What some are calling “The assassination of Windows XP by the coward Internet Explorer” (ok, that was just me in reference to the great movie I recently watched!), Internet Explorer 9 will not work on Windows XP. I don’t really think that it’s going to matter too much. If people are still using Windows XP, they probably aren’t in the habit of upgrading much. Corporations that still use XP still haven’t upgraded from the old Internet Explorer 6. Some people that really want to use IE9 will be forced to upgrade to at least Windows Vista SP2.
Good news is that Firefox, Opera, Safari and others still work great with Windows XP. If you’re really not in the habit of upgrading, Netscape Navigator 3.11 can still be found for your 386SX running Windows 3.11. Ah, memories.
Although Microsoft excluded Windows XP from the list for the IE9 developer preview, it sidestepped the question about which versions of Windows the final browser would support. In an IE9 FAQ, for example, Microsoft responded, “It’s too early to talk about features of the Internet Explorer 9 Beta” to the query, “Will Internet Explorer 9 run on Windows XP?”