Software-update: Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 final

Microsoft heeft de final release van Internet Explorer versie 9 vrijgegeven. Met IE9 probeert Microsoft wat van het door browsers als Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome en Opera afgesnoepte marktaandeel terug te pakken. De nieuwe browser maakt surfen sneller, makkelijker en vooral veiliger, aldus Microsoft. Dat geldt overigens alleen voor Windows Vista en 7, want Microsoft is niet van plan de browser voor XP uit te brengen. Meer informatie over de nieuwe versie is in dit artikel op de Tweakers.net-voorpagina terug te vinden. De aankondiging voor deze release ziet er als volgt uit:

E9 Release Globally Available for Consumers and Businesses

The final, consumer-ready Internet Explorer 9 is available for download starting at 9:00 PM PDT at www.BeautyOfTheWeb.com in 39 languages. With this set of browser releases, the best experience of the Web is on Windows. IE9 shows how your Web experience and browser are only as good as the operating system they run on:

• Fast. With IE9, the Web delivers a new level of performance by unlocking the power of the PC hardware through Windows.
• Clean. With IE9, consumers can keep sites at the center of their browsing experience, pinning them to the taskbar and interacting with them the same way they do applications.
• Trusted. IE9 offers industry-leading protections (like SmartScreen) for the real-world threats (such as malicious sites and phishing scams) that consumers face every day on a sometimes-hostile Web.
• Interoperable. With hardware-accelerated HTML5, developers can use the same markup across browsers to deliver a new class of Web experiences that feel more like apps than sites.

IE9 went from early preview to final release in less than a year, and in that time became the fastest growing beta of IE ever, with over 40 million pre-release downloads and 2% usage share on Windows 7. An important factor was the Web community’s engagement as the IE team took a more open and transparent approach across the nine platform releases of IE9.

Our new approach started with a regular cadence of meaningful platform previews. We also regularly released “test drives” to illustrate what the platform makes possible, along with comprehensive tests that we submitted to Web standards bodies. We blogged—a lot—to make sure that developers had the right information to succeed. We delivered site-ready HTML5 in the product and treated more emerging technologies as part of HTML5 Labs in order to get your feedback and respect your time. We appreciate the community’s response. Your help and feedback were crucial and informed the changes we made.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 screenshot, klik op de afbeelding voor een grotere versie.