Microsoft launches final IE9 release candidate

Company says its 35 per cent faster than beta

Microsoft has released the final release candidate for Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) today.

Microsoft UK web product manager Mark Quirk said that the browser is now "feature complete".

On Microsoft's official IE9 blog, IE performance lead programme manager Jason Weber said that with IE9 the developers' main aim was to make the time from when a user clicks on a web site to when it displays as as short as possible.

Quirk said that the new browser is 35 per cent faster than the beta on industry standard benchmarks such as SunSpider.

A major new feature in IE9 is Tracking Protection, which enables users to block web sites from taking any tracking information about them.

Other features include semantic tags and WebM open video format.