Since Microsoft made available to testers the Internet Explorer (IE) 9 developer preview in mid-March, there have been about 700,000 downloads of it, according to a source close to the situation, who asked not to be identified.

IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch, with whom I had a brief phone conversation on April 7, would not comment on the exact number of IE 9 downloads to date. But he did confirm there has been positive reception for Microsoft’s next release of IE — a release which will feature HTML 5 support, a new, speedier JavaScript engine and a host of other features.

The first preview was released in U.S. English only, Hachamovitch noted. The top five biggest downloaders (by country) were the U.S., Brazil, India, the U.K. and Germany (in descending order), he said. The majority (50 percent) of testers are hammering on the preview’s speed and performance benchmarks, Hachamovitch said. Another 27 percent have been focusing on the Microsoft-provided graphics-centric tests, he said, while 22 percent have been putting the HTML 5 capabilities of the preview through its paces.

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