Bryan Pieper's Blog : Microsoft

Microsoft has not been serious about Internet Explorer since the days of Netscape. Back in those days, they set out to oust Netscape as the #1 browser. As you know, they succeeded in that mission.

With Microsoft’s recent announcement of the preview version of Internet Explorer 9, I believe they might be serious about the future of Internet Explorer. More specifically, they seem to be serious about the idea of advancing the web.

When IE8 was released, Microsoft had basically upgraded its rendering capability to CSS2 and increased the JavaScript performance. The rest of features did little to advance the web. It did bring IE up to the days of Firefox 2, a little dated, but not bad!

Enter Internet Explorer 9, with Firefox-grade JavaScript performance, SVG, HTML5 features and support for CSS3. It is currently in development, but I see this as the most significant upgrade to IE since IE6.

On Friday, Google announced they are phasing out support for IE6 after March 1st, 2010.  I was beginning to wonder if this day would ever come. Since Google is putting their weight behind this, hopefully, the rest of the 'net will follow soon. Even Microsoft is urging users to upgrade. 

Just about any web developer will tell you how much grief, pain and agony Internet Explorer 6 is responsible for when building a website. Whether it be lack of standards compliance, undocumented "features", security issues, hair-pulling quirks or just plain stupidity, IE6 will not be missed. We all have a few choice words for IE6 (and IE7, even IE8).

So, let the celebration begin! Farewell IE6, don't let the door hit you on the way out!