7 ms·

I honestly can't see the reasoning behind this.

by antinitro 15y ago

RyanMcGreal 15y ago
They want people to buy a newer version of Windows.
- lallysingh 15y ago
  And more subtly, the "support windows, support office" mentality that forces each team to link arm-in-arm with other team. Everyone slow is sped up, everyone fast is slowed down. Btw, running that forward, everyone fast learns to slow down, and the slow ones aren't pulled ahead as much.
- jjcm 15y ago
  Or more accurately, it's not financially viable for a company to support a 10 year old OS.
  - RyanMcGreal 15y ago
    And yet Firefox and Chrome have no problem releasing modern browsers that work on XP.
dangrossman 15y ago
IE9 implements too much of its modern HTML5 and security features using Windows 7. DirectX 10, which it uses for hardware accelerated graphics, text and video does not run on XP. XP is eons behind the times in security features. It's not just a marketing decision, at some point if they wanted to do these things they had to say "this version of IE will not run on our 10 year old OS."
- msujaws 15y ago
  Hmmmm.... I wonder how other browser vendors are able to pull it off then? This answer doesn't seem to carry much weight if Firefox and Chrome can do these things and still remain secure.
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    They use OpenGL instead of DirectX for hardware acceleration. Microsoft's obviously not going to do that; using DX plays to their strengths in every possible way, from what their developers and toolchain is already optimized for, to what's already rendering the entire desktop in WinVista/Win7... so it could even mean IE10 on Win8 tablets will be better on battery life than FF/Chrome. I'm not an expert on this, but DX is likely the objectively better choice for hardware acceleration on Windows -- the reason FF/Chrome use OpenGL is because they have to support other platforms IE doesn't, and doing everything twice in OpenGL/DirectX to get the best result on Windows while still supporting Mac/Linux has obvious downsides.
  - superuser2 15y ago
    The latest version of Firefox does not run on PowerPC (my parents are both still on PowerPC Macs). Mozilla has no financial interest in people buying new Macs.

I honestly can't see the reasoning behind this.

RyanMcGreal 15y ago

They want people to buy a newer version of Windows.

lallysingh 15y ago
And more subtly, the "support windows, support office" mentality that forces each team to link arm-in-arm with other team. Everyone slow is sped up, everyone fast is slowed down. Btw, running that forward, everyone fast learns to slow down, and the slow ones aren't pulled ahead as much.
jjcm 15y ago
Or more accurately, it's not financially viable for a company to support a 10 year old OS.
- RyanMcGreal 15y ago
  And yet Firefox and Chrome have no problem releasing modern browsers that work on XP.

dangrossman 15y ago

IE9 implements too much of its modern HTML5 and security features using Windows 7. DirectX 10, which it uses for hardware accelerated graphics, text and video does not run on XP. XP is eons behind the times in security features. It's not just a marketing decision, at some point if they wanted to do these things they had to say "this version of IE will not run on our 10 year old OS."

msujaws 15y ago
Hmmmm.... I wonder how other browser vendors are able to pull it off then? This answer doesn't seem to carry much weight if Firefox and Chrome can do these things and still remain secure.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  They use OpenGL instead of DirectX for hardware acceleration. Microsoft's obviously not going to do that; using DX plays to their strengths in every possible way, from what their developers and toolchain is already optimized for, to what's already rendering the entire desktop in WinVista/Win7... so it could even mean IE10 on Win8 tablets will be better on battery life than FF/Chrome. I'm not an expert on this, but DX is likely the objectively better choice for hardware acceleration on Windows -- the reason FF/Chrome use OpenGL is because they have to support other platforms IE doesn't, and doing everything twice in OpenGL/DirectX to get the best result on Windows while still supporting Mac/Linux has obvious downsides.
- superuser2 15y ago
  The latest version of Firefox does not run on PowerPC (my parents are both still on PowerPC Macs). Mozilla has no financial interest in people buying new Macs.