Microsoft Releases IE9 Platform Preview, Touts IE9 Functionality

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 18 Mar 2010

All Internet Explorer (IE) versions made the news recently. Internet Explorer 6 and 7 made the news because Microsoft uncovered a vulnerability that if exploited by a person with malicious intent, it could allow an attacker ot perform remote code execution on the targeted machine. The vulnerability, as Microsoft explained in Security Advisory 981374, “exists due to an invalid pointer reference being used within Internet Explorer.” An out-of-bad patch may be released soon.

The latest stable version of IE, Internet Explorer 8 also made the news – mainly because it is not affected by the vulnerability presented above. And because its SmartScreen Filter makes it the safest version in the IE range. Ever since it has been implemented in IE8, the SmartScreen Filter managed to block “over 560 million attempts to download malware, recently averaging over 3 million blocks per day,” said Program Manager with IE, Eric Lawrence.

And now its time for IE9 to make the news – that’s right, Internet Explorer 9. Redmond-based software giant Microsoft is already looking to the future and what the next iteration of the IE browser will bring to the table. So far Microsoft has released the IE9 Platform Preview to gather feedback. “Getting specific feedback directly from developers about their experiences with the platform is super important to us. It’s a critical part of how we optimize for real world performance and real world code patterns,” explained Program Manager with IE, Justin Saint Clair

Microsoft also shared a few details on the functionality it wants to incorporate into IE9:
- Optimized performance and HTML5 support
- GPU accelerated HTML5 rendering

"We love HTML 5 so much, we want it to actually work and in IE9, it will. We want the same script and same markup to work across browsers. And at the same time we want to be responsible about standards," IE General Manager, Dean Hachamovitch said at the MIX10 Web developer conference. "We set out to support every standard we saw in real world data in IE9."

Okay, so the good news is that IE9 will support HTML5 which means that browser will offer optimized rendering speeds and will aid developer in creating dynamic web applications.

Where’s the bad news? The bad news (for XP users) is that IE9 will not provide support for the Windows XP operating system. What Hachamovitch specifically said is that a modern browser deserves a modern operating system.


Latest News


Sony's 'Attack of the Blockbusters Sale' Slashes Prices in Half for a Ton of PS4 Games

17 Aug 2017

How Samsung's New T5 Compares to the Old T3 Portable SSD (Infographic)

17 Aug 2017

See all