Internet Explorer 9 Offers Speed, HTML 5
Microsoft wants the world to abandon Internet Explorer 6 and upgrade to IE7 or IE8 for security reasons, but the company says Web and application developers will want to upgrade to the next version of Microsoft's Web browser, IE9, for its optimized performance and HTML 5 support.

Microsoft seeking browser comeback with IE9

Without revealing when the browser will become generally available, IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch told attendees of a keynote address at Microsoft's MIX10 Web developer conference that the company will not only support HTML 5, but also drive efforts to make the Web presentation specification a standard.

According to research from Janco Associates, Microsoft IE continues to lead the pack of browsers despite losing market share in the past 12 months. Microsoft now holds a bit less than 65% of the total browser market, compared to more than 80% in February 2007. Firefox market share remained mostly flat at about 17%. At the same time, market share for Google's browser grew to nearly 6%, while Safari increased to 1.39%.

"This will move Microsoft much higher up in terms of their level of innovation in the browser. The company has a very broad user base today, and this news will be met with much applause from the developer community who would like to see all vendors embrace standards," according to McLeish.

Source: www.pcworld.com