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This week we released the final version of Internet Explorer 9 to the world. With over 40 million downloads, IE9 Beta was our fastest adopted browser beta ever. Many people have already been using the Beta and RC versions of IE9 with over 2% usage share worldwide on Windows 7 while still in beta. Now with our Release to the Web (RTW) of IE9, we encourage companies to adopt IE9 so their customers, employees, and IT staff can start taking advantage of the benefits offered in this release of IE9.
While there are many reasons why IE9 is the best browser for business, there are nine reasons I think are most important:
1. Built for performance. IE9 was designed from the ground up to be the world’s fastest browser based on real Web performance metrics that matter to all customers. Chakra, the new JavaScript engine in IE9, is the fastest available today per the commonly used WebKit SunSpider benchmark and increases your productivity with faster browsing. While script performance is important to browsing, it is only one of many factors in performance that we focused on in building IE9.
2. Hardware acceleration. Tapping into the power of the whole PC, IE9 is the only fully hardware-accelerated browser on Windows. All graphics, video, and text in IE9 are hardware-accelerated through the graphics processing unit or GPU. By utilizing the power of hardware acceleration, businesses can build web-based apps that behave more like native Windows applications because they can have better performance through using both the CPU and the GPU. Better performance means better productivity for your company.
3. Site-centric design. Users launch a browser to reach their favorite site or web app. To make these sites shine, IE9 has a new, clean user interface that puts the focus on your websites. We’ve streamlined IE9 to give you more screen real estate within the browser frame than any other browser available. Notifications have also been revamped in IE9 to be clearer and less intrusive in your users browsing experience. Less browser frame and interruptions mean you and your employees can spend more time focused on your sites.
4. Native to Windows. With IE9, your websites and web apps feel like native applications on your PC. IE9 has seamless integration with Windows 7 that allows you to increase your productivity by using common controls in Windows 7 like Jump Lists and Aero Snap. Your employees can “pin” their favorite sites to their Windows 7 taskbar and receive notifications and see thumbnail previews of their work or personal sites or apps through the taskbar.
5. More Secure by default. IE9 builds on the great award-winning security features of Internet Explorer 8. IE9 helps protect you and your business from drive-by exploits, socially-engineered attacks (like malware), and threats against websites you visit, through proven technologies like SmartScreen, Protected Mode, Data Execution Prevention, and Cross-Site Script Filtering. Socially-engineered malware represents one of the biggest threats to user security today, and IE9 has the highest block rate of any browser out there today with its SmartScreen technology that has blocked over 1.5 billion pieces of malware since its release with IE8 in March 2009. Reduced likelihood of having malware on your systems means less down time and lowered costs of cleanup from malware attacks. And if privacy is a concern of yours, IE9 includes support for Tracking Protection, which gives you better control over the browser’s communication with third party websites to help keep your information private from online trackers.
6. Easy to deploy. IE9 relies on well-established and supported deployment options not found in any other web browser, making it possible to deploy inside your organization quickly and easily. You can deploy IE 9 using Windows Update, WSUS, System Center Configuration Manager, group policy, a network folder, or even quickly slipstream into your existing Windows images. The Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) allows you to create customized IE9 install packages in minutes for your own company-version of IE9.
7. Comprehensive management tools. IE9 offers extensive management options for big and small businesses alike. Larger customers can have full granular control over IE9 with over 1500 group policies to enforce any configurations they want. For companies that seek simpler controls, there are tools available such as the Security Compliance Manager or the “Easy to Deploy” section of the IEAK for complete end-to-end security and management scenarios for your particular environment.
8. Compatibility and Migration Support. Internet Explorer is the only browser that officially supports backwards compatibility for browser and document modes, emulating some functionality as early as IE5.5 and IE6. With IE9 we continue that compatibility from previous versions of IE. Your users can easily render sites in early compatibility modes by selecting compatibility mode from within IE9 and your IT admins can programmatically places sites into compatibility mode through group policy. As you would expect, we provide numerous resources and tools to help with your migration to the latest version of Internet Explorer. And we provide the longest support life cycle of any browser out there – allowing you to upgrade your browser at your own pace.
9. Support for modern standards. Modern web applications require support for the latest Web standards. With Internet Explorer 9, we have delivered our most standards compliant browser ever including support for industry standards such as HTML5, CSS3, SVG1.1, and ECMAScript5. We are committed to modern Web standards and work closely with standards bodies like the W3C to help develop these standards and bring them to the marketplace through IE9. Great standards support in IE9 means that when you build sites based on modern Web standards, your sites will work across other browsers as well who have adopted these industry standards. Building on HTML5 with IE 9 is the best way to build for Windows, today and tomorrow.
Over the past few months, we’ve worked with large organizations such as Siemens IT Services and Solutions, our own Microsoft IT department, and several others to deploy and test IE9 to see what people thought of IE9. The feedback has been great from users and IT professionals alike. We are confident that IE9 is a great choice for your business and employees as well.
As your company makes the move to IE9, we want to hear from you as well. Your feedback is an important part of delivering the right technologies to meet your business needs.
Thanks,
Roger Capriotti Director, Internet Explorer Marketing
Ok; so if it's such a great browser then where are the non-Windows versions and the Windows XP version? Answer = there are none. Now it may not have occurred to you that not everyone is running Windows Vista or 7. In fact a sizable proportion of business-users still prefer Windows XP because of its much-faster 2D graphics-handling when running Office applications and other, similar, types of software. There are also *nix and Mac users out there who could benefit from IE9 but have been left in the dark.
I can understand that the idea is to wean everyone using Windows off of XP and have them using Vista and 7, but it appears to me that Microsoft could have made more of a name for itself had it made provision for use with most if not all operating systems. While XP is still alive until 2014, is it not a bit of an insult to XP users to leave them out of having the chance to use a new browser developed by XP's makers? Didn't XP users pay good money for their o/s when it was new, just like Windows 7 users also did? Isn't leaving XP users in the cold short-changing them somewhat?
So maybe the technology of XP is a little lackluster for running this browser to its full-capability? Maybe also the hardware capability required to run IE9 with full-functionality is missing with regard to some rather ancient machines that were purpose-built for running XP but are unable to run Vista and 7 due to their geriatric hardware-capabilities? Surely the mighty Microsoft with all its financial and technological clout would be able to produce at least a trimmed-down version for XP, so that its users didn't feel quite so left out?
@shazzalive... I can't vote here, but just like to give a big + for your comment
I would also like to encourage Microsoft to consider creating a version of IE9 for XP. I purchased a Vista machine before 7 was out and elected to install a downgrade to XP. I am a web developer, so I will likely need to install IE9 for testing purposes if nothing else. However, I don't intend to upgrade soon, so I think my only option will be to setup a virtual machine installation of Vista (since I don't have a license for 7) just to run IE9.
I still wish the next version of Internet Explorer would run on the XP operating system. IE9 already has a mode for software rendering fallback. Microsoft isn't listening to customers here, XP users are a very sizeable chunk still. It would be understandable to not create an XP version if its market share falls below 20-25% of something. Please create a standards compliant-browser for WinXP.
Expression Web's Superpreview support IE9 for those who can't install it?
Also, Putting a modern browser on a legacy OS doesn't make good business sense in my book. It costs MS more to support XP than Vista/7 combined. Why would they want to keep hemmoraging money through a 10 year old thorn in their side?
Microsoft invent to new idea...how to increase in sales to world wide so they implement IE9. I think IE9 is best web browser in the web market.
@deadonthefloor - I agree! Waste of time to bring it to XP. Support for XP ended in April 2009, extended support covers security holes not bringing an outdated OS up to speed. They need to concentrate on IE 10 because Google will surely respond. If you like XP so much, go with Google Chrome...the more they support outdated tech, the more people keep using it...like aheeeeeem IE 6
It's hard to find a place to submit feedback to specific people that could hear to implement it. Well, I hope you hear if not pass my suggestions to the appropiate team/manager.
- IE lacks a spell/grammar checker.
- It would be very useful to have a control visible to control the zoom. (In IE9)
- The IE9 icons on the address bar I think shoul be a bit more separate and maybe if I pass the mouse the icon grows.
- The bing bar shoud be activated on an icon next the the home or preferences icons. No notification of desactivation. That could be great for all other toolbars.
- the bing bar could also be displayed when I move the mouse over the address bar (bellow).
- The window controls could be removed, that would gain even more space (IE9).
- IE extensions are tedious to install. It should be as easy as click to install, click to restart your browser.
- I read that IE extensions are hard to develop. That's why there are not many. You need to make it very easy for developers in order for them to create an ecosystem.
- I would be happier to be able to keep various versions of IE and be able to install/uninstall easily. IE is tightly attache to the OS. Make like an add-on and people won't feel like forced for a browser. Maybe make it work for other OS, that would expand the user base, like other browsers.
Thanks.
Posted elsewhere on this site by me:
Yeah, the only problem is, it won't work with Windows XP. And with the Windows Vista debacle, nobody upgraded.
So businesses and individuals who (were smart and) didn't upgrade, won't be able to get IE9.
Microsoft: FAIL!
A variation on the top 9 reasons can be found here: technet.microsoft.com/.../top-9-reasons-enterprises-should-deploy-ie-9
Yea, you guys need to stop smoking crack. There is nothing good about nearly every browser MS has ever made. MS is really good as squashing companies that know how to write/develop software so why do you guys find a company that knows how to develop a browser (Mozilla), squash them and take what is a known working product & put you logo one it... instead of selling the public these bags of shi....