Microsoft has always been criticized for lack of improvements with their web browser development. Ever since IE6 dominated the browser market and killed off the main rival, Netscape (rest in peace), we have not seen any major updates in the IE until recently with the pressure coming from FireFox back in 2005. Since then, Microsoft has released IE7 and IE8. Still with the improvements of the new browser, IE is still being criticized for rendering the website slower than FireFox or Safari.

Now there are information about the upcoming IE9 which will "support for all CSS 3 selectors, border-radius CSS 3 property, faster JavaScript, and hardware accelerated rendering using Direct2D and DirectWrite." (Wiki). Further information has been revealed from IE 9 team regarding the use of the Direct2D and DirectWrite to render all graphics and text instead of the CPU. Over at the IE8Blog, the site has posted video interviews with the IE engineers where they discuss the script engine and the interoperable standards of the upcoming browser.

In addition to performance improvements, the site also has a screen capture of the font rendered with the Direc2D where it shows that the text looks significantly better with no jaggies.