Internet Explorer 9 Will Not Support Windows XP

MojoKid writes "As it turns out, news this week is that the same features that made IE9's hardware-acceleration possible probably aren't compatible with Windows XP. Microsoft initially dodged giving a straight answer to the question of XP support but has since admitted that the new browser won't be XP-compatible when it launches. This has created a small tempest of protest from those users still using XP, but this is less of an arbitrary decision than some appear to think. It's literally impossible to port Windows Vista/Win 7-style hardware acceleration backwards to XP. Microsoft would have to either develop a workaround from scratch or create a CPU-driven 'software mode.'"

Re:Thats ok , as an XP user

[hedwards]

Yes, there are a significant number of them. Unless something has changed recently, all South Korean bank sites for instance require activeX and as such have to be used with IE. And quite a few sites still use plug ins that aren't available for other browsers. It's obnoxious and annoying, but it's becoming less common as people get sick of IE and jump ship for something that works in a somewhat sane fashion.

Re:Thats ok , as an XP user

[Artifakt]

I'm using a three months old version of a 'Linux OS', with Firefox 3.6. I know of several dozen websites that deal in financial transactions and related, and which will all check for software versioning and require downloading active x controls onto the user's machine for at least some functions. I have been informed by a large corporation's legal dept. that attempting to spoof those sites into thinking I was browsing with IE/Windows from a Nix box would not just be a TOS violation, but in at least some of those cases, securities fraud, a violation of Sarbanes-Oxley, or otherwise just not done, and all we can do is use a Microsoft product to visit those sites and perhaps ask them to broaden their website's support. Yeah, in some cases, there's probably a bunch of crooks easily defeating those sites version checking, they're being idiots, and some of them probably get ritually abused by 14 year old script kiddies every weekend, but these are not fly by nights, they are major financial partners in stock trading, banking, sale of treasury securities, and such, they pay a small fortune every year for VPN security and encryption, and everyone else in the financial industry has to occasionally deal with them. For my company, which has begun transitioning to FOSS by adopting Open Office, this is an impediment to completely dropping either Windows or IE completely.
      So we will probably upgrade the machines that still run Windows in every office, yet again. While those are getting fewer, it's still vendor lock-in with bells on. Your comment about 10 year old OS versions isn't just a red herring, it shows a complete lack of understanding.

Re:People need to stop bitching

[bheer]

While I agree with everything you say, I'll point out the following (and I usually support MS on many issues):

• Windows Live Messenger 14.x (labelled '9 series' or something) has lots of snazzy Windows 7-style visual effects and was backported to Windows XP (I am aware this is less elaborate than what IE9 is planning).
• Opera supports 2D acceleration under XP
• The technical arguments against backporting to XP are hogwash. Chrome has superior sandboxing on Vista/7, but gracefully downgrades on XP
• Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot by effectively ceding the modern XP browser market to Chrome, Firefox and Opera. XP will still be around 'til 2014-2015. That's 4-5 years. If they think they can afford that, well, more power to them.

They already did that with directx 10

[voss]

They have a modified directX 10 file out there that will run on xp. The reason why they dont want directX 10 for XP is that XP will run directX 10 faster than vista or windows 7

Re:So XP users will be stuck with IE8 forever..

[KingMotley]

Time will tell whether Windows 7 manages to convince a majority to upgrade again, but it will be a long time before there's the kind of critical mass that happened with XP.

Current Market share (March 2010):
Windows XP 32 bit (-3.48%) 40.33%
Windows 7 64 bit (+3.95%) 22.99%
Windows Vista 32 bit (-1.51%) 16.88%
Windows 7 (+1.16%) 10.92%

XP is losing 3.48% of it's market share each month, and Windows 7 is gaining nearly 4.64% market share each month. How long exactly at that rate will it take for Windows 7 to reach this critical mass point?

Hardware accel is pretty sweet

[cbhacking]

I'm not sure what you think is "funny" about that, but maybe you just have an odd sense of humor. Actually, I suppose if you were the sort to bash anything that MS does which looks like a mistake, without any idea of what was involved, yeah it might be funny.

Go visit this page, in whatever browser(s) you please: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/01FlyingImages/Default.html [microsoft.com]

• IE8: The default 36 images get nominally 4 FPS, but it doesn't even finish drawing the old frame before starting the new one so it tears abominably. At 4 images it gets about 30 PFS, smoothly. The follow-the-mouse function doesn't work.
• Chrome 4.1: At 36 images, only 2 FPS, though no tearing. At 4 images, 30 FPS. Animation is still smooth, but framerate drops terribly if you zoom in oh hold the Shift key for faster rotation.
• Firefox 3.6: 20 FPS at 36 images, and very clearly not smooth if you hold the shift key (fast spinning). 60 FPS and smooth at 16 images, though it drops to 12 FPS if you zoom in.
• Opera 10.5: At 36 images, 25 FPS and smooth. Faster rotation is fine, but zooming in gives a flickering background and only 20 FPS. It'll do 100 images (at 12 FPS) but the background flickers fit to give you a seizure.
• IE9 preview: At 36 images, 60 FPS and smooth, even zoomed in or with Shift. No change at 64 images. 100 images causes a drop to 57 FPS. I can go up to 256 images before the framerate drops to 30, and it's still smooth even with zoom and Shift.

I don't have Safari or Konqueror installed here, but I think you get the idea. IE8 can't even execute the page's code right. Chrome crawls at the 3D effect. Firefox is OK at wide angle and crawls when zoomed. Opera is the fastest of the released browsers, but has horrible flicker when images pass the edge of the screen. None of these browsers use hardware accelerated drawing.

The very, very early preview of IE9, which does use hardware acceleration, blows them all away. No performance degradation until it reaches the point where most other browsers drop to the single digits. No trouble with zooming or fast motion. No flicker or tearing. If you'd told me I was watching a demo of a 3D engine written in C++, I'd have believed you (not been terribly impressed, but believed you). For something using pure JavaScript I'm amazed.

My system has a mid-range GPU (GeForce 9600M) but pretty good CPU (Core 2 Duo T9600, 2.8GHz), running Win7 x64. I'm guessing IE9 uses vertical sync, since it maxes at my refresh rate (60 Hz). Clearly, simply compiling the JS to native binary isn't enough to get the really impressive performance, since the other browsers do that. Since Vista/Win7 use 3D to render the desktop anyhow, I can certainly believe it's easier to incorporate this kind of functionality into those operating systems. It may be possible with XP, but so far there's no indication that you can get comparable performance - none of the browsers that will run on XP can, at least.