Microsoft is expected to share details about Internet Explorer 9 at its upcoming MIX10 conference, and industry watchers say the forthcoming release could help the software giant put part of its embattled browser past behind it.Google Chrome chips away at Microsoft IE

"People love to hate Microsoft, and they are usually very techie types and early adopters that see flaws in engineering and strategy," says Sheri McLeish, an analyst covering information and knowledge management at Forrester Research. "Microsoft bundled IE with Windows, which added to its very long and dramatic history with the hubbub around Netscape, for example. But the browser market epitomizes the company's challenges as it looks to improve market share and faces a lot of dislike and distrust in terms of Microsoft's competitive nature."

Microsoft in the past years suffered several injuries during the browser battles, but the software giant could be looking to save face with IE 9. Industry watchers expect Microsoft to reveal details about IE 9 at its MIX10 design and developers conference in Las Vegas. The actual technology most likely won't be generally available for a year or more, McLeish says, but Microsoft could win over skeptics by including support for emerging standards such as HTML 5, while still providing customers their choice of browsers.

"Microsoft is urging customers to upgrade to IE 8 because the company recognizes it is important to have the latest browser, which was illustrated by the very public Chinese hacking of Google, using IE 6," McLeish says. "It has been well-circulated that Microsoft will be supporting http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/44350 ">HTML5, and it has been widely criticized for not supporting it to date, but it is not an official standard yet."

Yet competitor Google is pushing HTML5 as part of its Chrome browser, which makes Microsoft appear less "leading-edge" and behind in browser technology.

"Silverlight and Flash are still much more predominant," McLeish says. "From Microsoft's perspective, they are moving forward to appease critics, but that doesn't mean that HTML5 will be the new default approach."

Though specific numbers vary, several different sources report that Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has been losing market share for several years, mostly to Firefox but now also in smaller part to Google's Chrome.

Yeah, Internet Explorer is sort of dead...Google or Mozilla are the leaders in Browser Technology.

Opera FTW!!!!
I dont remember when was the last time I opened IE

Hmmmm... 250th post. 3 times as much and it will be fine then.