Internet Explorer 9

Internet Explorer 9

Windows Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is a version of the Internet Explorer web browser from Microsoft. It was released to the public on March 14, 2011. Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 9 as a major out-of-band version that is not tied to the release schedule of any particular version of Windows, unlike previous versions. It is the first version since Internet Explorer 2 to not be bundled with a Windows operating system, although some OEMs have installed it with Windows 7 on their PCs, as well as new Windows 7 laptops.

The system requirements for Internet Explorer 9 are Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista Service Pack 2 or Windows Server 2008 SP2 with the Platform Update. Windows XP and earlier are not supported. Internet Explorer 9 is the last version of Internet Explorer to be supported on Windows Vista; Internet Explorer 10 will only be supported on Windows 7 and later. Both IA-32 and x64 builds are available.

Internet Explorer 9 supports several CSS 3 properties, embedded ICC v2 or v4 color profiles support via Windows Color System, and has improved JavaScript performance. It is the last of the five major web browsers to implement support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). It also features hardware-accelerated graphics rendering using Direct2D, hardware-accelerated text rendering using DirectWrite, hardware-accelerated video rendering using Media Foundation, imaging support provided by Windows Imaging Component, and high fidelity printing powered by the XML Paper Specification (XPS) print pipeline. Internet Explorer 9 also supports the HTML5 video and audio tags and the Web Open Font Format.