A Chinese website claims to have gotten hold of some leaked screenshots showing off the GUI concept of Microsoft's next big Internet Explorer release, IE9 (not that many people would be interested in anything more to do with IE these days).

However, you can see straight away this one takes a big step away from the typical bloated appearance we're used to seeing and cuts off the fat in favour of a singular bar up top that alternates, depending on what use you require at the time.

THe bar can go from displaying the title to the status, address bar or search box which goes a long way to condensing the overall design and generally looking a lot cleaner.

The downside? - Engadget were quick to learn the images were in fact just an act of April-inspired tomfoolery from the source (LiveSino). But there's no denying the concept is an attractive one and it would be nice if we saw browser developers heading this way in the future.