Launch, as in end of product, it's "finished", it's in the wild, you're on your own we will now work on IE 10?
Or launch like the rest of the software development world now operates and push out updates on a regular basis, with new features and better standards support, leading to something that actually has a chance of competing with the browsers the rest of us love to use?
'Cause I think it was around 2000 that people started realizing that monolithic development and release cycles lead to failed products. Software needs to be, and can be, updated constantly, or it falls behind. If this launch is like all other IE launches, it will be a day we will all look back on with disappointment. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see Microsoft actually become a modern development house, but I have huge doubts that it could ever happen.
As someone who hates IE, I must say that I'm actually really looking forward to IE9. The "worst" of the major browsers just closed the gap (and surpassed?) with fast JavaScript and gpu acceleration.
People will debate endlessly whether IE9 is a "modern" browser based on its HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, etc support.
The real smoking gun that it still isn't modern is that it doesn't include a spellcheck by default. You can't claim to be doing what users want while ignoring that elephant in the room.
My guess is that the real reason for this is that Windows 8 will add a native spellcheck API (technically Vista already did, as part of WPF, but that generally isn't used by consumer applications for various reasons), and in the meantime to avoid future confusion they don't want to implement it separately in IE.
Is it true that it won't work on Windows XP? I know XP is like a decade old, and I really don't wanna start an upgrade-your-browser-you-noob flamefest, but it seems kinda lame to exclude the people still on XP from having a modern browser and I can't figure out what the rationale might be for that.
There's never been a good reason publicly stated, but I imagine they don't want to be seeing as supporting their decade-old OS.
Chrome, Firefox and Safari have no problem doing it, so it's very likely a political decision.
I think Microsoft has some responsibility to update IE6 on XP, given that they left it out on the market so long and caused an incalculable amount of time to be lost developing for it while the rest of the worst was trying to move on.
Exactly twelve months from the first Platform Preview of IE9, on Monday March 14th we will celebrate the developers and designers who are making a more beautiful web for all of us. We will release the final version of Internet Explorer 9 for download beginning at 9 p.m. Pacific.
I guess I earned the downvotes for the bad attitude. I'm just amazed that in a time when everyone else is iterating and pushing out updates in a Big Hurry, they're announcing (celebrating?) the fact that they took a year to go from preview to release.
[+] [-] jameskilton|15 years ago|reply
Or launch like the rest of the software development world now operates and push out updates on a regular basis, with new features and better standards support, leading to something that actually has a chance of competing with the browsers the rest of us love to use?
'Cause I think it was around 2000 that people started realizing that monolithic development and release cycles lead to failed products. Software needs to be, and can be, updated constantly, or it falls behind. If this launch is like all other IE launches, it will be a day we will all look back on with disappointment. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see Microsoft actually become a modern development house, but I have huge doubts that it could ever happen.
[+] [-] melling|15 years ago|reply
Hopefully, there's more to come.
[+] [-] nailer|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 27182818284|15 years ago|reply
The real smoking gun that it still isn't modern is that it doesn't include a spellcheck by default. You can't claim to be doing what users want while ignoring that elephant in the room.
[+] [-] contextfree|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skore|15 years ago|reply
Spelling words properly, just for one day
[+] [-] pzxc|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmastrac|15 years ago|reply
Chrome, Firefox and Safari have no problem doing it, so it's very likely a political decision.
I think Microsoft has some responsibility to update IE6 on XP, given that they left it out on the market so long and caused an incalculable amount of time to be lost developing for it while the rest of the worst was trying to move on.
[+] [-] yannickmahe|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contextfree|15 years ago|reply
I hope Mozilla and Google take advantage of this opportunity.
[+] [-] woogley|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaatar|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmastrac|15 years ago|reply
It still doesn't work in Firefox4 though. Not sure if I'm surprised.
[+] [-] tnorthcutt|15 years ago|reply
twelve months
twelve months
twelve months
[+] [-] tnorthcutt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PatrickTulskie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] givan|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramki|15 years ago|reply