“Socially engineering attacks like malware are a growing threat on the internet and are one of the most common risks to people’s safety online” wrote Microsoft’s James Pratt.

“We have got better and better at blocking malware through the SmartScreen Filter because we have continued to invest in our back end service since we released IE8 in March 2009″ said Pratt.

In the last two months, more than 100 million malware attempts have been blocked by Internet Explorer 8, 5 times as many as the same time last year, with more than 1.7 times the users.

The continued investment and development of malware protection is great for consumers, and helps keep their home PC’s safe.

Malware, also known as phishing (pronounced fishing), protection can also be found in other popular browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, and Opera.

The updated preview release includes support for the HTML5 video tag, canvas tag support and embedded fonts using the WOFF standard.

“The third Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9, available now, continues the deep work around hardware acceleration to enable the same standards-based markup to run faster. This is the latest instalment of the rhythm we started in March, delivering platform preview releases approximately every eight weeks and listening to developers. You’ll see more performance, same markup, and hardware accelerated HTML5″ wrote Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager, Internet Explorer.

This latest release performs well in benchmarks, now scoring 83/100 in the Acid3 test, up from 68/100 in the last platform preview. SunSpider testing shows the browser is almost on par with the recently released Safari 5, which our own testing confirmed.

Willing testers can check out the IE9 Platform Preview release from the Test Drive IE website.

Available for many versions of Windows, starting at Windows 2000, and covering all versions of Internet Explorer from IE5.01, the update is highly recommended for all Windows users.

The update fixes six security vulnerabilities, with the most serious allowing remote code execution if a user visits an infected website.

Windows users with Automatic Updates turned on will receive the update in the coming days.

Microsoft is still hard at work on Internet Explorer 9, and today provided an updated on how they are going with the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) web standards.

Latest results show that IE9 is now fully HTML5 standards compliant.

Microsoft conducted W3C Web Standards tests for HTML5, SVG 1.1 2nd edition, CSS3 media queries, CSS3 borders & backgrounds, CSS3 selectors, DOM level 3 core, DOM level 3 events and DOM level 2 style across a variety of browsers.

These browsers included IE9 May 2010 Preview, Firefox 3.6.3, Opera 10.52, Apple Safari 4.05, and Google Chrome 4.1 all running on Windows. The results are very promising for IE9.

A preview IE9 build can be downloaded from the IE Test Drive website.

They base this data on their Google Analytic data that is collected from their website, with users of the site being described as early adopters.

ReadWriteWeb data shows a big drop in Firefox users over the last 12 months, from 54% to 39%, while Chrome has enjoyed a jump from 7% to 18%, all while Internet Explorer usage has stayed constant at around 25%. These statistics make this theory sound plausible.

We can’t vouch for these figures in our own statistics, but it is interesting none the less. Market Share data from Net Applications shows that Firefox is still gaining share slowly, while Chrome is also growing, and Internet Explorer is on a one way slop down.

This would suggest that Firefox may be taking users away from Internet Explorer, but that older and more experienced Firefox users are taking the plunge to Google’s Chrome browser.

Either way, the entrance of Chrome into the market has surely stirred things up. Statistics over the next few months will be very interesting, with yesterdays release of Chrome for Mac and Linux.

“You wouldn’t drink 9 year old milk, so why use a 9-year-old browser” asks Microsoft.

“When Internet Explorer 6 was launched in 2001, it offered cutting–edge security – for the time. Since then, the Internet has evolved and the security features of Internet Explorer 6 have become outdated. With the latest state–of–the–art security features, Internet Explorer 8 is designed to cope with today’s modern cyber crime” says Microsoft’s introduction.

The campaign is aimed at existing IE6 users, which still make up 17.58% of the web browsers world-wide according to Market Share by Net Applications.

Microsoft Australia’s campaign can be seen here, along with some very interesting fraud facts.

“CSS3 Selectors enable complex styling of webpages using simpler CSS and less script than previously possible” wrote Newman.

“Our goal is to enable new selectors in your webpages in a way that lets the same markup work across browsers [...] IE9 now passes 100% of test cases on css3.info, 100% of the W3C CSS3 Selectors Test Suite, and Acid3 tests 34 through 37 and 39 through 44″ continued Newman.

Interested users can test out a developer preview of Internet Explorer 9 by downloading it from the test drive site.

A full list of CSS3 selectors supported by Internet Explorer 9 can be found after the break.

Internet Explorer 9 is set to include support for the following selectors:

• E:root
• E:nth-child(n)
• E:nth-last-child(n)
• E:nth-of-type(n)
• E:nth-last-of-type(n)
• E:last-child
• E:first-of-type
• E:last-of-type
• E:only-child
• E:only-of-type
• E:only-child
• E:only-of-type
• E:empty
• E:target
• E:enabled
• E:disabled
• E:checked
• E:indeterminate
• E:not(s)
• ::selection

“Today’s release builds on the first Platform Preview, delivering improvements to IE9’s performance, support for standards, and hardware acceleration of HTML5.  We’ve also updated the test drive site with a new set of developer samples to show what developers can do with GPU-powered HTML5. As part of our commitment to enabling developers to use the Same Markup – the same HTML, CSS, and script – on the web, we have contributed many new tests to the W3C for HTML5, as well as CSS3 Media Queries and DOM. The Developer Tools in this preview include some new features to make finding and fixing markup issues easier” wrote Internet Explorer’s General Manager Dean Hachamovitch.

Microsoft testing shows the browser is also slightly faster in SunSpider JavaScript benchmark test then the previous preview release, with the browser still being faster than Firefox 3.6 and Firefox.Next builds.

The release come days after figures show that Internet Explorer’s market share has dropped below the 60% mark for the first time since late 1998.

Windows users wanting to test Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview #2 can download the browser from ietestdrive.com.

The problem according to Opera, is that the ballot screen is completely obstructed when a user opens Internet Explorer for the first time on a fresh installation of Windows.

Opera fears that users will just ignore the ballot screen, and continue to use Internet Explorer without realising they had a choice.

Microsoft has dismissed the claims. “This scenario is very easy to reproduce in a test lab, but would occur only in unusual cases in the real world. For it to occur with the Browser Choice screen, the user would need to have IE set as their default browser and have never configured it for use. Opera’s example, where a Windows XP user has rejected installation of IE 8 for the year it has been available but suddenly decides to install it is not realistic” said a Microsoft spokesperson.

Opera has alerted the European Union of the problem.

New images have emerged over on Chinese site LiveSino which appear to be a leaked Internet Explorer 9 interface.

The interface appears to resemble the new minimalistic Metro interface found in the upcoming Windows Phone 7 series.

Microsoft has been tight lipped about the images, and has not yet released a statement. It is uncertain whether they are real, or part of an elaborate April Fools prank.

A second screen shot can be seen after the break.