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Internet Explorer 9 Will Not Support Windows XP

Posted by timothy on from the are-you-keeping-up-with-me dept.

MojoKid writes "As it turns out, news this week is that the same features that made IE9's hardware-acceleration possible probably aren't compatible with Windows XP. Microsoft initially dodged giving a straight answer to the question of XP support but has since admitted that the new browser won't be XP-compatible when it launches. This has created a small tempest of protest from those users still using XP, but this is less of an arbitrary decision than some appear to think. It's literally impossible to port Windows Vista/Win 7-style hardware acceleration backwards to XP. Microsoft would have to either develop a workaround from scratch or create a CPU-driven 'software mode.'"

6 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. Not surprised by tkinnun0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    XP's graphics handling is really crappy compared to 7 and Vista, so this is no surprise. Flip an LCD to portrait mode in XP, then try to turn on vsync because horizontal tearing just became vertical tearing. Can't be done.

    1. Re:Not surprised by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 4, Interesting

      XP's graphics handling is really crappy compared to 7 and Vista, so this is no surprise. Flip an LCD to portrait mode in XP, then try to turn on vsync because horizontal tearing just became vertical tearing. Can't be done.

      Whether or not XP can handle it doesn't really matter. Windows 7 is where Microsoft's focus is now and their money is better spent supporting the road forward. One other thing worth looking at is why people are still using XP? Chances are in a couple of years once Windows 7 has proved itself many companies will upgrade to the new OS, invalidating any effort Microsoft put into making IE9 work with the older platform.

      Beyond companies, who are probably still using IE6 anyhow (ugh), people who really want to stick to XP and want to have the latest version of IE might end up being gifted by some hacker making it possible.

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    2. Re:Not surprised by sopssa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You forgot tablets, and XP/Vista/Win7 are used in those too. With those you might actually flip the screen quite often - I do with my mobile phone too.

  2. Re:Thats ok , as an XP user by sopssa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, those wanting to or forced to use IE-only websites might also be forced to upgrade from XP. Welcome to the effects of proprietary lock-in.

    Forced to upgrade? IE8 works just fine on XP and will continue to do so. It also doesn't have any of the exploits that IE6 has.

    Also, how does it differ between proprietary and open source then? If you're using some 10 years old version of your Linux OS and it doesn't support some feature that the newer OS/kernel versions have, you're not going to be able to install programs that require said feature.

  3. munitions by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Unless something has changed recently, all South Korean bank sites for instance require activeX and as such have to be used with IE.

    ActiveX banking applets in the Republic of Korea came into being because the United States once classified SSL browsers with more than 40-bit encryption as munitions and banned their export outside the United States and Canada. (This policy ended sometime in the late 1990s.) So Korean banks used homemade crypto applets as an alternative to SSL. I'm sure at least some banks have switched to SSL by now.

  4. Re:People need to stop bitching by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Comparing XP's worthless out-of-box installation to any other OS which comes with (and MAINTAINS) hundreds of third-party apps is an extremely invalid comparison.

    Unlike Canonical and Red Hat, Microsoft has market power in operating systems for commodity desktop and laptop PCs. If Microsoft included basic versions of Office, Visual Studio, and the like with Windows, it might get in trouble with competition regulators, just as it did with Internet Explorer in the EU.