Hinting that the public beta of its much-enhanced next-generation browser, the Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is coming soon, Microsoft Wednesday released the fourth and final Platform Preview of the browser for developers.

The notable improvements that Microsoft has introduced in its forthcoming IE9 include the integration of the “Chakra” JavaScript engine; hardware-accelerated HTML5; and the noticeably bettered Acid3 score of 95 – that is nearly five times better than Acid3 score of IE8.

Noting that for the key focus of the IE9 team has been the development of a fast as well as capable ‘cutting edge’ browser, a post on Microsoft’s IEBlog revealed that the IE9 development team is “committed to the right foundation for HTML5 applications, including performance and ensuring the same markup and same script work across browsers.”

The post further added: “One aspect of doing these things well is integrating the JavaScript engine natively inside the browser, rather than bolting it onto the side to support multiple JavaScript engines as some other browsers do today. How a JavaScript engine is integrated into the browser is as important as the engine itself for real-world HTML5.”

In fact, after every eight weeks or so, Microsoft has been releasing new updates to IE9; and has recently started hinting that the next release could be the public beta; thereby indicating that the beta version of the new browser may become available to the general public by early October.