Exactly twelve months from the first Platform Preview of IE9, on Monday March 14th Microsoft will officially release the final version of Internet Explorer 9 for download beginning at 9 p.m. Pacific.

The launch event will be held in Austin, Texas, during the SXSW Festival, Microsoft said in a post to the Exploring IE blog.

New features of the IE9 include support for newer Web standards such as hardware-accelerated HTML5, as well as a do-not-track feature to help protect users' privacy. It also features a simple user interface.

Microsoft released a public beta of IE9 last September, and followed that with a "release candidate," (RC) a month ago.

Windows XP users will not see the IE9 Relese to Web (RTW) offer because the browser does not work on the popular operating system.



Microsoft is expected to beat Mozilla to the upgrade punch Monday. Mozilla's Firefox 4 is nearing completion as the company has wrapped up the first RC of Firefox 4, but will apparently go final after IE9.