Microsoft has launched the latest version of its popular browser, Windows Internet Explorer 9 in 40 languages, including Arabic in the Middle East.

Internet Explorer 9 is Microsoft’s most-downloaded browser beta of all time, with more than 40 million downloads, and it has already gained more than 2 per cent usage on Windows 7.

“Today, the Web can unlock the power and performance of the best PC hardware through Windows and Internet Explorer 9. Websites also can act more like applications within Windows 7, with features such as Pinned Sites. In less than a year, Internet Explorer 9 went from early preview to final release with the help of hardware partners and the Web community,” said Muhammad Arrabi, developer platform evangelist, Microsoft Jordan.

Already seven top sites from Jordan are taking advantage of the capabilities in Internet Explorer 9 to deliver differentiated experiences to their customers, and they include Maktoob, D1g, Jeeran,  JordanWeather, Kharabeesh, Minihath and  Shoofeetv.

Partners in Jordan are re-imaging their websites using the capabilities of Windows and Internet Explorer 9, creating new experiences that make the Web feel as native as PC applications.

The new version of Internet Explorer takes advantage of the power of modern Windows PC hardware to improve all-around Web browsing performance. The only browser with fully hardware-accelerated HTML5, Internet Explorer 9 harnesses the power of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), unlocking 90 per cent of the PC’s power that went previously untapped by Web browsers.

With Internet Explorer 9, developers can now build faster, more immersive websites that feel like native applications using interoperable HTML5 or by using plug-ins such as Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight, both of which will take advantage of the hardware acceleration in Internet Explorer 9 in their next versions.

The new browser contains a robust set of built-in security, privacy and reliability technologies that keep customers safer online. So it comes with Tracking Protection, which puts people in control of what data they are sharing as they move around the Web, by enabling consumers to indicate what websites they’d prefer not to exchange information with.

Malware is now the No. 1 risk to people’s security online, and Internet Explorer 9 provides the first Download Manager with integrated SmartScreen malware protection. The browser also introduces SmartScreen download reputation, a groundbreaking browser feature that uses reputation data to remove unnecessary warnings for well-known files and show more severe warnings when the download has a higher risk of being malicious.

Studies show that Internet Explorer 9 blocks 99 per cent of socially engineered malware attacks, five times more than Firefox and 33 times more than Chrome, he added.-TradeArabia News Service