great hope for ridding our computers of Flash addiction and, it must be noted, a likely contender for some of Microsoft’s Silverlight limelight. Sure, HTML5 isn’t yet a standard; IE9 only supports a small piece of commonly accepted HTML5 commands; controversy about HTML5 rages, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. To see how your favorite browser, beta or otherwise, measures up to various visions of HTML5, drop by test sites html5test.com, html5demos.com, and caniuse.com. IE9 runs noticeably faster than IE8 — you can feel it, just dropping by sites you visit all the time. Is IE9 faster than Firefox 4 or Chrome 7? Good question, but it’s still too early to tell: Running a speed test on beta software is like jogging on a rusty treadmill in wet socks. IE9 clearly lives in a Windows 7 world. It doesn’t work on XP — not at all. Microsoft makes much of IE9’s new ability to “pin” a website’s favicon (to the left of the Web address) to the Windows 7 toolbar. I stepped through the demos and could hardly muster a snore, but you may like the new color-coordination between the favicon and the front and back arrows. Bling. The over-arching question: Is IE9 good enough to stem Microsoft’s hemorrhaging browser market share? Can the company that went from 90 percent of the market to around 50 percent reclaim some of its lost luster? Press reports paint a happy face on Microsoft execs talking about how IE9 will gain “huge momentum” in conjunction with an anticipated massive corporate switch to Windows 7. IE9 and Windows 7, the fanboys say, go together like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Or something. Pardon me for raining on several parades, but I just don’t see it happening. Microsoft gave up its wide corporate IE9 appeal when it dropped XP support. Undeniably the march to Windows 7 will continue, as it should, but dragging IE9 along in upgrade lockstep compounds — and lengthens — the misery. With IE8, companies with significant investments in Web applications have a chance to bring older XP systems into the fold first, making the upgrade in two steps. For those who get to choose their own browsers, IE9 puts Microsoft back into the browser game, certainly, but anyone familiar with Firefox or Chrome will immediately see where most of the new ideas came from. Firefox 4 and Chrome 7 clearly run circles around IE9 in many ways. Microsoft has shown that it can catch up, but rapid-fire development cycles with the Firefox and Chrome teams mean that IE’s going to be outflanked again. Soon. Quo vadis? I’d be willing to bet that we’ll see IE’s market share bump up a little bit through the end of the year, then slowly continue its downward drift, with Firefox and Chrome fighting fiercely for the other half. Now that’s going to be a battle worth watching. Technology IndustryBrowsers