It's interesting to watch the tension at Microsoft.
The IE team has to embrace standards (HTML5/JS/CSS) as much as possible to be thought of as a serious competitor in the browser wars. (Since the browser is the new OS.)
The rest of MS has to push Silverlight as the way to build applications, or else Windows itself is endangered, if there's nothing Windows-specific about future app development. (Hoping the browser isn't the new OS.)
Seems like both Microsoft and Apple are trying to figure out where to go in the post-PC era. Apple's clearly betting on mobile (which is a good bet), but MS is tied to their Windows/Office/Exchange legacy, and falling behind horribly in mobile. (We'll see if Windows Phone 7 does anything for them.)
The IE team is part of the Windows division, Silverlight is part of Server & Tools. If anything IE is more about selling Windows than Silverlight is. Silverlight is cross-platform (Mac, Nokia) and is about selling ... servers and tools.
The value over the previous versions of IE is that IE9 implements a huge number of html/css/JS fixes, so it is much more like FF/Chrome/Safari than IE8.
For FF/Chrome/Safari users this means that it becomes much more likely to see web-sites use html5 technologies and leave IE6-8 behind.
So if you create intranet web-sites, then a huge amount of pain is gone when the company upgrades its IE install base to IE9. Personally, I'm looking very much forward to this, and I'm able to tell my customer that this will save valuable time for me (i.e. money for them).
It's probably better than IE8, and if you just use a standard Windows PC then Microsoft Update will perhaps give you IE9 automatically? (Sorry, I don't use Windows enough to know whether browser updates are automatic.) So the common non-computer savvy user will benefit.
Browser updates from Microsoft have ALWAYS been opt-in and that is the reason you don't see the same adoption rates like with other browser manufacturers.
As a web developer, it's my biggest gripe with Microsoft.
If you have Windows set to automatically update then "critical" updates will be install without prompting the user. However, when it attempts to install IE it will always as for the user's permission. I feel that it's a bit different than a regular hotfix.
The least common denominator has been increased. In a few short years, hardware accelerated HTML5 will be expected. 95% on ACID3 will be taken for granted. Really fast JavaScript, ... you get the idea.
Sure some people will hang out with IE6 for another 5 years, but most sites can now be optimized for much more functionality.
Finally, for those people(companies) that will only use a Microsoft browser, they now have a really good HTML5 browser.
The key phrase in your question of course is over everything else on the market. The value of IE9 is that it will get more people off IE6, 7, and 8. Certain types of web app will be much easier to produce once (eventually) they only need to support IE9+.
Pinning these "immersive app-like experiences" to the task bar sounds like one step back in terms of UI innovation. Having different webpages available from the task bar looks exactly like what I had with IE6 and multiple windows.
If it's anything like Fluid.app [1] on the Mac then I'm a big fan.
I have numerous web-apps setup as dedicated applications using Fluid and find it much nicer than having them as tabs in the same browser, or in their own browser windows. It means I can launch them with Spotlight easily, they have their own icon in the dock and start up without the address-bar or any other chrome.
At any one time I'd say around 75% of the apps I'm running are Fluid.app instances.
While interesting, the article perpetuates the myth that any cool new browser feature is somehow due to HTML5. Pinning apps to the taskbar is nice, but not related to HTML5 in any meaningful way.
Weird, it feels like they are missing out on such a large market not supporting XP when all their competitors still do. Seems like for the purposes of better integrating a few features they have decided to ignore the many improvements they could provide to someone on XP currently using IE8.
It just becomes another reason for people to make the switch, and I doubt they will win them back when they finally do decide to upgrade to windows7.
XP is dead and I'm not sure how Microsoft can make that any more clear than completely avoiding releasing products on it any more. Upgrade or lose out on the newer features available in later OS releases.
OK, software never really dies. You can keep running it forever, if you insist.
But Microsoft has made it pretty clear that they do not thing you should be running XP. You're getting critical security updates only until 2014. And it's rather tricky to purchase a new copy of XP (you pay a premium and it typically involved buying a new OS first)
Yes.. they support it until 2014. My 'dead' comment was really that from a feature set point of view. I'm supporting, but I'm not adding any new features. As a software company aren't you wanting your customers to upgrade to the latest and greatest?
They may want people to but it is happening very slowly. One big problem is that XP has all the features most users need and a big price tag on windows 7 doesn't help. Every windows before XP ended up having large game breaking issues which meant the customer base would switch quiet fast to the new one when it came out. Sure windows 7 is a nice addition on top of XP but in terms of day to day usage most people would easily be able to get by on XP.
Microsoft makes most of its money on Windows and Office. So, if they can use this as a reason to get people to upgrade in a way that also makes them more money, they'll do it.
If you can't (or don't want to) upgrade past XP, but want modern browser capabilities, just use Firefox, Safari, or Chrome.
I think they make some money from their ads too... that is why I think it is funny that they just allow firefox (default search = google) and chrome (default search = google) to continue to make gains in this market. One would think that they would want ie (default search = microsoft) to be available to as many people as possible to get them to their search to get them to their ads.
Second of all, the fact that microsoft continues to decrease in market share while only releasing its browswer on one of the many operating systems available is no way to succeed. I know the linux community isn't large enough to draw much notice from microsoft, but is the coding that windows centric that it can only run on windows (no, since there will be a mac version... maybe).
I understand that not everyone enjoys this comment... Oh well.
The IE team has to embrace standards (HTML5/JS/CSS) as much as possible to be thought of as a serious competitor in the browser wars. (Since the browser is the new OS.)
The rest of MS has to push Silverlight as the way to build applications, or else Windows itself is endangered, if there's nothing Windows-specific about future app development. (Hoping the browser isn't the new OS.)
Seems like both Microsoft and Apple are trying to figure out where to go in the post-PC era. Apple's clearly betting on mobile (which is a good bet), but MS is tied to their Windows/Office/Exchange legacy, and falling behind horribly in mobile. (We'll see if Windows Phone 7 does anything for them.)