Microsoft: IE9 Won't Support Windows XP

Windows XP users will not be able to run the final version of Internet Explorer 9, according to Microsoft executives, cutting out a decade-old, yet still popular operating system.

In fact, the Windows IE9 Platform Preview, as well as the final version, won't run on anything but the latest Microsoft operating systems. Users trying to run the preview code on an XP system will receive the following dialogue box: "Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview does not support any operating system earlier than Windows Vista SP2."

And of course, don't even think about versions for non-Windows operating systems. IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch told us that Mac and Linux versions weren't currently in the company's plans.

The reason IE9 doesn't work in XP is that it uses the Direct2D feature of DirectX when accessing the graphics hardware to accelerate image creation and drawing. Direct2D was introduced in Windows 7, but then added to Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2. But not to WIndows XP.

When I asked the IE9 team about their plans for the legacy OS, they confirmed that XP was not in the cards:

"Windows XP users have a fast, safe, reliable and private browser in Internet Explorer 8," company representatives said in an emailed statement. "As the Web has continued to change in everything from security to the future HTML5 applications developers are starting to build today, browsers should require the modern graphics and security infrastructure that has come along since 2001.

Internet Explorer 9 requires the modern graphics and security underpinnings that have come since 2001, and is intended to be run on a modern operating system in order to build on the latest hardware and operating system innovations."

It only makes sense the the OS vendor wants to give people as many reasons to upgrade their PCs to Wnidows 7 as possible, and not spend developer man-hours updating software that debuted nine years ago. Still, this probably won't make XP loyalists smile. They may even jump ship to fast browsers that do run on their platform – like Chrome, Opera, and Safari.