Microsoft fights back in browser wars, with Internet Explorer 9
With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft showed Wednesday it's trying to retake the browser initiative. IE remains the Net's dominant browser. But perversely, it became something of a technology underdog after Microsoft vanquished Netscape in the browser wars of the 1990s and scaled back its browser effort.
That left an opportunity for rivals to blossom -- most notably Firefox, which now is used by a quarter of Web surfers, but also Apple's Safari, which now runs on Windows as well as Mac OS X, and Google's Chrome, which aims to make the Web faster and a better foundation for applications.
Microsoft has been pouring resources back into the IE effort, though, and at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, some fruits of that labor were on display. In particular, Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky showed off IE 9's new hardware-accelerated text and graphics.
The acceleration feature takes advantage of hitherto untapped computing power in a way that's more useful than other browser-boosting technology such as Google's Native Client to tap into a PC's processor and Mozilla's WebGL for accelerated 3D graphics, said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer.
"This is a direct improvement to everybody's usage of the Web on a daily basis," Hachamovitch said in an interview after Sinofsky's speech. "Web developers are doing what they did before, only now they can tap directly into a PC's graphics hardware to make their text work better and graphics work better."
Why go to all this trouble? In short, to help keep the Windows business alive and kicking.
"Our goal in building a great browser for consumers and for everyone is that they are Windows customers. That's at the core of it," Hachamovitch said.
He didn't bring it up, but it should be noted that an increasing fraction of Microsoft's business is moving online, too, through its Bing, Live, and now online Office 2010 sites. "We want to build a better IE so all the Web sites have a better experience," Hachamovitch said.
Turning up the heat Microsoft began work on IE 9 just three weeks ago, Sinofsky said. But signs have been clear that the company has taken interest in its browser again.
When it arrived earlier this year IE 8 brought significant new security and privacy features, and in a significant departure Web developers appreciate, it attempts to follow various Web standards such as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and Cascading Style Sheets.
More recently, Microsoft joined the HTML standards effort in August. And earlier this month, Microsoft sent a dozen IE team members to a World Wide Web Consortium meeting.
"High-quality specifications that improve interoperability between browsers are important. Our goal is to help ensure these new standards work well for Web developers and will work well in future versions of IE," said Adrian Bateman, a Microsoft program manager who's involved in the standardization effort, describing the motivation. That point of view is music to the ears of programmers who struggle to make sure their Web sites work with the ever-wider variety of browsers on the Web today.