I doubt anyone will upgrade their OS just cause IE9 does not support there current one. I mean some will but in the end we will still be designing for those that haven’t.
I had to read that twice; just to make sure and they must be running scared of the competition then and trying to galvanise something.
Interesting that they’re adding support for proper application/xhtml+xml, didn’t see that coming.
Oh that’s fantastic… add support for XHTML when the W3C working group decides not to continue the efforts on the next version (which I’m sure is partly due to IE’s initial lack of co-operation in having basic support for it in IE8)… talk about too little too late. I guess it’s nice to see their doing something about XHTML in the end, though perhaps I do wonder if that XHTML support will be aimed at 1.0 and 1.1 or will it also include HTML5’s own XHTML mode? 
A lot of business may well still use XP, they aren’t going to spend money to upgrade however many computers to Win 7 (and they might well use apps which don’t work with Win 7) just to use IE9, they will stick with IE (version 6, 7 or 8) or move to a rival browser.
Finally, SVG in IE.
This might mark the beginning of a revolution!
OS9 vs OSX is not XP vs Vista or 7.
OS9 vs OSX is more like windows 98 vs 2000.
Anyway I upgraded from Vista to XP (yes, upgraded), and I havent tried 7 yet. My bad experience with Vista discouraged me a bit. I’m happy with XP loaded with all my software.
Not everyone are early adopters. It is also a trend in the business world to stay on old systems until an upgrade is really necessary.
Businesses rarely rush into upgrading their operating systems, why do you think so many people still use IE6? Because they are surfing at work.
I hope they will make it work with Windows XP.
Well I will not use IE just because they have a new version! Firefox For Ever!
Another anti-microsoft fanboy. Oh, i’m sorry, Micro$oft.
Seeing as XP won’t even be supported by the time this comes out it’s highly unlikely.
I hope they support Windows 3.1 myself.
I really hope Windows 3.1 gets supported as well 
I really hope it will be platform independent! 
In fact, let’s make a poll!
Nah, forget it, Shakespeare’s right: too much noise for nothin’! They tease us but don’t get serious where it matters.
How about security issues for this new IE? I’d like more input on that.
And available as a Live Boot CD.
Me too, I miss that OS, life was much simpler with the program manager rather than having a desktop, taskbar, start menu, system tray and every other form of navigation in existence. I used to use plug-in for Windows and back-menu to max my 3.1 system with tonnes of useful additional features
Fantastic news concerning #1, and a loud head-scratcher regarding #2. Why support XHTML now? Makes no sense to me. I mean good for those app developers who have hard-coded XML syntax into their core and brought those of us who wanted to use proper HTML 4.01 to frustration…, but otherwise?
Well, Microsoft is always good for surprises. 
Reading out on the web, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/17/microsoft_internet_explorer_9_questions/, and plenty other places, one conclusion begun raising it’s ugly head: Microsoft IE9 will not comply with standards. Again, they are doing things their way.
Yeah, they lie: IE9 & HTML5 in the same sentence and we all begin to believe compliance to standards.
I believe not. They have Silverlight to defend - so no HTML5 video embrace, use Direct2D features available in Windows OS - don’t like Canvas that much, do they. Yeah, I believe they plan another IE6.
They seek to impose their will on the constant-movement-towards-standards set off by other rival browsers, giving developers toys to forget essentials:
What this means is that Internet Explorer will not deliver on the “same markup everywhere” dream - at least until XP is obsolete. Bearing in mind that some new machines still ship with Windows XP today, developers face a long wait.
They leverage on the dominance of the market share, but that might just became their emperor clothes. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, if you don’t sell easy universal solutions, as they used to, you can’t buy that back.
They already have their share of bad press. Going away from mainstream doesn’t help much, unless you believe you can take the world alone.
I do not follow you, how do you follow a standard that is not a standard? What are they doing that goes against the current unfinished HTML5 spec? You also can have both Silverlight/Flash and HTML5 support, I don’t recall there being a clause in the HTML5 spec saying you cannot. So what exactly are you on about? And what does the use of Direct2D have to do with anything?
But exactly what parts of HTML5 will the company support? And what will happen when changes are made as the standard evolves? Hachamovitch tends to avoid straight answers
and
“Building a modern browser requires a modern operating system,” he says. “There are facilities in Windows Vista and Windows 7 around security, for example the integrity-level work that gave us protected mode. There are performance improvements, there is graphics infrastructure to take advantage of the GPU, that doesn’t exist in previous operating systems.”
Hachamovitch plays a game with the press when he is quizzed about specific HTML5 features that are not in the current IE9 preview. What about the Canvas element? “All the graphics that run in IE9 are GPU-powered, they are hardware accelerated. We said there’ll be updates to the preview and we’ll see what else is coming in the next preview.” So that’s a maybe.
What about video codecs, a contentious issue which has left the Video tag without any officially standardized codec? “For IE9, the demonstration that we gave involved the H.264 codec, which is a great industry standard for video, and we will support the H.264 codec.” says Hachamovitch. Other codecs, like the open source Ogg Theora? He says nothing, but the signs are not good. He even adds, “If I made a list of all the things for the HTML5 spec to do next, it’s not clear that the HTML5 video codec would be near the top.”
and
Another question that Hachamovitch is frequently asked concerns Silverlight. Does the overlap between HTML5 and Silverlight, for features such as video and animation, imply that Microsoft might eventually move away from the plug-in approach?
I believe this sums it up, don’t you?
He positions Microsoft as pragmatic. “The end, that we’re all trying to get to, is that developers can use the same markup everywhere. There are a variety of means of getting there. I talked about using data to find what developers are actually using to make that work.”
Ideally
same markup everywhere
duh!(:
No, it does not.