The platform preview of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 released on Tuesday showed that the web browser performed 7.8 times better than Internet Explorer 8.

This comes as welcome news to web programmers since it ensures that various web standards will now become safer to use.

Beta News also affirmed that IE9 is faster than IE8 in specific categories. The computational department and the Chakra JavaScript engine display much needed improvements.

However, debatably, Microsoft is sticking with one litigious standard. The bone of contention is the web video that calls for a plug-in such as Adobe’s Flash or Microsoft's Silverlight.

Microsoft’s IE9 includes HTML5 video encoded with a particular technology called H. 264. This implies that web sites with video will either have to include two streams for different browsers or possibly continue using Flash.

The H. 264 is inhospitable to open source video streaming that does not require plug-ins such as Flash or Silverlight.

Leaving aside this hitch, IE9 has shown to perform faster and better than IE8. It is believed that IE9’s new Chakra can interpret data with a 581.4% greater efficiency than IE8 and it also increases its pace when the workload increases.