Net Applications released their usage share numbers for June on Thursday and Internet Explorer has gained 0.57% share worldwide.
Continuing the trend from May, when IE gained usage share in the United States, the share worldwide has also increased in June. In a blog posting on Thursday, Ryan Gavin, Senior Director of Internet Explorer Business and Marketing, said the share increase was encouraging. "Usage share is simply one of several ways we evaluate our progress with IE. We certainly don’t judge our business on just two months of data but the direction here is encouraging."
In July 2009, Microsoft proposed a ballot screen to allow users to pick their default browser in Windows XP, Vista and 7. The European Commission accepted Microsoft"s plans in December 2009 after the software giant agreed to randomize the ballot screen due to several complaints from rival software companies. The browser ballot screen eventually rolled out in March across Europe. Early indications showed that Internet Explorer 8 was losing market share initially. June"s Net App share results show that IE usage share gained .88% in Europe this month.
Microsoft is currently developing its next update to Internet Explorer, version 9. Early platform preview releases have been downloaded more than 2 million times by developers. Microsoft originally unveiled Internet Explorer 9 at PDC 2009. IE 9 will take advantage of the power of the GPU for all page rendering and developers can exploit this using CSS, DHTML and javascript. A new JS engine (codenamed Chakra) will also be built into Internet Explorer 9 with greater interoperability and standards support all round. Features such as rounded corner CSS support will be built in.
Microsoft is also planning broader support for HTML5 in Internet Explorer 9 through its new script engine. Microsoft recently performed W3C Web Standards tests on IE9, including HTML5, SVG 1.1 2nd edition, CSS3 media queries, CSS3 borders & backgrounds, CSS3 selectors, DOM level 3 core, DOM level 3 events and DOM level 2 style. Microsoft, with the help of W3C, performed a total of 192 tests on a variety of browsers. Internet Explorer 9 scored 100% in all eight tests, while every other browser, except Firefox in DOM level 2 style tests, didn"t score perfect in any of the test categories.
Microsoft originally began scouting for Internet Explorer 9 beta testers in March. Neowin understands that Microsoft will introduce a beta of Internet Explorer 9 in August.
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