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Just over two weeks ago, we released Internet Explorer 9 and in that short time it has been great to see the positive reaction around the globe. Ars Technica called IE9 “the most modern browser there is,” Computer World said “IE9 speeds past the competition,” and Venture Beat said “Microsoft launches Internet Explorer 9, its prettiest browser yet.”
It’s also been humbling to see customer enthusiasm for IE9. What really matters however is the web experiences themselves. Our decision with IE9 was not to build to the lowest common denominator. That pattern has arguably been the norm for browser vendors, including IE, for years. The result has been a lot of browser “feature” innovation, while the web that we all use has remained largely a flat experience compared to that of the native apps on your PC or phone. With IE9 we made the decision to help unlock the best web experience possible, which means taking advantage of everything around the browser – including Windows 7 and modern PC hardware. When sites like Flixster or Huffington Post see greater than 50% increase in engagement from their users with IE9, it’s not because we simply created more browser features – it’s because we took those sites out of browser box and integrated them right alongside native applications in Windows 7 and gave the site developers similar capabilities. When Grant Skinner uses HTML5 to build a rich Pirates Love Daisies game, you realize IE9’s hardware acceleration of HTML5 is unlocking experiences that simply weren’t possible on the web a year ago.
Over 1,000 partners are building experiences that take advantage of IE9 and Windows 7’s unique capabilities including some of the biggest names on the web. Some of those partners – like Groupon, Gilt, and Slacker have even developed some great new offers that they are extending to their IE9 customers when they pin their site.
It’s obviously very early but we are pleased with the reception. According to Net Applications’ latest data, worldwide, IE9 share on Windows 7 reached 3.6% for the month of March. The combination of IE9 and Windows 7 with the PC creates the best experience for users of the web and the developers and designers that create those sites. The adoption rate of IE9 is about five times higher then what we saw for Internet Explorer 8 in the same time frame. As we mentioned on Tuesday, all of our early downloads (through March 27) were user-initiated with over 90% of the downloads coming from non-IE9 RC or Beta users, including over a quarter that came from Chrome and Firefox users.
Last month, we also launched a new website called ie6countdown.com. The response to the site has been overwhelming. We had users from all over the world showing great interest – with over 1.1 million unique visitors to the site and nearly 1.8 million page views. We now have over 400 partners like Woot and CNET who have joined the cause and are committed to help spread awareness about moving to a modern browser. Net Applications reported that we are one step closer to the goal in March, with IE6 dropping another 0.43 points to 11.58% worldwide across all operating systems.
Try IE9 for yourself today by visiting www.beautyoftheweb.com. We look forward to sharing more with the MIX 11 crowd in Vegas in a couple weeks!
Ryan Gavin
Senior Director, Internet Explorer Business and Marketing
so i had the beta, rc and rtm of IE9 and the favicons have not worked in any of those builds on my desktop (favicons work perfectly on my laptop). they do not work in the browser or on the taskbar. they show up if i make a site a "favorite" but that is it. Pinning sites to my taskbar has become completely useless because i would just have a whole mess of default IE9 icons on my taskbar. any suggestions?
@cmwind
Generally, to refresh the favicons, you would have to delete history and temporary internet files. Once that's done, you should be able to get the favicons working. If not, you can try answer.microsoft.com, someone could probably help you there
I'm lovin' IE9 on Windows 7.... pity you don't have it for Mac OS X too. :((
And yet, w3schools tells a COMPLETELY different story for 2011, although they have not yet updated for March.
So the question really becomes: Even if the 3.6% share in one month is accurate, how much of that share is from within the same platform (e.g. people going from IE8 to IE9) versus how much of it is replacing another platform (Chrome, Firefox, Safari).
Lest we not forget that Firefox 4 blew away IE9's downloads, and Google Chrome, by any metric, is growing at an exponential rate month-to-month. I wouldn't read too much into a"3.6% share on Windows 7", even if it's proven accurate because, by both NetMarketShare and w3school's numbers, Windows 7 is the decidedly second place Windows OS.
Sorry Microsoft - I support and develop for your platforms for a living and this gambit of forcing WinXP out through IE9 isn't going to work. I don't think you realize just how entrenched Windows XP is in the corporate environment, though I'm certain you're VERY cognizant of the fact that IT budgets aren't what they once were, and we're being forced to do more with existing tech and less money. Couple this with the fact that Mozilla finally released a MSI for Firefox that plays nice with Group Policy settings and has several extensions that are built for IT security.. and IE is more irrelevant than ever.
If you look at statistics around the world, 33.8% people in china use IE6 .
I came from IE8. I have been using a 3rd party download manager for years & am very comfortable with it. The fact that you can't disable the IE9 download manager is stupidity in design. I am off to try Chrome and/or Firefox.
Installed Explorer 9, it was different. Not too sure of the favorites position. Tried to repin to the left side but it did not stay there. Couldn't find my quick launch buttons that were on the tool bar in IE8 so I had to go thru the favorites list to find them. This was annoying. But, and most important of all...IE9 failed to work after a few days. It would expand out and immediately collapse. I had no browser capability. I could not uninstall it, I had to go back to a restore point prior to IE9 being installed. I am staying with IE8 until this gets worked out.
IE9 is really nice. I like the overall performance! i think its better then firefox 4.
I recently downloaded IE9 to see how it was compared to FF and Chrome...I'm glad to say, I've now switched back to IE9...man it's fast...good job.
@Captiosus -
Do not use W3Schools (or rely on its statistics), because...
1. It is not related to the W3C in any way.
2. It has a lot of misinformation and bad guidance (especially against best JavaScript practice), see http://w3fools.com/ for more details.
3. The statistics that are shown there do not represent all of the internet users, to say the least -
They only represent the users of W3Schools, which consist almost entirely of developers.
Other statistics (like Wikipedia, NetMarketShare, StatCounter and more) have much more real world statistics (though still not sufficient, I guess).
What is really amazing is microsofts ability to FORCE people into things like the download manager. I must say I am however not surprised as this is typical Microsoft philosophy, “Lets break was has been working well for the users and leave the broken stuff broke”. Mmm aaah and another cool idea, lets force our users to use the newly broken stuff and see how much we can annoy them before they switch to another browser. Well done Microsoft you have succeeded.. you have lost some more users with the IE9 release ! Forcing me to use your download manager now gives me no reason not to go Firefox, cheers !!