The long-awaited successor to Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is now available to the public for pre-release testing. This comes as good news to web developers and technology enthusiasts around the globe due to Microsoft's new commitment to web standards.

Previous releases of the software giant's flagship web browser has been notorious for its lack of support for web standards, slow scripting engine and its overall bugginess. Internet Explorer has lagged behind more cutting edge browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Google Chrome for years now.

Among the new features that Microsoft has announced support for are HTML5, CSS3, ECMAScript 5th edition, hardware-assisted graphics, 3D acceleration and more.

More than 70 web companies including Amazon, Twitter, MySpace, Hulu, and Yahoo! are reportedly planing to capitalise on IE9's new features by optimize their websites to be faster, richer and more user friendly in the new browser.