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• March 18, 2011 •
This week Microsoft announced the availability of its next generation Web browser - Internet Explorer 9 - for global availability.
"The best experience of the Web is on Windows with Internet Explorer 9," said Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president, Windows Internet Explorer, at Microsoft. "Today, the Web can unlock the power and performance of the best PC hardware through Windows and Internet Explorer 9. Websites also can act more like applications within Windows 7, with features such as Pinned Sites. In less than a year, Internet Explorer 9 went from early preview to final release with the help of hardware partners and the Web community."
The new version of Internet Explorer takes advantage of the power of modern Windows PC hardware to improve all-around Web browsing performance. It is the only browser with hardware-accelerated HTML5 spanning all graphics, text, audio and video. Internet Explorer 9 harnesses the power of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), unlocking 90 percent of the PC's power that went previously untapped by Web browsers.
Improved Privacy and Security
Microsoft introduced Tracking Protection in Internet Explorer 9, which puts people in control of what data they are sharing as they move around the Web, by enabling consumers to indicate what websites they'd prefer not to exchange information with. Consumers do this by adding Tracking Protection Lists to Internet Explorer 9, and partners such as PrivacyChoice, TRUSTe, Abine and Adblock Plus have already published these lists.
Internet Explorer 9 also added a Download Manager with integrated SmartScreen malware protection.
Minimal Design & Hardware Acceleration
Internet Explorer 9 does away with almost all of the buttons and other clutter that users came to expect from a Microsoft browser. It's clear that Microsoft followed Google's example of a simple browser interface which simply focuses on displaying content.
Internet Explorer 9 includes hardware acceleration for web-page rendering (it uses your graphics processor to do some of the work), the first browser to offer this feature.
Internet Explorer 9 is not compatible with Windows XP, but is available for Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft says it has given users a browser better able to exploit a PC's computing power by tying Internet Explorer to its later, more powerful operating system(s).
Get Started
Here are some links to get you started:
For more information and questions, check out our WindowsBBS Internet Explorer Forum.
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