Microsoft announced today that Internet Explorer 9 is almost halfway finished and it will support HTML5. Although Microsoft hasn’t announced the release date which was to be expected. Microsoft published a blog post yesterday asking for feedback within it’s beta ‘platform preview’ which has been released to developers & designers.

Microsoft says:

Internet Explorer Platform Preview is not a full web browser. It’s intended to give Web developers an early look at the Web platform technology coming in the next release of Internet Explorer. To distinguish it from a full browser, we call it a platform preview.

HTML 5 Demos

Border Radius – This demo illustrates the CSS3 border-radius property in conjunction with border-width and border-style.

CSS3 – CSS3 Selectors provides new, more powerful ways to select nodes using CSS. This helps when styling complex documents or making CSS that can apply to a document as its structure changes.

DOM Events – DOM Events provides an interoperable eventing mechanism.

DOM Style – DOM Style enables reading and interacting with all the style information for a document.

HTML5 T-Shirt Designer – This demo shows a cross-section of features in Internet Explorer 9, including XHTML, that make our platform more standards-compliant and interoperable.

Download Here @: Microsoft – Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft announces Internet Explorer 9

1). Right-side chat – Move the chat box to the right side of the inbox. Find more @ Gmail Labs

2). Google Calendar gadget – Adds a box in the left column which shows your Google Calendar. See upcoming events, locations, and details. Find more @ Gmail Labs

3). Google Voice player in mail – Lets you play voicemails left on your Google Voice account right from the email notification. Find more @ Gmail Labs

4). Google Docs previews in mail – Shows previews of documents, spreadsheets and presentations directly in the email when you receive any link to a Google Doc. Also gives an option to open directly in Google Docs. Find more @ Gmail Labs

5). Superstars - Adds additional star icons. After enabling this feature: (1) Go to the “General” Settings page to choose which superstars you wish to use. (2) Use either the keyboard shortcut (‘s’) or click to rotate through your selected superstars. (3) Use the search operator “has:” to find all messages with your superstar (e.g. “has:red-bang”, “has:blue-star”). Learn the name of a superstar by hovering over its image in the “General” Settings page. Find more @ Gmail Labs

6). Message translation – Uses Google Translate to translate messages you receive in other languages. Find more @ Gmail Labs

7). Sender Time Zone – Should I reply to this mail or just call the guy? Ooops… it’s 1 am. Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb… Find more @ Gmail Labs

8). Canned Responses – Email for the truly lazy. Save and then send your common messages using a button next to the compose form. Also automatically send emails using filters. Find more @ Gmail Labs

9). Navbar drag and drop – Allows you to reorder the items in your navbar using drag and drop. Find more @ Gmail Labs

10). Authentication icon for verified senders – Displays a key icon next to authenticated messages from certain senders that spammers attempt to fake. Currently works for mail from PayPal and eBay only. Find more @ Gmail Labs

YouTube engineers and developers test out recipes and concoctions that aren’t quite fully baked and invite you to tell them how they’re coming along.

1). Insights for Audience – Discover what different audiences like doing on YouTube. Find more @: YouTube TestTube

2). Warp - Visually browse YouTube videos in the Fullscreen player. Find more @: YouTube TestTube

3). HTML5 Video – Try an experimental version of the YouTube HTML5 video player. Find more @: YouTube TestTube

4). Comment Search – Discover videos by searching video comments. Find more @: YouTube TestTube

5). Feather - View YouTube videos on a super-low latency page. Find more @: YouTube TestTube

1). Attach Google Docs – Attach a Google Docs word processing document, spreadsheet or presentation to your event. You must share each attached document. Find More @: Google Calendar

2). Gentle Reminders – Do you like pop-up reminders but hate how they rudely interrupt whatever you’re doing? This feature will prevent reminders from bringing Calendar to the front. Instead, the title of the Google Calendar window or tab will happily blink in the background. Find More @: Google Calendar

3). Event Flair – Bring life to your calendar and organize your events with icons for things like flights, vacations, parties and meals. Note: icons added to events you organized will be visible to all attendees. After you enable this feature, click on an event and look for the “Calendar flair” gadget to activate. Find More @: Google Calendar

4). Next Meeting – See what’s coming up next in your calendar. Find More @: Google Calendar

5). World Clock – Keep track of the time around the world. Plus: when you click an event, you’ll see the start time in each time zone as well. Find More @: Google Calendar