Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 will be knocking at the update door on Windows 7 and Vista operating systems. But, as it turns out, the upcoming Internet Explorer 10 will not make friends with Vista.
IE9, which became available on March 14, has previously been available through manual downloads. The company said it has seen strong customer and business demand for the new browser, which supports HTML5 and Windows 7 integration. On April 18, existing IE9 beta and release candidate users will be upgraded through Windows Update.
Goodbye, XP
Business customers will find IE9 available through the Windows Server Update Services in June, which provides management tools to control the deployment in corporate environments. If desired, business users can also employ the IE9 Blocker Toolkit to block the IE9 upgrade until ready.
The upgrade will not be automatic, and users will need to agree to install the new browser. The rollout of IE9 is expected to be completed by the end of June.
Users of Windows XP, the venerable, still-popular but now abandoned operating system, will not be welcoming IE9. Version 9 does not support XP, although IE8 does. Ironically, IE’s main competitor, Firefox 4, is continuing to support XP. Jonathan Nightingale from the Mozilla Foundation has told news media that “our obligation is to the users, and Windows XP is not a part we can cut out.”
According to web-statistics firm Net Applications, XP represents 55 percent of operating systems connected to the web, or 61 percent of all Windows-based systems. In the U.S., recent statistics from StatCounter indicate that Windows 7 is on about 32 percent of U.S. computers, and XP is just a few hundredths of a percent less. Vista is third at about 19 percent, and Apple’s Mac OS X is fourth at nearly 15 percent.
Other browsers, including Apple’s Safari… Read more
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