Mozilla shocked IE 9 ‘kick’ Windows XP

Windows

Microsoft’s decision not to provide Internet Explorer 9 on Windows XP platforms surprising Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser. Though many XP users are still counted even though the age of this OS is quite old.

Microsoft certainly has a reason why they dump XP. According to the software giant is, XP is deemed too old for a browser equipped with the latest features such as IE 9. For example, CPU and GPU optimization features are claimed to improve the performance of the browser dramatically.

Whatever the reason for Microsoft, it seems many people question it. Quoted from Computerworld, Johnathan Nightingale as the director of Firefox, also wonder why Microsoft ignores XP.

“The exciting part for me is not about the fuss browser which has hardware acceleration. What is surprising is that the acceleration is not available for Windows XP,” said Nightingale seemed to satirize the Microsoft.

Both IE 9 and Firefox 4 supports hardware acceleration in Vista and Windows 7 with Direct2D and Direct3D APIs. But Mozilla does not leave just like that and claim XP accelerate Firefox 4 using Direct 3D in XP.

“It gives us a lot of work. But in our calculation, Windows XP still holding market share about 40% to 50%. We have an obligation to the user and Windows XP is the part that we can not ignore,” he added.

In comparison, Vista and Windows 7 if it has a 38% combined market share of all versions of Windows that is used last month. There are still many users of XP to make other browser makers still support it, including the latest versions of Chrome, Safari and Opera.