Microsoft's big plan is to launch the public beta of Internet Explorer 9 on Sept. 15, at a high-profile event in San Francisco. While the browser's features--including speedier browser performance, greater compatibility and compliance with standards, and enhanced HTML5 support--are well-known among the developer community by this point, there's been precious little info about how IE 9 will actually look.

Until now, perhaps. That's because a Microsoft Russia site might have accidentally posted a screenshot of IE 9's interface. Mary Jo Foley over at All About Microsoft seems to have spotted the image first, before a site administrator yanked it down, and posted it on her blog along with a machine translation of the accompanying text:

If the image is authentic, and that text a reflection of the final product, then IE 9 will include a streamlined navigation panel with a merged search/address bar, as well as Firefox-style tabs that can "rip away" to become new windows. To me, at least, the interface feels quite a bit like Google Chrome.

What do you think?