The much anticipated RTM release of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) happened today.  IE9 preview release was first showcased at MIX 2010 and post that there were 7-8 Platform Preview releases.  Also, IE9 Beta came out in September 2010 with close to 10 million downloads within a month.  More recently, the RC version was out with much improved performance. 

Today, marks the launch of IE9 RTM.  What this means is that, within an year, the IE Team has shipped the stable product, much faster than the earlier cycles for IE8 and IE7.  I wanted to clarify a few things (myths) that arise in common

1. I am already using Chrome and its faster for me, why would I need IE9

IE9 uses 100% hardware acceleration which means, you are going to get the best of performance compared to any other browser that shipped/will ship in future.  With native Windows support, IE9 will outperform all other browsers in terms of performance.

2. What about standards and security

Agreed IE6 hasn’t been in the best of standards, but why would someone compare IE6 which was released almost 10 years back.  Later, we shipped IE7 and IE8 which had the best of standards and supports during their timeframes, but one would agree that standards and specifications keep getting updated and its hard to keep pace with the same for older browsers.  Example. HTML5 support is not there in IE8 but it is very much there in IE9.  IE9 supports most of the stable standards of HTML5 and its going to provide preview releases for the work-in-progress standards.

3. IE doesn’t keep in pace with other browsers

Agreed! we don’t force/release updates on major versions in very short time periods.  What we do is provide Windows Update that provides security updates/patches and other critical updates for not just IE but the whole of Windows operating system

4. I am running Windows XP, what do I do?

This is the trickiest part.  Windows XP isn’t the supported operating system for IE9 and there are various reasons to it.  The recommended operating system is Windows Vista and Windows 7.  In the interest of technology and its pace, we had to discontinue Windows XP both from a retail selling perspective as well as IE9 support.  But, the recent 2 years has seen PCs/Laptops only shipped with Windows Vista or Windows 7 so, it shouldn't affect them.

5. Where do I verify IE9’s performance/standard support and other information.

http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/ 

Here below is a snapshot of one of the tests.

Clearly IE9 outperforms all other browsers and will continue to outperform them in future.  You can download IE9 from www.beautyoftheweb.com

Cheers!!!