There's only four weeks to go until the next IE9 developer preview, and it looks like Chinese leak site Cnbeta might have got its hands on the new build already.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the screenshots, nor the Google translation. The Developer Previews (Internet Explorer Test Drive) are not meant to have a user interface -- they're just there to show off the Trident rendering engine. That means we're probably looking at the beta version of IE9 in these screenshots. Does that mean the private beta has begun -- or are these simply fakes?

As you can see above, IE9 seems to gained a proper download manager. After the break there's a couple more images -- one of the very Chromeish 'new tab page', and one that hints at restartless add-on management.

Looking at the SunSpider performance graph, I'm not sure if these images are real -- or whether this beta build sports the latest version of the Trident rendering engine. When I tested IE's JavaScript performance last month, it was about the same speed as Firefox 3.6 -- not some 10 times slower than Chrome.

[via Neowin]

Very Chromeish, eh?

'Stay Fast'? Are these really from a beta build...?

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

Firefox 4 Beta 2 was just released, and you can grab it from the Beta page.

Every tab now has a "Make into App Tab" command in the context menu, which shrinks the tab down to just the favicon and puts it on the leftmost position (similar to Chrome's pin tab feature). Also, tabs on top have arrived in the Mac version. I couldn't test it myself - share your thoughts in the comments, Mac users!

Mozilla made a snazzy video showing App Tabs, which you can watch after the jump.

[via Google Chrome Blog]

Since we released Chrome for Mac in beta last December, we've been busy adding new features. Today, after some incubation in the developer channel, we're happy to make some of these features more widely available. The new beta release of Chrome for Mac offers extensions, bookmark sync, and more.

With this new version, you'll be able to install any of over 2,200 extensions (and counting!) currently available in Chrome's extensions gallery. Extensions can add useful, informative, fun, or quirky functionality to the browser. You can manage your extensions by clicking on the Window menu and choosing "Extensions."

For this release, we remained focused on providing a snappy, safe, and simple browsing experience on the Mac. If you haven't tried Chrome on the Mac yet and are curious about its features, this video will take you on a brief tour:

While Chrome OS has been getting the lion's share of netbook/smartbook buzz of late, Tariq Krim and company have been steadfastly plugging away at Jolicloud.

Today, the Jolicloud pre-beta has been released and it's ready for the general public to install on their Windows netbooks.

Jolicloud's Wubi-derived installer make the process dead-simple. Download the 600Mb .exe [or the torrent] from their website, launch it, and make your selections. Within a few moments you're system can dual-boot into Jolicloud or Windows.

While I suppose it's technically not fair to compare Jolicloud and Chrome OS right now since Chrome is so early in the alpha stage, I'm going to anyway. Right now - and for the near future - Jolicloud is the winner in my mind because it supports both native and web-based applications equally well.

"Sure, but Jolicloud uses Firefox and Firefox is slooooooooooow!" you say? Fine, go grab the Google Chrome beta for Linux and install the 32-bit .deb on Jolicloud. There. You've got a nice, fast, webkit-based browser - just click in from your internet apps tab.

Google Chrome for Linux is finally ready for beta. Like the Windows version, it's fast, secure, stable, simple, extensible, and embraces open standards like HTML5.

[via Google Chrome Blog]

Fresh from a Halloween weekend, we're excited to introduce a brand new beta for Google Chrome, which includes a few new treats and cool tricks for our users.

For those of you who use several computers -- for example, a laptop at work and a desktop at home -- you've asked for a way to keep your Google Chrome bookmarks in sync across multiple computers. Today's new beta release allows you to do just that! You can keep your Google Chrome bookmarks synchronized and up-to-date across the multiple computers you use, without needing to manually recreate your bookmarks every time you use a different computer.

For more on how to use bookmark sync, check out the video below from one of our team members, Anthony LaForge:

Google just released a new beta version of its Chrome browser for Windows PCs. The company claims that it is 30 percent faster than the current stable version of the browser (based on V8 and SunSpider benchmarks).