This week we released the final version of Internet Explorer 9 to the world. With over 40 million downloads, IE9 Beta was our fastest adopted browser beta ever. Many people have already been using the Beta and RC versions of IE9 with over 2% usage share worldwide on Windows 7 while still in beta. Now with our Release to the Web (RTW) of IE9, we encourage companies to adopt IE9 so their customers, employees, and IT staff can start taking advantage of the benefits offered in this release of IE9.
While there are many reasons why IE9 is the best browser for business, there are nine reasons I think are most important:
1. Built for performance. IE9 was designed from the ground up to be the world’s fastest browser based on real Web performance metrics that matter to all customers. The new Chakra JavaScript engine in IE9 is the fastest available today per the commonly used WebKit SunSpider benchmark and increases your productivity with faster browsing. While script performance is important to browsing, it is only one of many factors in performance that we focused on in building IE9.
2. Hardware acceleration. Tapping into the power of the whole PC, IE9 is the only fully hardware-accelerated browser on Windows. All graphics, video, and text in IE9 are hardware-accelerated through the graphics processing unit or GPU. By utilizing the power of hardware acceleration, businesses can build web-based apps that behave more like native Windows applications because they can have better performance through using both the CPU and the GPU. Better performance means better productivity for your company.
3. Site-centric design. Users launch a browser to reach their favorite site or web app. To make these sites shine, IE9 has a new, clean user interface that puts the focus on your websites. We’ve streamlined IE9 to give you more screen real estate within the browser frame than any other browser available. Notifications have also been revamped in IE9 to be clearer and less intrusive in your users browsing experience. Less browser frame and interruptions mean you and your employees can spend more time focused on your sites.
4. Native to Windows. With IE9, your websites and web apps feel like native applications on your PC. IE9 has seamless integration with Windows 7 that allows you to increase your productivity by using common controls in Windows 7 like Jump Lists and Aero Snap. Your employees can “pin” their favorite sites to their Windows 7 taskbar and receive notifications and see thumbnail previews of their work or personal sites or apps through the taskbar.
5. Secure by default. IE9 builds on the great award-winning security features of Internet Explorer 8. IE9 helps protect you and your business from drive-by exploits, socially-engineered attacks (like malware), and threats against websites you visit, through proven technologies like SmartScreen, Protected Mode, Data Execution Prevention, and Cross-Site Script Filtering. Socially-engineered malware represents one of the biggest threats to user security today, and IE9 has the highest block rate of any browser out there today with its SmartScreen technology that has blocked over 1.5 billion pieces of malware since its release with IE8 in March 2009. Reduced likelihood of having malware on your systems means less down time and lowered costs of cleanup from malware attacks. And if privacy is a concern of yours, IE9 includes support for Tracking Protection, which allows you to control the browser’s communication with third-party websites to help keep your information private from online trackers.
6. Easy to deploy. IE9 relies on well-established and supported deployment options not found in any other web browser, making it possible to deploy inside your organization quickly and easily. You can deploy IE 9 using Windows Update, WSUS, System Center Configuration Manager, group policy, a network folder, or even quickly slipstream into your existing Windows images. The Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) allows you to create customized IE9 install packages in minutes for your own company-version of IE9.
7. Comprehensive management tools. IE9 offers extensive management options for big and small businesses alike. Larger customers can have full granular control over IE9 with almost 1500 group policies to enforce any configurations they want. For companies that seek simpler controls, there are tools available such as the Security Compliance Manager or the “Easy to Deploy” section of the IEAK for complete end-to-end security and management scenarios for your particular environment.
8. Compatibility and Migration Support. Internet Explorer is the only browser that officially supports backwards compatibility for browser and document modes, emulating some functionality as early as IE5.5 and IE6. With IE9 we continue that compatibility from previous versions of IE. Your users can easily render sites in early compatibility modes by selecting compatibility mode from within IE9 and your IT admins can programmatically places sites into compatibility mode through group policy. As you would expect, we provide numerous resources and tools to help with your migration to the latest version of Internet Explorer. And we provide the longest support life cycle of any browser out there – allowing you to upgrade your browser at your own pace.
9. Support for modern standards. Modern web applications require support for the latest Web standards. With Internet Explorer 9, we have delivered our most standards compliant browser ever including support for industry standards such as HTML5, CSS3, SVG1.1, and ECMAScript5. We are committed to modern Web standards and work closely with standards bodies like the W3C to help develop these standards and bring them to the marketplace through IE9. Great standards support in IE9 means that when you build sites based on modern Web standards, your sites will work across other browsers as well who have adopted these industry standards. Building on HTML5 with IE 9 is the best way to build for Windows, today and tomorrow.
Over the past few months, we’ve worked with large organizations such as Siemens IT Services and Solutions, our own Microsoft IT department, and several others to deploy and test IE9 to see what people thought of IE9. The feedback has been great from users and IT professionals alike. We are confident that IE9 is a great choice for your business and employees as well.
As your company makes the move to IE9, we want to hear from you as well. Your feedback is an important part of delivering the right technologies to meet your business needs.
Thanks,
Roger Capriotti
Director, Internet Explorer Marketing
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