back to article Microsoft confirms IE9 will shun Windows XP

Microsoft has confirmed that Internet Explorer 9 will not support Windows XP. This is hardly a surprise, and it was implied by Microsoft's press materials, which said that the browser's platform preview requires Direct2D, an API available only with Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008. But just to lay the matter …

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Yeah right

      ...which is why Firefox is installed as standard on all IBM corporate laptops that their staff use.

      Me thinks the poster doth protest too much!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      UAC

      Once upon a time I got a new laptop. This was several years ago and I'm using it right now. When I switched it on for the first time I was asked to give Windows XP a username for the new Admin account that I would be using. The dangers of this were not explained or even hinted at. Having had no computer of any kind for many years prior to that and basically no clue I went ahead and logged in every time as an Administrator, as intended.

      As intended. By Microsoft.

      Microsoft saw the cliff and lovingly, nurturingly guided me straight off it. Why? Because many of these developers with bad habits build software only for Windows and cause people who purchase and use that software to become dependent on Windows. Given the choice between my system being compromised and my user experience with that other software being difficult there was no contest.

      So the valuable developers with the bad habits saw no reason to change, and this went on for many years until MS came up with UAC. UAC is a way of making the valuable software written by the valuable developers with the bad habits work slightly more safely, and it does so by making the user stop and manually allow or deny certain actions. In other words part of MS' way of sucking up to these crappy developers is to make the user work for them.

      When you sped hours in procmon watching some crappy little utility written by some crappy little programmer stomp all over your nice neat OS (neat - really?) it is because the developer of that OS has been sucking the dicks of several crappy little programmers for a long time.

      I don't believe, like so many here, that MS is incompetent. It knows exactly what it's doing.

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    the shame of it! - where's the Linux angle gerryg?

    I'm writing to my MP:

    "Dear MP, this XP ie9 thing, what you gonna do about it? eh?"

    unseriously though, at this point, anyone saying:

    "Try Linux"

    needs to be taken outside and dispatched with immediately.

    Better still, they need to have thier genitals coated with sardines and thrown to a hungry pack of Gentoo's (that'll be you, gerryg)

    This topic is about internet explorer and windows. It is not about Linux. There's not even one mention of a penguin.

    Yes, we know there's a risk-free opportunity to try a modern Linux distro, to which most non-geeky joe the plumber & wifey public would greet with "Eh?, I want windoze 'cos that's what I know is best"

    The semi-geeky john the artist & fruitcake actor boyfriend public would greet this with "But why would I use anything other than a Mac, daaahling?"

    If you persist in badgering them (or would that be penguining them?), they'll probably dress you as a tasty crustacean and throw you to starving Emperor penguins in the depths of the Antartic winter! (That would probably be you gerryg)

    What has this to do with ie9 and XP?

    About as much as it has to do with Linux, gerryg

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. blackworx
      Coat

      Antarctic, spelt thus

      That is all.

      Mine's the one with a post-it saying "I have no mates, please kick me hard" stuck to the back.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    I don't wish to seem pedantic

    Internet Explorer 9 doesn't support Windows XP?

    Isn't IE9 an application?

    Wouldn't it be correct therefore to say 'XP doesn't (or may not) support IE9?'

    Older operating system does not support newer application shock.

    Is that why IE6 is still the most widely used version of IE?

    Go and get on with some work.

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    Windows 7 FTW

    I have been using Windows 7 since the beta stages. And I love EVERYTHING about it. I love the beautiful UI. Not just because of its pretty looks, but because they make tasks much easier. Little things like the Breadcrumb Bar in Windows Explorer works like a charm and saves many clicks.

    I have my whole hard drive indexed and using Windows 7's search I can find any file on my computer within a fraction of a second.

    Then there is the great security. With Windows 7 and MSE I have never had any trouble with malwares.

    Overall, Windows 7 rocks and XP sucks balls. XP is fugly, insecure and unusable. I guess the Linux fanboys prefer XP because they are afraid of Windows 7 being a thousand times better than any Linux distro.

    I can't wait for a beta release of IE9. It should be great with all those added features. XP and IE6 is dead as a dodo.

    1. Lee Dowling Silver badge
      WTF?

      Stop the hyperbole.

      "I have been using Windows 7 since the beta stages."

      So just over a year then? In my business, that means we can't possibly know enough about it to risk deploying it. Not to mention retraining budgets, etc. I could also comment on how your first thought is the beautiful UI, not the advanced features, but I won't. Windows 7 actually has some nice features - shame they've been bundled with a shedload of stuff that we *don't* want (that's my main criteria for an OS... how much does it have that I *don't* want).

      "Little things like the Breadcrumb Bar in Windows Explorer works like a charm and saves many clicks."

      *cough* Try *any* file explorer in Linux for about the last 5 years. The wiki article on breadcrumb nagivation even uses Nautilus as an example, and Vista had something very, very similar. That's not a reason to upgrade an OS.

      "I have my whole hard drive indexed and using Windows 7's search I can find any file on my computer within a fraction of a second."

      *cough* slocate *cough*. Except that doesn't interfere with the usage of my computer at all and I can do *insane* narrowing down, plus it works properly with multi-user security setups. And that utility (or it's equivalents) has been around since... god knows when. Probably 1994, if not earlier, as part of GNU findutils. Feel the joy over MS scrapping their old, crappy search method (equivalent to "find" on Linux) and reimplementing one that other OS's have been using for over a decade and a half?

      "Then there is the great security. With Windows 7 and MSE I have never had any trouble with malwares."

      Good for you. It's hardly foolproof though... hell, the frontpage of the Register listed nearly a dozen ways to break Windows when I looked at it last (though you would have to read through the articles to find most of them, because they get lumped into single articles). I don't claim any other OS is any "better", but the new "security" is nothing to write home about on Windows either.

      "XP is fugly, insecure and unusable."

      I agree with you on that sentence up until that last point. And that's precisely the problem... I can't even bring myself to use Windows 7 because I can feel the lost productivity with every click.

      "I guess the Linux fanboys prefer XP because they are afraid of Windows 7 being a thousand times better than any Linux distro."

      Or they're just laughing at what you base your OS decisions on, i.e. UI elements that have been present for *years*, and work much better on other OS's, functions for which superior versions have existed for over a decade, etc. Or functions which could be (and were) added to an average Linux distro in the time it took for Windows 7 beta's to be finalised. Or which do precisely zip compared to just different, simpler, less "showy" ways of doing stuff.

      Stop the hyperbole. Nobody really cares if you're happy with Windows 7, especially if you're reasoning is so unresearched.

      And nobody "serious" is going to be using IE of *any* version for a long, long, long time - a DirectX dependency for IE9 is just the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in ages.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Gates Halo

        RE: Stop the hyperbole.

        "So just over a year then? In my business, that means we can't possibly know enough about it to risk deploying it."

        But millions of customers have been using it for months and they say it's the most stable Windows release ever. Windows 7 RTM is a lot more stable than XP SP3. Unlike the latter Win7 has never crashed on me, ever.

        "Breadcrumbs are not a reason to upgrade an OS."

        Of course they are not. It's just one of many many small things which collectively make a strong reason to upgrade. I have only mentioned about the breadcrumbs, but there are Libraries, Taskbar features like Jump Lists, Tab previews, Aero Peek, Aero Snap (it's incredibly useful for editing two documents side-by-side), Action Center and so on. If you know how to use these features you start to appreciate their value. If you try to make Windows 7 like XP, only then you will face a loss of productivity.

        "Except that doesn't interfere with the usage of my computer at all and I can do *insane* narrowing down, plus it works properly with multi-user security setups."

        I think you are saying this because you haven't ever used this search feature. It improves productivity by a long way. It can find files within a second without having to browse through folders. I find myself using the Windows Explorer less and less these days in favor of the Start Menu Search. Plus you can find anything in the Control Panel using this feature. Wanna change the screen resolution? Just type "resolution" in the search box and immediately you get a link to change the screen resolution.

        "I don't claim any other OS is any "better", but the new "security" is nothing to write home about on Windows either."

        Windows 7's security is infinitely better than XP's security and it's one of the most compelling reasons to upgrade.

        "I can't even bring myself to use Windows 7 because I can feel the lost productivity with every click."

        That's because you don't know the right way to use Windows 7. Instead you try to do things in the XP way. Learn to use Windows 7's features and you will notice a huge improvement in productivity.

        "Or which do precisely zip compared to just different, simpler, less "showy" ways of doing stuff."

        Well, I use Ubuntu 9.10 side-by-side with Windows 7 and I can safely say Ubuntu is by no means simpler or more productive. It seems like a downgrade from Windows 7. I'm talking about the default features not third party tools. Where is the search functionality like Windows 7? Why is the UI so old-fashioned? Why do I have to "sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces" every time to get my broadband to work? Why does the file explorer look like it's from ten years ago?

        Ubuntu may be good enough for people who like XP, but it's not for me.

        "And nobody "serious" is going to be using IE of *any* version for a long, long, long time."

        Again that shows your closed-mindedness. Sure, at the moment I'm using Google Chrome as I like its simple UI and responsiveness. But IE9 will probably be good enough to bring me back to IE. I'm just waiting for the UI to arrive.

        1. Glyn 2
          Gates Halo

          memories, like the corners of my mind

          "I think you are saying this because you haven't ever used this search feature. It improves productivity by a long way. It can find files within a second without having to browse through folders. I find myself using the Windows Explorer less and less these days in favor of the Start Menu Search. Plus you can find anything in the Control Panel using this feature. Wanna change the screen resolution? Just type "resolution" in the search box and immediately you get a link to change the screen resolution."

          There's been a running joke for years from a lot of MS fanbois laughing at the fact that mac users were all idiots because they stored things all over the place and used the search to find anything as opposed to putting their stuff in a logical structure. Congratulations Microsoft, you've finally succeeded in making your fans hate themselves :-)

          Want to change the resolution? Press Windows key, S, C which opens the control panel, then click on display. What's so hard about that?

          Libraries, yay, the photo's of me on holiday are in the same place as the button images for the sites I'm working on. Progress???

          AeroPeek a badly skewed image that let's you see that it *is* a window, but not what's on it and that eats into your PCs capacity, so something that's marginally just about as useful as alt+tab but runs slower because of the overhead it has.

          Similarly Tab previews are small and worthless if you've got 2 things which are vaguely similar, like 2 word documents.

          If you've got 2 web browsers open and ones of a red site and ones a blue site then yes, handy. If you're in the more likely scenario of 2 applications with similar content, then...notsomuch!!!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      slurp slurp ;)

      enough with the brown nosing already :)

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      I have a suggestion.

      Stick to wanking.

    4. Glyn 2
      WTF?

      hmm

      The beautiful UI that's the same as XP but with bigger edges and rounder corners? And the semi-transparent background so you can see through to the windows below which if it's cluttered, makes trying to read the top bar of the top window difficult. It's time to take out shares in specsavers because that's going to cause eyesight problems down the line.

      Yes, they really went all out to leave XP's interface behind, "Forget XPs thin grey windows, now Windows comes in slightly wider blueygrey" Woo and hoo

      And the address bar...which doesn't show you the full path if your window isn't full screen and you're more than 4 folders deep. So you know you're in a folder, but where are you exactly. To find that out you've got to click on the address bar...if there was space to click on it because there's no room, so it's just thrown you up 2 levels because you missed with your mouse. And the mouse-sniper game which is the dropdown on the breadcrumb that takes you to folders at that level (the same mouse-sniper game which is trying to turn off the computer, click start, then try to click the little dropdown without clicking whatever you've set as default). It'd be easier if there was a demarcation seperator between the button and the dropdown but no, you've kinda got to guess where one starts and t'other ends.

      The "up level" button was simple to use and most importantly, never moved. You click on the breadcrumb trail when you can't see all of it and everything moves to the right, so then you've got to find the next level. Or you can hover over "up" and press it as and when you like without moving. Want to find the desktop when you're searching. Thump up a half a dozen times and you're there.

      I ran the index on the last W7 PC I had, I left the index running over the weekend on a machine with pretty much nothing on it but the operating system. 3 days later...it was still running and sat in the background churning away for the entire time I had it. And were the searches any faster...no. After 2 months, it still dragged when searching and was still builiding the index.

      If you go into a folder in the search results, and then go back, it starts the whole search off again, slowly, from the beginning. XP remembers the search results, so I can go back to the results and go in the next one without having to wait while it rebuilds the list. If I want to re-search I can click the button to start the search off again.

      From a usage point of view, I'm more likely, when searching, to want to look at a number of files/folders which match a criteria than to look at each one individually, then do another re-search to see if anything has been added in the 5 seconds since I looked at the first file/folder. Especially if the search results are ordered in a different way each time, so before I can use the results I have to order them which, yes, you've guessed it, kicks off the search AGAIN this time putting the them in order.

      Yes, I could go on that advanced mouse training course, Mr Miyagi and Yoda could get together and teach me the inner Zen of mouse clicking...or MS could practice what they preach on their courses and make things easy to use, reusing what you can (processing and searchingly speaking), customisable and logical.

      The design of W7 would fail any software course (MS or other) I've ever been on or heard about.

      I never had trouble with malware on XP ever...anti-virus software anyone?

  5. Brent Beach

    MS drops support for 1 year old OS

    I bought an Acer Aspire One 6 months ago which came with XP installed. So MS is dropping support for an OS they sold 6 months ago. Not that I use IE, having using FF since it replaced Mozilla. The MS argument that the new IE must use Direct2D that must use the GPU makes as much sense as their original argument that the OS must have IE. It is a lie. The number of changes in IE required to work without Direct2D would certainly be within the capability of MS. Marketing made this decision.

  6. blackworx
    Pint

    If IE8 is anything to go by...

    Then this is no great loss to all us XP holdouts.

    I'm with Glyn2 on the death-by-a-thousand-cuts nature of the W7/Vista SP2 interface and unexplained pauses. When something that took one click in XP now takes three, or when simplified UI "features" can't be turned off, there's only one word to describe it: stupid.

  7. David Pickering
    Thumb Down

    never use that crud anyway

    will make making developing ie/html5 supporting websites a pita tho.

  8. MinionZero
    Pint

    Oh thats bad news, I have XP and they won't let me use IE9 ;(

    Oh well, I'll just have to keep using Firefox then. ;)

    Ironically the more they fail to support XP, the more XP is getting extended life and support from open source software. Which in the long run is good news for Linux as more people get familiar with these open source alternatives and so the transition to Linux becomes easier for more people.

    But then Microsoft very evidently want to force people away from XP, but in doing so, they risk pushing more people onto Linux as they try to kill off XP.

  9. sisk

    We'll be stuck for a while

    My place of work just upgraded to XP less than a year ago (yeah, scarey, I know). Until last month we were getting rid of IE6 through attrition, but someone finally convinced the powers that be that it was time to ditch it. To my knowledge I'm the only one here running IE8, and that's only for testing websites. Frankly I don't expect to see Windows 7 here for another 5 years or so at least....Probably about the time Windows 9 is coming out.

    Incidently, in response to a couple of anonymous cowards who posted earlier:

    1) IE6 is FAR from the most common IE out there now. It accounts for about 20% of our traffic, compared to 51% for IE7. Granted you're not going to find our website on a top 100,000 sites list, but we get diverse enough traffic that I think that's probably a fair reflection of what's out there.

    2) Speaking as a Linux geek, I don't fear Windows 7. I still wouldn't willingly use it, but I gladly recommend it to others. A lot of the GUI features that everyone seems to love in it just drive me nuts. Isn't personal preference great? And what's with the Microsoft ad anyway? Seriously you sound like a TV commercial.

  10. Keith Doyle
    Coffee/keyboard

    Nice to know

    That Microsoft's Windows 7 has finally made it to the advanced world of the 1980s with the "modern graphics" of a 2D API.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Troll

    Shameless trolling

    Ah noes....no IE9 for me. I'm so sad :(((

    I'm a bit at loss about WHAT exactly they want to achieve? Fanboys and/or somewhat early adopters and/or rich people (...or just peoplet that wanted it) already have W7, die-hard XP users won't definitely care about IE (not until they sent the black helicopters and BlackOps), the old or stupid and/or conservative and/or government people won't care either.... Sooo? Or do they really expect me to burst in tears, bow before 'em and go buy 99 copies of W7 after that?

  12. andrew mulcock

    And for MS update

    So when will MS update only work on IE9 or above ?

    that will kill XP fast ,

  13. Mark Land

    Lame Excuse

    So Firefox/Chrome/Opera runs on Windows X, Apple, Linux and IE9 doesn't run on all Windows. Maybe MS should ask Opera and Mozilla how to make their browser run on XP, what a lame excuse. I am willing to bet, Opera or Chrome running on my old Celeron Ubuntu laptop will outperform IE9 on a dual core Win7 machine. DirectX lol

  14. passionate indifference
    Megaphone

    too much hating going on here

    it's fairly clear to all that in the World of IT, people tend to be rather resistant to change

    The main advantage to upgrading to IE9 is the additional support for GPU hardware acceleration in images and video, that will be particularly useful in displaying video for HTML5.

    Thing is, I'm not sure this is particularly relevant to most people:

    - HTML5 isn't going to be widespread for some time - some say as far away as 2022

    - date for EOL of IE7 on XP SP3 is July 2012 (if I can read the ms eol pages correctly)

    - date for EOL of IE8 hasn't been set yet but is years away

    - the people running Windows XP with competent GPUs are very much in a minority - most graphics-intensive applications tend to run faster in Windows 7

    You really don't have to upgrade to IE9. There's no penalty for staying with IE7 or 8. If IE's not your cup of tea, there's plenty of other browsers - and a change is as good as an upgrade.

    Does this warrant the amount of hate going on in this thread?

    1. Glyn 2
      Megaphone

      bwa ha ha

      "it's fairly clear to all that in the World of IT, people tend to be rather resistant to change"

      No, in the World of IT, people are resistant to garbage, backed up with a glossy advertising campaign being palmed off on us as a radical change into the greatest thing in the universe and if you don't rush out to buy it the bogey man will break into it and steal your souuuuuuuulllllll.

      W7 is not radically different, it's just another iteration of windows 95, with a slightly larger padlock, more blue in the colour scheme and some useful accoutrements taken away for no reason.

      When the first thing we got shown in the demo from the MS salesman was that the mouse pointer reflects on the taskbar...a billion $$$ in development and the first thing you show us is a white pointer shadow instead of the usual black one...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

      "Does this warrant the amount of hate going on in this thread?"

      The hate is reserved for the people who think that anyone who doesn't love W7 must :-

      - not have a 1337 PC

      - is stupid

      - is lying

      - is a technological luddite

      - be a Linux or Mac lover

      If Microsoft made a new OS I liked, I'd like it, not hate it just because it's M$ or because it's new. As it is, they've failed to make something, I and many others think is nothing special

      Look again, the Emperor is naked.

  15. passionate indifference
    Troll

    meanie

    It's quite funny looking back at the criticism for XP:

    http://www.actsofvolition.com/archive/2001/december/windowsxprough says "it looks weird"

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1321953.stm says "little is new"

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/104954/windows_xp_slow_to_gain_ground.html says "why bother?"

    Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. For those who wish to change, go ahead and change. For those who don't or can't, in this case, you're really not missing out.

    and to anyone who tries to signoff with a one-liner put-down: if you're not Charlie Brooker, P.J O'Rourke or Sir Alan Sugar, your one-liners won't be very good

  16. Ahmad Ali
    Gates Horns

    WTF

    Why Microsoft WHY ??

  17. John Sanders
    Linux

    Truth is that...

    MS is still in charge of the largest commercial computer platform, but it is not as relevant to the industry as it was anymore.

    Three things about Vista SP3, I mean Windows 7/2008/R2 sorry NT 6.1

    1) Why you can not put network files on a library?

    2) Why shared folders do not show a different icon anymore?

    3) Why you can not pin shortcuts of exes from network files to the task bar?

    What's up with the network? Not friends anymore?

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