Microsoft's IE9 will not support XP

BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Microsoft has confirmed that Internet Explorer 9 will not support Windows XP.

Speaking at Microsoft's Mix conference in Las Vegas, IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch told reporters that IE9 will not play nicely with XP.

IE9 uses Direct2D (an API available only with Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008) to hardware-accelerate HTML5-based scrolling and 3D graphics, handing such processing to the machine's GPU.

Direct2D was introduced with Windows 7, and it was later rolled into Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2000 R2.

For Windows XP, the writing has long been on the wall. Microsoft said back in November, at its PDC conference in Los Angeles, that IE9 would make use of Direct2D. "Building a modern browser requires a modern operating system," said Hachamovitch.