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Microsoft Says IE9 Beta Demand Overwhelming

cgriffin21 writes "Microsoft expected Internet Explorer 9 to be popular, but after more than two million people downloaded the IE9 beta in the first two days after its release, the software giant is having a hard time choosing which eye-popping statistics to cite. Microsoft says its "Beauty of the Web" site, which illustrates the aesthetic advantages of IE9's support for HTML5 and hardware acceleration, has had more the 9 million visits and 26 million page views since the IE9 beta launch on Sept. 15. Microsoft's developer-oriented IE Test Drive Site has had 4 million page views during the same period."

38 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Not suprising by Tolleman · · Score: 4, Funny

    Everyone just had to see if they were actually doing a browser without the retarded gene.

    1. Re:Not suprising by SpryGuy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's still in beta.

      They shouldn't be working around issues, they should be reporting any issues and demanding that MS fix them prior to official release.

      --

      - Spryguy
      There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
  2. Good to see by MyLongNickName · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I for one am happy to see IE becoming competitve again. It is good to have more than one viable alternative out there.

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    1. Re:Good to see by jazman_777 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Absolutely. Someone needs to put the pressure on the near-monopoly that Firefox/Opera/Chrome/etc. has.

      --
      Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
    2. Re:Good to see by MonsterTrimble · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I for one am happy to see IE becoming competitve again. It is good to have more than one viable alternative out there.

      Highlights mine.

      What do you define as a viable alternative? Firefox, Opera & Chrome have been around for quite a while and they all have been eating IE's lunch. By a lot of accounts, the big story is that IE9 is a radical departure from IE7/8 and has made major strides in catching up but it's not there yet.

      Personally, I hope IE9 gets pushed out tomorrow. At work I'm stuck using IE8 and I would love to have something which approaches the Opera browser I use at home.

      --
      I call it 'The Aristocrats'
    3. Re:Good to see by Jorl17 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because it belongs to Microsoft. Don't you know they're EVIL?

      --
      Have you heard about SoylentNews?
    4. Re:Good to see by gravis777 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Completely agree. I also like to see MS trying something new. The new UI is sweet, and this is FREAKIN FAST on my dual-core laptop with Win7. I haven't installed on the 6-core desktop yet, because its still rather buggy (several text fields on Facebook refuse to work), but I guess it wouldn't really matter, I still am a pretty big Firefox user and have it set to the default browser.

      I was in shock with the HTML5 and the speed increase from going to GPU. Their Beauty of the Web pages are jawdropping, and I think this is REALLY going to change the web forever. I would have to say this (GPU accelleration and HTML5) is probably the biggest thing to hit the web since Flash / Shockwave came out 12 or 13 years ago.

      I also like the increase in real-estate when browsing. Yes, I know I can turn my other browsers into fullscreen mode, but then I loose the address and search bars.

      Actually, is it just me, or did IE9 practically copy Chrome's interface?

    5. Re:Good to see by StuartHankins · · Score: 3, Informative

      ... and it used to be 90%. There's been a large shift to other browsers over the past few years. That is significant.

    6. Re:Good to see by Vectormatic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      well, given past performance, it is quite reasonable to assume that somehow IE-9 will be borked up in some way, some odd rendering bug or something.. in that light, MS introducing IE 9 means all those poor web-devs will now have to support 'standard rendering' + IE 6-7-8-9 instead of just 'standard rendering' + IE 6-7-8.

      i would prefer it if IE6 would be killed off once and for all though.. fucker needs to DIE

      (and no, i dont think MS releasing IE9 is negative, i wont be using it, but i dont mind)

      --
      People, what a bunch of bastards
    7. Re:Good to see by Vectormatic · · Score: 2, Insightful

      which used to be 95% just a few years back...

      if losing half the markt in ~5 years isnt getten your lunch eaten, then i dont know what is

      --
      People, what a bunch of bastards
    8. Re:Good to see by hedwards · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's not standards compliant at least not completely. If you got to beautyoftheweb.com they specifically say that it works with all modern browsers but not as beautifully on browsers other than IE9. I couldn't let me copy the text.

  3. Early start by halcyon1234 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Two million malware distributors want an early start on the game...

    1. Re:Early start by MahariBalzitch · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The way malware seems to work so seemlessly with IE, you would think the malware distributors were on the IE development team.

  4. 26 Million views in 6 days... by gimmebeer · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... insert "must not be running on IIS..." joke here.

  5. Beauty of the web by Drakkenmensch · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now I can go on 4chan and view the full beauty of... oh god is that an anthropomorphic hermaphrodite squirrel orgy?!?

  6. keeping up with the jones' by Sprouticus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Say what you want about IE's history (and lets face it, the jokes that come to mind are bountiful), but with Firefox and chrome pushing them that Microsoft has again started pushing IE development. Im not happy about that because I want IE to dominate, but because it keeps ALL the vendors honest.

    Say it with me, competition is GOOD.

  7. Re:I can only assume by nullifi · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, it's not being pushed, believe it or not people do have to download it. Although, you are correct in that the "Beauty of the Web" is the first page it loads up to.

  8. Obligatory by Pojut · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Say it with me, competition is GOOD.

    Unless it threatens a brand you like or comes from a brand you don't like.
    (the general "you", not "you, Sprouticus")

  9. Re:I can only assume by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Today you have to download it. I'm sure, just like previous iterations, that this will eventually be a pushed patch.

  10. I.E. lock? by cgenman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I can see a few reasons for this:

    1. Lots of intranet and other internal company websites are I.E. only. It would be good to know now if those sites will continue to function.
    2. Lots of employees are locked into I.E., and want to know what is coming up.
    3. I.E. still means "the internet" to a lot of people.
    4. Everyone who has a plug-in or toolbar needs to know if this will work with their "product."
    5. There are about 2 billion internet users worldwide. I.E. has about %50 marketshare. 2 million downloading a beta out of a group of 1 billion users is about half of a percent. That's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it doesn't seem out of line with expectations.

    1. Re:I.E. lock? by Haedrian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      RE: 3.) The kind of people who think that would probably not be trying out a beta. I might be wrong though

      5.) If you filter out the people who CAN'T run IE9 - XP users circa 60%, Linux and Mac users... it works out to be a bit bigger.

      I think the biggest share is the people who are curious to see what Microsoft pulled out this time. Their form at late with software is getting much better. Windows 7 was great, Office 2010 was great as well... Microsoft are finally waking up in face of some competition.

  11. Its running on windows azure by cybrthng · · Score: 2, Informative
  12. People are desperate for a fix! by erroneus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Browsers do not excite people. Getting their problems resolved does. Microsoft's "overwhelming" response is a strong indicator that people are displeased with what they have now and are looking for it to be fixed.

    This is nothing new. Nearly every upgrade from the previous version of Windows was enthusiastically received by users who were hopeful that the problems of their previous version are resolved in the new one. People were happy with Windows98 and so WindowsME did not receive any welcome from users. (If they called in Windows98enhanced it might have gained popularity though) And the same happened when trying to get people to go from WindowsXP to Vista... people were happy with XP (and still are!) and see no compelling reasons to move to another OS. (The use of 64 bit will be the draw that will finally move people to Windows 7 though)

    If there is a reason people WANT MSIE9, it is because the previous versions are not good enough.

    1. Re:People are desperate for a fix! by cybrthng · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I beg to differ.. If browsers didn't "Excite" people then we wouldn't have this fascinating "War" of Google vs Firefox vs IE vs everything else. If browsers didn't excite people the open source projects would be ghost towns and people wouldn't be downloading & trying out a browser.

      For me, the browser doesn't really "Excite" me, i'm just giddy for that "early days" feeling that comes about whenever some new stuff that we can tinker with heads out way. MS didn't just release a browser and say "here you go", they dove headfirst into an HTML5 experience and developed a showcase to go along with it. That is pretty exciting :)

  13. Do my eyes deceive me? by watermark · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hell may have frozen over. A JS engine that rivals the best, support for most of the CSS3 goodies, and budding hardware acceleration. This is looking like the best IE release in a while.

    If they can keep security snafus down, alternative browsers are going to be a harder sell.

  14. Compete on Linux and OS X too please by tizan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why not one for Linux or Mac too....Why compete on your turf only ?

    1. Re:Compete on Linux and OS X too please by smash · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Because there are plenty of alternatives on other platforms. There are plenty of alternatives on windows as well, but "IE" has become a platform in itself, due to the prevalence of shitty microsoft-HTML sites in corporate intranets. Currently the only browser that deals with the corporate intranet AND the internet without needing 2 browsers is IE. And its shit.

      If you're on an open platform and don't use microsoft corporate intranet websites, you have no need for IE.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  15. Re:Fraudulous advertisement by airfoobar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I feel the same way with the AC. Microsoft seems to use this marketing technique a lot, after picking it up from Apple. It tells people "Hey, this thing is like SO popular, everyone is doing it, so you need to do it too" to use artificial peer pressure to make them use its products. I personally think it's a despicable way to operate, and makes me like them even less.

  16. Re:I can only assume by Vectormatic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    i just gave beautyoftheweb.com two hits, one from chrome, in which all worked fine, but the fonts/scaling was borked to give me horrible alliased text, another in IE8 produced correct text, but all nice visual effects where gone, and surprise, all moving effects slowed to a crawl...

    --
    People, what a bunch of bastards
  17. Re:I can only assume by Solidblu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually I think this number not completely honest. 6 Days ago Microsoft because a sponsor of Reddit and asked the Reddit community to test it out and give feed back.

    "See, Microsoft is getting ready to release Internet Explorer 9, and they reached out to us because they genuinely want to start a dialog with the reddit community. In fact, they've taken the unprecedented step of putting the reddit team in charge of this entire campaign. This is a great deal of trust for an advertiser to offer, and we should both take it as a huge compliment."

    http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/depct/and_now_for_a_word_from_our_sponsor_because_for/

  18. Re:I can only assume by insufflate10mg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When are people going to grow up and admit MS has released several top-of-the-line products recently? IE is getting much nicer, especially with 9, and Windows 7 blows away any other OS available, except for certain *nix distributions for specific reasons. Likewise, if you would actually give the .NET framework and its associated languages a try you may find yourself impressed with the capabilities.

    I guess I just feel like people should upgrade and quit whining like we're still in the early 00's. Technology advances, and with it comes a need for stronger hardware and new programming frameworks.

  19. Re:What about the rest of us? by IANAAC · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Also, if you're a proper developer, get a technet subscription and get access to whatever software of theirs you need and never pay full price for an OS again.

    Why on earth should he have to buy an entire OS - discounted or not - just to test a browser?

  20. Re:I can only assume by wmac · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Every product is marketed. People do not find a product out of nowhere. And that's good. MS did a splendid job with Win7 marketing.

    However first essential thing in a successful marketing is having a good product which offers something new and competitive. And both Win7 and IE9 offer that.

  21. Re:"Pushed" is a stretch by HermMunster · · Score: 2, Informative

    IE updates have always been optional but they have always been checked by default.

    --
    You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
  22. Re:I can only assume by VGR · · Score: 5, Informative

    When are people going to grow up and admit MS has released several top-of-the-line products recently? IE is getting much nicer, especially with 9, and Windows 7 blows away any other OS available, except for certain *nix distributions for specific reasons. Likewise, if you would actually give the .NET framework and its associated languages a try you may find yourself impressed with the capabilities.

    Surely you jest. Just because IE 9 and Windows 7 are vastly better than their horrid predecessors does not make them top-of-the-line. And .Net is just Java with a flood of feature creep and syntactic candy. As Microsoft has done so many times before, they took something successful and copied it, while completely overlooking the reason for its success: Java's strength was and is in its lack of syntactic fluff. It makes the code take slightly longer to write but dramatically and mercifully faster to read and maintain.

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  23. Not a schocker by _newwave_ · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes, 2 million+ web developers are very interested in how you are going to continue to make their lives a pain.

  24. Re:Geez by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    lol u mad?

  25. Re:I can only assume by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And .Net is just Java with a flood of feature creep and syntactic candy. As Microsoft has done so many times before, they took something successful and copied it, while completely overlooking the reason for its success: Java's strength was and is in its lack of syntactic fluff. It makes the code take slightly longer to write but dramatically and mercifully faster to read and maintain.

    Java's strength was in its simplicity, but that time is long gone. It was okay in mid-90s, but it's hopelessly outdated in 2010 (guess what, programming languages evolve, too!). Any simplicity that may be in the language has long been drowned by the complexity of the overengineered standard library and various "enterprise" frameworks with miles of XML configs, factories of factories, and other creative architectural decision.

    In the meantime, C# has been adding features that actually make code both easier to write and clearer. LINQ is a prime example of that. Lambdas are another (when used with a well-designed framework of higher-order functions). A more obscure example, which might nonetheless resonate with Python developers, are iterator methods (Python calls them generators - with "yield" keyword).

    And - "syntactic fluff", really? Then why did Java scramble to copy large parts of that "fluff" for 1.5 release?

    Oh, and what about all the people begging for closures/lambdas in Java today (in C# since 2005)? Just to remind, it got postponed again, from Java 7 to Java 8. And a lot of people are quite angry about it.