This story ran in the print edition of The Seattle Times on March 15, 2011. -Sharon Pian Chan
Microsoft's new browser, Internet Explorer 9, seems to have little to say about Microsoft. It doesn't even say "Internet Explorer" anywhere on the browser.
Microsoft has trimmed the fat off the glassy browser frame, creating more on-screen playground for Web developers to stretch out on.
It's clear Microsoft has made some major development changes to bring back the millions of Web users who have been lured away by Mozilla Firefox, a competitor that has whittled Internet Explorer's share from more than 90 percent to 57 percent of the market.
Microsoft released the new browser Monday night in an event at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. It's available for free download at www.beautyoftheweb.com.
While Microsoft still is the most popular browser, Mozilla now has 22 percent of the market with Firefox, Google has 11 percent with Chrome, and Apple has 6 percent with Safari, according to research firm Net Market Share.
Computer users spend more time in the browser than any other application on the PC, and it will become an even more important chess piece as users move toward cloud computing. The browser, after all, is the gateway to cloud computing.
"I still view the browser as the main portal to the cloud and what we think of as the access point, where we're going in the future, how we consume information and how we consume documents," said Lee Nicholls, director of global solutions at Getronics, the IT services branch of KPN.
"If you look at what Microsoft is doing itself with the next generation of Office, you see more and more things that have one foot on the desktop and one foot in the cloud."
Read more...Christina DaRe Malin Akerman Melissa Joan Hart Bianca Kajlich Giulianna Ramirez
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