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Screenshots: Internet Explorer 9 beta

Take a tour of Microsoft's next browser, now in public beta, which features a revamped, minimalist user interface and makes the most of HTML 5
By Simon Bisson, Contributor
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Drag a tab out to make a new window and it's easy to snap two pages side by side. Drag it to the taskbar to pin it and you get the slightly different interface on the right.

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With a fast JavaScript engine and renderer under the hood, IE 9 tells you when an add-on is slowing it down.

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Start typing and IE 9 gives you matches from your history and favourites — and search suggestions if you turn them on. Matching URLs are autocompleted.

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Dialogues, infobars and alerts all move down into the notification bar, where they're not as irritating — and maybe not as noticeable.

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Pin sites to the taskbar and they act like apps with jump lists of tasks that are actually web pages, making a site feel like an app and a web app feel like a Windows app.

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Pin this streaming site to the Windows 7 taskbar and you get a thumbnail with controls; you can pause or rate songs in the thumbnail.

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You have to click in just the right spot to turn old interface components back on.

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There are some useful tools in the new IE 9 download manager.

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The colourful and (mostly) useful New Tab page displays common and recently visited pages.

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Microsoft has plenty of tools that let you play around and compare browser speeds; the Beauty of the Web site also highlights real sites and web apps that make the most of HTML 5.

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