Microsoft announced the latest Platform Preview 6 of Internet Explorer 9 earlier today.
The latest developers build introduces CSS3 2D Transforms, which provide a simple, declarative way to translate, rotate, and scale elements in two-dimensional space. Platform Preview 6 also recognizes HTML5 Semantic Elements as object type HTMLElement and provides default styling for them. Both of these features are not present in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 beta build, released in September.
Ars Technica have worked out how to run the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 6 components with the beta UI of IE9. The hybrid Internet Explorer allows you to test the new features of Platform Preview 6 alongside the UI of Internet Explorer 9. To enable this functionality simply follow these steps:
- Install IE9 Beta on your machine. You can download IE9 Beta from www.beautyoftheweb.com
- Install Internet Explorer Platform Preview 6. You can download Platform Preview 6 from www.ietestdrive.com
- Create a folder on your Desktop called IE9_PP6
- Copy the iexplore.exe file from the C:/Program Files/Internet Explorer directory (or C:/Program Files (x86)/Internet Explorer if you are on a 64 bit machine) to the IE9_PP6 folder
- Create a folder inside IE9_PP6 called iexplore.exe.local (Note: It is imperative that you name this folder exactly as specified)
- Navigate to the Internet Explorer Platform Preview directory within Program files (commonly on 32 bit machines this will be at C:/Program Files/Internet Explorer Platform Preview and on 64 bit machines this will be at C:/Program Files (x86)/Internet Explorer Platform Preview)
- Copy the contents of the iepreview.exe.local folder within the Internet Explorer Platform Preview directory to the iexplore.exe.local folder within IE9_PP6
- Close all instances of IE running on your machine and run iexplore.exe from IE9_PP6