Software giant Microsoft released the beta version of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) on September 15, with much fanfare in San Francisco.

The IE is widely seen as a Windows feature, but the company has already confirmed that IE9 is not a Windows feature. This becomes clearer with the fact that IE 9 currently only works with Windows Vista and Windows 7. That means it does not work with Windows XP, which presently is the most popular operating system around the globe.

The new browser has been receiving positive reviews for the features the company added to make it better then its predecessors.

IE 9 features HTML 5 technology and CSS3, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) in addition to other web standards. It is claimed to be faster than its rival browsers. In addition, it comes with a number of privacy and security measures that have been designed to eradicate perceptions that IE is less safe than other browsers.

It focuses on applications, with a redesigned and cleaner interface. More pixels have been dedicated to the website rather than the browser. It also incorporated IE 8’s Smart screen Filter, along with Application Reputation, which protect users from malware.

The company is yet to announce the exact release date for its new web browser, but it is broadly expected to be released in April 2011.

The IE 9 beta comes with some of the features witnessed in the Google Chrome browser. For example, opening a new tab in the Microsoft’s newest web browser brings up a popular sites screen depicting the logos of the most visited Web pages. The popular sites screen looks like that of the Google Chrome screen. The IE 9 is Microsoft’s attempt to preserve its dominance in the market against rivals such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.