Internet Explorer 9 to bolster IE market share
Microsoft’s latest iteration of their Internet Explorer (IE) web browser launched at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.
Among the features introduced in Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) are full hardware acceleration, improved HTML 5 support and a new JavaScript engine.
IE9’s new JavaScript engine, Chakra, is optimised to interpret, compile and execute JavaScript in parallel by taking advantage of multiple CPU cores.
According to Microsoft this newly optimised JavaScript engine, combined with full hardware acceleration, improves site loading times and performance, letting developers build “immersive Web experiences that are as fast and responsive as applications installed on your computer”.
One of the biggest issues people had with Internet Explorer was speed and performance, said David Mitchell Smith, research vice president and Fellow at Gartner.
HTML5 support
Another concern was standards compliance and Microsoft’s HTML5 direction, said Smith.
HTML5 is the version of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body responsible for developing web standards.
The W3C develops standards such as HTML5 which are implemented by developers like Microsoft, Mozilla, Google, Apple and Opera in their web browser software.
There have been conflicting reports of Internet Explorer 9’s HTML5 support. One report comes from the W3C itself which indicated that IE9 had better HTML5 support than other browsers.
Others argued that the W3C’s survey only tested those elements of HTML5 that IE9 were particularly good at without taking into account features where Microsoft’s latest browser remains poor.
It is worth noting that the W3C say: “It is inappropriate to cite those results as other than work in progress and unstable.”
Smith also explained that no-one has performed any tests on Microsoft’s actual product yet, so IE9’s real performance still remains to be seen.
Share of the pie
Will the promise of better standards compliance, faster browsing and tighter integration into Windows 7 improve or at least stabilise Internet Explorer’s browser usage share?
Over the past few years Microsoft have seen a steady decline in browser market share, but Smith predicts that Internet Explorer 9 will help stabilise this downward trend and even reverse it somewhat.
To achieve this many new and existing users will have to adopt Microsoft’s latest browser.
How quickly will users adopt IE9?
One of the problems Microsoft experiences with new versions of their browser is the relatively slow adoption by existing users.
This is mostly attributed to the slow rate at which large enterprises adopt new versions of software, as well as the fact that Microsoft ships a particular version of Internet Explorer with every release of Windows in most countries.
Smith said that he believes that corporate use of older versions of Internet Explorer would pull down the rate at which Internet Explorer 9 is adopted when compared to newer versions of other browsers.
Corporations aren’t fast to adopt anything, said Smith, adding that they tend to upgrade entire operating systems. Smith said that many companies are set to upgrade to Windows 7, which means that they are likely to adopt Internet Explorer 8.
However, Smith said that we can expect to see a lot of promotion from Microsoft driving consumer adoption.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 << Which browser do you use?
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