I get that Chrome is fast, but do you hear what you're saying. They did a tech preview in October and it's only been three months, which includes Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.
There's rumors that the RC is coming on the 28th. And RTW is probably a few months after that. Not Google like speed, which is ridiculously impressive, but a beta and 7 tech previews in this time isn't bad.
IE8 came out in March of 2008. By the time IE9 is out, it'll be close to 3 years between major browser releases from Microsoft. That is too slow. The Internet is moving much faster than Microsoft understands. (Or perhaps if they understand it, the Web is moving much faster than they can handle.)
Chrome went from a state of non-existing to very popular in the same time. Microsoft's web browser development speed is abysmal for such a powerful and large software company. They either don't care, or they want it to be slow and have poor performance. I can think of no other reason for such slow development of their web browser, especially in an era where everyone knows how important the web is.
Actually it came out in March 2009. So it's two years between major browser releases. In that 22 months they've dropped 7 tech previews and beta. So at about a clip of every 3 months they've released a new build.
But I do agree that it's too slow. They really do need a Chrome like schedule.
[OT] I am pleased with the features in the IE9 Demo, even if a couple of features are fully matured (like the ones mentioned in the article) but what about their upgrade strategy? Are they planning on forcing IE users to upgrade? If there isn't some sort of push for people to upgrade then all these changes are for naught.
From a personal perspective, I find it highly impressive that their dev team can get stuff pushed out that quickly. Please don't get me wrong in that respect. But what you and I think is cool and impressive matters very little in a highly competitive market.
And I think it's also important to note that I'm not talking about speed of feature releases. I'm talking about speed of general releases. New Chrome features often go from conception to stable release in 2-3 months because of the development structure in which they are released. I wouldn't at all be surprised if the IE team have worked out these canvas issues already, but they just haven't released it (which is why I mentioned that the last beta release was in September).
There's rumors that the RC is coming on the 28th. And RTW is probably a few months after that. Not Google like speed, which is ridiculously impressive, but a beta and 7 tech previews in this time isn't bad.