Most people don’t think of Microsoft as an Internet browser provider. In fact, when they do think of Microsoft, they think of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and the new Windows 7. So I am here to tell you that Microsoft is hard at work on their new browser, conveniently named Internet Explorer 9. A recent blog post from Microsoft hints at the fact that some serious work is being done on Internet Explorer 9, which is great because we need something to get Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) out of the internet! IE9 is bound to be very competitive in the open source world that Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox have long dominated. Plus Internet Explorer 9 will reach out to the new standards such as HTML 5. But at this point in the game can Internet Explorer 9 challenge Firefox and Chrome?
“Because some browsers run on many different operating systems, there can be a tendency to use a ‘least common denominator’ approach to implementing HTML5. By using more of the underlying operating system, and taking advantage of the power of the whole PC, IE9 enables developers to do more with HTML5. Running through Windows, instead of just on Windows, makes a big difference; the web runs more like a native application.”
I say to Microsoft, “Words are easier said than done!” – I really think that Microsoft is on the right track this time though, I mean, they have taken a beating when it came to Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 in regards to web development, and the whole website designer community. I mean, a website designer must code their work to be compatible with IE6 and IE7 – how convenient!
Microsoft does have a preview page that you can visit using your current internet browser. On that page you will be confronted with a page that looks like this:
As you can see on this screenshot there is a ton of information featuring Microsoft’s new browser. Microsoft is not cutting any corners in the development of Internet Explorer 9 and I think that it will definitely be worth the upgrade when it becomes available.
Don’t forget, upgrading your browser is very important when it comes to security and also compatibility. With the release of CSS3 and HTML5 you should definitely not be using Internet Explorer 6, or you will be missing out on a lot of the internet.
