Internet Explorer 9 due on March 14

Microsoft has announced that Internet Explorer (IE) 9 will be available for download next Monday, March 14.

“We will celebrate the developers and designers who are making a more beautiful web for all of us.  We will release the final version of Internet Explorer 9 for download beginning at 9 p.m. Pacific,” Microsoft’s Ryan Gavin posted on its Windows Team blog.

Microsoft has been dribbling out new features ever since it released its Platform Preview in March last year, which has now gone through one Beta and a Release Candidate.

The latest update included a Tracking Protection privacy feature, its answer to a US regulator's push for “Do Not Track” legislation to be introduced.

Microsoft's IE9 announcement comes days after it launched a bid to expunge an early predecessor, IE6, from the web.

IE9 promises to be a faster, but also more web standard compliant browser, which it claims to conform to several HTML5 specifications, including CSS3, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), XHTML parsing, and the video and audio tags using industry-standard (H.264/MPEG4 and MP3/AAC) codecs, among others.

Earlier this month Google released its new Chrome browser while Mozilla has in the works Firefox 4, with both promising a faster web experience.