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Microsoft just launched the first beta of Internet Explorer 9. After a series of developer previews, this is the first release of Internet Explorer 9 that features the browser's new interface. The new design is very clean and only features a single bar for entering URLs and managing your tabs. In addition, the browser is also integrated more tightly with Windows 7 and allows users to pin websites to the task bar, for example.

You can download the beta here.

Microsoft plans to unveil the design of Internet Explorer 9 next week, but thanks to a new leak, we now have a pretty good idea of what the next generation of Microsoft's browser will look like. Currently, Microsoft only offers "developer preview" versions of the browser that do not feature the new user interface. The enterprising Internet Explorer 9 fans at IEBest.com, however, managed to get an early copy of the browser and captured the new interface on video.

With the official launch of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 only a few weeks away, we already know about some of its impressive capabilities but there is still one thing we're still left wondering: What does it look like? Will Microsoft continue on with its often clunky and cluttered design or will it join the likes of the sleek and slim Google Chrome?

According to ZDNet, a sneak preview of the next-gen browser seems to indicate that Microsoft is finally ready to join the future.

Microsoft just announced the launch of the first developer preview version of Internet Explorer 9. This release is clearly geared towards developers and only features a very stripped down user interface. The developer preview does, however, include Chakra, Microsoft's new JavaScript engine, as well as a new hardware accelerated graphics subsystem and additional developer tools.

Microsoft announced Internet Explorer 9 at its Professional Developers Conference earlier this month. One of the unique features of IE9 that Microsoft announced at that time was hardware acceleration for its browser. Thanks to technologies like Direct2D and Direct Write that are available for Windows7, Windows developers can use a computer's graphics card to render websites faster. While Microsoft is still working on this project behind closed doors, however, you can already download a Direct2D-enabled pre-release version of Firefox 3.7 today.

Microsoft just announced that it started work on Internet Explorer 9 three weeks ago. Steven Sinofsky, the president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, showed an early build of IE9 during his PDC keynote today. In this presentation, Sinofsky announced that Microsoft will focus on support for new standards like HTML5 and CSS3, as well as developing a faster JavaScript rendering engine. Sinofsky candidly acknowledged that IE8 did not do well on the Acid3 test, though this early build of IE9 only scored a few points higher than IE8 (24 vs. 32).