Microsoft today will preview Internet Explorer 9, the next version of its web browser -- promising a faster online experience and stronger support for emerging web standards, while making the case for traditional PC hardware and operating systems in a world increasingly focused on computing in remote data centers.

The company says Internet Explorer 9 will come with a new underlying scripting engine that takes advantage of multicore computer processors to make web pages run faster. Microsoft also says the new browser will bring better support for HTML5, CSS3 and other web standards, attempting to make it easier for web developers to create a single version of their site that can work across multiple browsers.

But the most eye-catching demonstration is the way the new browser will tap into the computer's graphics processor, rather than the central processing unit, to make high-resolution images and animations zip around the page. It's a new approach that works through the DirectX application programming interfaces in Windows to let the browser access more of the underlying power of the computer hardware.

The announcements, to be made at Microsoft's MIX10 conference in Las Vegas, come amid steady declines in market share for Internet Explorer in the face of competition from Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and others. IE, which at one point in the 1990s had upwards of 90 percent of the market, has fallen to less than 62 percent now, according to the latest data from the NetApplications research firm.

Microsoft today is not expected to issue a timeline or design plans for the release of Internet Explorer 9, in preliminary or final form. The company is releasing a stripped-down IE "Platform Preview" designed to let web developers experience he changes under the hood, also allowing them to see how their sites perform.

[Platform preview available for download here. Live stream of MIX keynote here.]

Microsoft says other browsers will also be able to tap into the same DirectX technologies in Windows if they choose, using the same APIs. Mozilla has also signaled plans to implement hardware-accelerated graphics in the next version of Firefox, but Microsoft says IE9 is so far going further than what other browser makers have shown.

In the long run, will this make a difference in IE's market share?

"I think that developers are going to look at the performance differences and say, wow, I'm getting a lot better performance over here," said Dean Hachamovitch, the Internet Explorer general manager. "I think consumers are going to go, wow, I can use whatever browser I want (but) there are these sites where I'm getting better performance over here. And I think that people are getting very good at making choices."

In the process of overhauling Internet Explorer, the company is also trying to illustrate the ongoing value of traditional computing, and its Windows operating system. The position highlights a philosophical divide between Microsoft and companies such as Google, which is betting heavily on cloud computing, in which storage and processing takes place largely in remote data centers.

Although Microsoft is pushing into cloud computing, as well, it has continued to stress the role of traditional computer processing in the mix.

"Underneath, the hardware is evolving and changing rapidly," said Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft Windows president, explaining that he believes browsers should be in a position to take advantage of those changes. He cited, as one leading indicator of the trend, the desire of web developers to access the computer hardware to incorporate geolocation features into their online applications.