The nearly decade old operating system from Microsoft is not going to get the newest version of their newest browser, Internet Explorer 9. There are many reasons for this, and it is going to anger many people that don’t want to upgrade to the new Windows 7. For some, updating from Internet Explorer 6 is a challenge, much less a whole new operating system. I still love my old DOS programs and games, but I learned to live with a UI after Windows 95 up until now. Sometimes it’s ok to let go!

Much of the talk yesterday around IE 9 was about moving the browser out of the way of the website, with features like “jump lists” and the “pinning” of websites to the desktop. These features, along with hardware acceleration using DirectX 10, would be unavailable on Windows XP. As Microsoft showed during a reviewers workshop yesterday much of Internet Explorer 9 has been rebuilt from the ground up. If this means that we don’t have to deal with the clunky IE of the past from now on, so be it. Our only lament is that a better, standards-based version of IE will never happen on XP and for now, XP isn’t going anywhere fast.