Dean Hachamovitch: Internet Explorer 9 Launch

DEAN HACHAMOVITCH: Good evening. I’m Dean Hachamovitch, and welcome to the show.

Right now, we are competing with all of South by Southwest for your attention, all the parties, all the amazing live music, so thank you for taking the time to be here with us tonight. Tonight, we’re announcing the global availability of Internet Explorer 9. At 11 p.m. Austin time, 9:00 p.m. Pacific, the final IE9 will be available for download in 39 languages. Now, that gives everyone here a Foursquare check-in in about half-a-tweet.

So, the real question is, what are the next 45 minutes about? We want to share the engineering back story, we want to share how and why we developed this version of Internet Explorer. We’re used to the Web getting better because of everything other than the PC. There was high speed, and there was Wi-Fi, and they feed the Web to the PC. Then there was the Web on the phone, and apps on the phone to make up for the Web that’s on the phone.

But the Web today just doesn’t get that much better on your modern PC than your older one, even when developers do a lot of work. So, why build IE9? To bring all the benefits of a modern PC with Windows to browsing the Web, to where it really matters, the activity that people do the most at their keyboard.

As you heard that developer say in the opening video, things are about to change. This evening is about three things. A new approach, we took a dramatically different tact starting with the community. That resulted in something amazing, artists, designers, developers, businesses reimagining the Web. As a result of their creativity and work, your experience on the Web improves significantly.

Our approach starts from our point of view in building a browser. That starts with Windows. Building a Web browser is important to Microsoft because Web browsing is the top activity that people do on their PC. We want browsing the Web to be a great experience, so that people keep choosing Windows to do it.

Consumers wish that their Web experiences could be as rich, as silky smooth as the applications they use. To do that, their websites are going to need to tap into the power of the underlying hardware the same way that applications do. The way sites are going to do that is through the browser. The way the browser is going to do that is through the operating system. So, the world just changed.

The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on. Other browsers dilute their engineering investments across a lot of different systems. Because IE focuses exclusively on one, IE can make the most of the Windows experience, and PC hardware. Just like graphics programs, like games have done for years. The sites continue to use Web standards the same way they do with other browsers. It’s just that in IE those standards take advantage of modern PC hardware running with Windows, and they run better.

This focus on building the best Web browsing experience on Windows guided what we’ve done in IE9. It’s why Microsoft builds a browser in the first place. So, building from that point of view, we took a new approach. It started with the community. We asked, how can we do better? How can the community have better visibility, and a more meaningful voice into the product?

Almost a year ago, we released the first platform preview of IE9. This was a radical departure. It wasn’t a beta. It was a bare browsing engine, no Back button, no address bar. Then we kept updating it. About every seven weeks, sometimes faster, and each new platform preview brought significant new functionality and performance. Each platform preview came with new test drives that showed new Web technologies in action.

The test drives show what the community can build when the Web and HTML5 take advantage of Windows and PC hardware.

During development, we acted on a lot of feedback. We considered over 20,000 pieces of feedback from the community. We worked very closely with standards bodies submitting thousands and thousands of test cases. We did this with a regular cadence of meaningful builds. Previous versions of IE were not this open, and not this transparent. This is also a very different approach from any other browser.

Some browsers offer a numbing sequence of nightly drops. And they may or may not work, and they may or may not reflect what the final product will do. IE offered previews that were worth the community’s time to comment on, and we engaged on every piece of feedback. The community had better visibility, and a meaningful voice. And that has made a huge difference to the final product that goes live tonight.

The result is that IE9 has had 40 million downloads before we even release the final product making it the fastest-growing IE beta ever. And, on Windows 7, IE9 already has over 2 percent of the market. When hundreds of partners work together across the industry, it looks like this.

So, that’s the approach, but what does it mean for the experience of the Web? Well, reimagining the Web and its experience was natural for artists, and designers, and developers. It built on the engagement we already had with the community. And tonight, you’ll see demos of how fast the Web is when it can take full advantage of the PC you run it on.

Our approach with IE9 was to tap into the PC’s power in a way that hadn’t been done before so sites can use the whole PC. Using PC hardware to help sites run faster means that the gap between Web experience and native app starts to disappear. Websites just have not had the performance, the responsiveness, or the richness that native applications have had.

Hardware accelerating the browser has unlocked a new Web, and a new level of creativity in the community. Developers tell us that their sites simply don’t feel like today’s Web but more like an app.

You’ll also see demos of a clean experience. From our point of view, the browser should be a stage. It should be a backdrop for the Web. Sites are the star of the show. The Web is about sites. The browser should be, too. We asked, how can IE make sites shine? How can IE keep sites at the center of the user’s experience?

Now, this informed everything we did, from the redesign of the Back button, and how it reflects the color of the site to how many pixels to use in the frame around sites. It drove us to make websites feel and act more like a native part of the experience, and that’s something that you’ll see in the demos.

Now, on the Web, every day consumers also face threats, like social engineering, malicious sites, phishing scams. IE9 offers industry-leading protection for the real world threats people face on the Web. The experts have been clear about the quality of work that we’ve done here. Privacy and online tracking are a concern for more people today than ever before. We’re working very closely with key groups, governments, privacy advocates, standards bodies, industry, to deliver the product that best helps consumers protect themselves. We will continue to lead here to keep you safe and private online with IE.

Now, as we did this, we also rebuilt IE9 from the ground up around modern Web standards like HTML5. We love HTML5 so much, we wanted it to actually work. So, in a sense, HTML5 is the secret sauce of the next Web. It enables a new level of interactivity and richness. And when it’s done right, developers can spend more of their time creating amazing experiences, and less time rewriting their sites.

You’ll see that in the demos tonight as well, and it’s the result of developer’s being able to use the same Web-standard markup across browsers. Now, these four factors, along with the community’s engagement had a strong impact on the experience of the Web.

And to show you the Web with IE9, please welcome Ari Bixhorn. (Applause.)

ARI BIXHORN: Thank you, Dean.

And thank you all again for coming out tonight. I also wanted to make a special shout out to folks joining us via the webcast. All right. So, IE9 is here. And what’s new and cool about the product? Well, Dean called out a couple of things that pop as soon as you start using IE9. One of them is the design of the browser. And we call the design of IE9 site-centric. The idea here is that we put all of the focus on the websites, and we let the browser fade into the background.

The other thing that pops with IE9 is the capabilities of the websites themselves. Sites in IE9 can simply do things that sites couldn’t do before. And we’ll see a few examples of that.

Let’s go ahead and dive in and look at the product, and we’ll start with the design of IE9. Looking up at the top of the screen here, the first thing that you’ll notice is that there’s not a lot of browser there. We’ve reduced the size, or the space taken up by the browser window itself. Now, why is that important? Well, because when you browse the Web, you’re browsing to see the sites, not the browser window. So, the less space taken up by the browser, the more of your sites you can uncover.

And with IE9, we provide websites with more space than any other browser on the market. You’ll also notice up in the top, the entire browser is set in the semitransparent glass. That’s another design aspect that says, focus on the website, not on the Web browser. This is a fundamentally different approach to designing a browser where all of the attention goes on the sites.

Now, how else do we put the focus on websites? We allow websites to look and feel more like native apps. What does that mean? Think about some of the things that you can do with native apps. If you take a native app like Outlook, for example, I can pin it to my taskbar and get one-click access to it. I can get notification so that if I get a new mail I see a little icon up here. In IE9 you can do these same things with websites.

Let’s take a look. Now, when I get to work every morning, what is the No. 1 most important thing that I do? Go to Facebook, that’s right. Good. Now, in the past to go to Facebook, what I would do is, I would launch my browser, I would type in “Facebook,” and I would navigate to the site. Because I’m an avid Facebook user, I want it always available to me, though. Let’s see how we do that in IE9. I’m just going to click on the Facebook tab, I’m going to drag it down to my taskbar, and with that Facebook is now a first class app on my Windows desktop.

Now, a few things just happened there. The first is what you see in the taskbar. I’ve got always-available access to Facebook. The second thing you’ll notice is up in the browser window. IE9 actually takes on the look and feel of Facebook, so we get the Facebook logo. We can even see a little bit of the color scheme of Facebook reflected in the buttons. And then the third thing that happens is, I get additional functionality that in the past was only reserved for native apps.

When I right-click on Facebook, I get a jump list, just like I would for a native app like Outlook. So, here I get one-click access to my news, my messages, my friends, et cetera. And we talked about notifications. We can now get notifications when we pin sites. So, let’s say I send, or someone, rather, sends me a message in Facebook, watch the Facebook icon in the taskbar.

I get a little notification icon, a little red star, letting me know that I’ve got a new message in Facebook. It’s a notification just like I would get in a native app. Now, pinned sites, as we see here, are actually all around us tonight. The partners who are here with us, the Favicons on the wall around us, and the folks here are joined by over a thousand other websites that leading up to launch tonight have already taken advantage of pinned site functionality. These sites are seeing an increase in their customer engagement of up to 50 percent. That’s huge. So, whether you’re a marketer, or a reporter, we all have pressure to get page views, and pinned sites is a great way to do that. So, it’s not only a great feature for end users, it’s also great for sites.

That’s a quick look at the design of IE9. It’s site-centric. We’ve put all of the focus on the websites, and we let the browser fade into the background. Now, what about the website experience itself? What I would like to do is show five websites that are pushing the limits of what’s possible on the Web today.

We’ll start with Foursquare. Now, I know everyone in the room is familiar with Foursquare. If anyone on the webcast is not familiar with Foursquare − dad − Foursquare is a really cool application that allows you to check into a venue. You can share your location with friends. You can earn virtual points, and virtual badges. You can also get discounts based on where you check in.

What we’re looking at here is Foursquare’s website, and Foursquare wanted to make the site more engaging. Check out what they did. This is Foursquare Playground. It is a beautiful 3D visualization built entirely in HTML5. And because IE9 is built from the ground up to support HTML5 the site looks beautiful inside of the browser. But, it’s not just about a beautiful experience. It’s also a really cool engaging experience.

As I zoom out here, we’ll notice that building right here is the W in Austin. The site actually knows where I am. That’s kind of cool. It’s something that we do on phones, all the time, right. I give an app permission to see my location. And then, based on that, I get more relevant information. We should expect the same thing form our websites and now we can. HTML5 supports a feature called geo-location, and Foursquare Playground is taking advantage of that.

Now, you’ll notice that different buildings have a different look and feel based on the type of venue that it is. So, the hotel looks different than a bar, looks different than an Office, and so on. You’ll also see on some of the buildings, they have a little bouncing ball with a number on it. That indicates people who are currently checked into that venue. We’ll take a look at that in just a second.

Now, in this case I’m going to filter, say, I’m just looking for some grub, I’m going to filter on food, and I can see just the restaurants surrounding me. Let’s check out Austin Java over at City Hall, I will click on that and watch what happens when I click on it. I zoom in and we sort of crack open the building, and I can see people who are checked in here right now. It’s pretty cool.

Now, if I want to go to Austin Java, but I want to find out more about it before I go there, I can check on tips and feedback that people have on the venue. I can see who the mayor is, and if I want to go there I can click on a link and get a Bing map with directions to the place. It’s pretty cool. So, Foursquare Playground is a great example of a website, or the new types of websites that you can build entirely in HTML5, and that look beautiful in IE9.

Now, HTML5 provides sort of a foundation for a new class of websites, where do we go from there? Let’s talk a bit about performance, performance used to be about basically page load time. And honestly that’s kind of an old-school way to think about performance on the Web. Website performance today is about having a website that is as fast, and as responsive as any app running locally on my machine. Let’s look at five sites that are doing that, or actually, let’s skip over to KEXP, rather. KEXP is a great example of this.

Now, KEXP is a public radio station in Seattle. They specialize in alt, in indie, they play some hip hop, some rockabilly. They’ve always had a website that has had some cool functionality. I can make a DJ request. I can see the list of DJs. They’ve got a nice on-demand schedule. But, like Foursquare, KEXP wanted to make the site more engaging.

Check out what they did. This is KEXP Archive, and what you’re looking at here is a beautiful HTML5 visualization of the most frequently played albums on the radio station. I can hover over various DJs. And in this case I’ll click on DJ Rizz. When I click on a DJ we bring up the albums that that DJ has played most frequently. And then I can drill into the album to see how many times DJ Rizz has played each one of these songs. So, it’s some cool functionality.

Now, in addition to that, KEXP wanted to push the limits of what’s possible in terms of performance on this site. So, they embedded some cool little Easter eggs here. I can rotate the albums. I can make them grow and shrink. I can add some flashing effects. Let me show you a different view here where I sort by date. And you know what, why don’t we go ahead and throw a video into the background. I can resort and look at the performance on this. This is just a webpage. I can right-click on this. It’s just HTML5.

Now, what’s interesting about this is that to get this kind of performance, this kind of animation, the background video it actually requires heavy lifting on the part of the laptop, and yet it looks beautiful and smooth in IE9. The reason is because IE9 supports hardware acceleration, which Dean was talking about earlier.

What is hardware acceleration? I see a number of you in the audience today who have got laptops, and when you’re browsing the Web on your laptop chances are you’re only using about 10 percent of the computing power on that machine. Why is that the case? It’s because your laptop is only taking advantage of this. Your browser is only taking advantage of the CPU, or the central processing unit. Every laptop has one of these. It’s basically the brains of the computer that does all the instructions for apps like a browser and so on.

It turns out this only represents about 10 percent of the power in your machine. The other 90 percent is locked away in this, a GPU, or a graphics processing unit. GPU is a special type of microprocessor that specializes in high intensity graphics, complex algorithms and so on. In the past browsers haven’t taken advantage of this.

IE9 is the first browser to take full advantage of not only the CPU, but also the GPU. So, when we talk about hardware acceleration being supported in IE9, it’s saying that we’re taking advantage of the full power of your computer. Why is that important? It’s because it allows sites like KEXP to have much richer graphics, cooler animation, richer sound as we see here.

Now, by contrast, let’s look at the same site running on Firefox. And I will go over to this machine here, crack it open, and can you guess what kind of a machine this is? Let me just do the unveil here, subtle, right?

Over on my left on your right, you see Firefox 4 RC running on a Macbook Pro. It’s the same site. It’s the same HTML5, but the experience is dramatically different. If I click on Artist to sort, you’ll see it’s really choppy. You compare that to IE9 and so what you have over here on your left is IE9 looking and feeling just like an app. On the left, you’ve got Firefox running on a Macbook, and it’s reminding us that this is just a website.

The reason is that Firefox doesn’t fully support hardware acceleration and it creates a dramatic difference that you see here. Let’s look at another example. Let’s switch back over to the PC and let’s take a look at another example here.

Now, when we talk about pushing the limits of performance on the Web, any developer will tell you that games set the standard. If you can build a game and it looks good, you can build anything.

So, let’s take a look at an online game written in HTML5 that takes advantage of hardware acceleration. The game is called Kung Fu Master of the Web. And the goal of the game is to catch the eggs flying at me. I think that’s like the first egg I caught. Now, as I’m getting pelted with eggs, check out everything else that’s happening in the background, the leaves falling, the beautiful little glowing things rising up from the grass. There are even three layers of grass. All right. OK. And, again, this is taking advantage of hardware acceleration.

Thank you very much. (Laughter.)

OK. Let’s take a look at that same site running, again, on our Macbook, and this time we’re going to show it in Chrome. So, let me fire up Chrome here. So, Chrome running on the Macbook, and again, because Chrome isn’t fully hardware accelerated you see a pretty dramatic difference in the performance of the game. And I still can’t catch the eggs.

Now, as these are flying at me, let me just try and get this going side-by-side here. OK. You get the idea. Clearly Kung Fu is a minute to learn and a lifetime to master. All right. Let me go ahead and close these up and now we’ve got the PC on both screens and you see that there. So, again, another example of where running in IE9 the hardware-accelerated website felt more like a native app than a website.

Now, when we talk about fully hardware accelerated, it’s about more than just graphics. When we say full hardware acceleration, we’re talking about accelerating graphics, text, audio, and video. Let’s take a look at an example that’s heavy on audio and video. And this is an example, a little program that we pulled together with Mike Tompkins. And for those of you not familiar with Mike, Mike is an awesome a cappella singer, and he pulls together a sort of new style of a cappella songs in which he records with his voice the lead vocals, the backup vocals, and all of the instruments for a song, and then he combines them all together into a really cool video. These videos have gone viral on YouTube and they look a little something like this.

(Video segment.)

Now, we reached out to Mike and we asked him if he wanted to record his fan’s most requested song, which is Katy Perry’s Firework. And you can see he not only graciously agreed to record the song, but he also agreed to record it in a new, interactive, HTML5 format. Let’s take a look at that.

(Video playing in the background.)

And let’s go full screen with this one. All right. Now, this is a HTML5 format of Mike’s video. I can grab the Polaroids. I can drag them around. I can even drag the different aspects of the songs, from the photos, and as I hover over each channel it zooms in and out. I can also drag with the audio channels. So, for example, I can turn down the vocals to get sort of a karaoke version of the song. I can turn down each of the channels here. Actually, let’s turn them all up.

A couple of things to point out here. The first is that you’re looking at 16 different videos all playing at the same time. I’ll say it again, this is just a Web page. It’s really cool. If you think about the way that Mike interacts with his fans, it’s all on the Web. And so, this gives him a new, more interactive way to engage with his fans. It’s a great example of how HTML5 can allow you to take a cool video and make it into a rich interactive site.

For those of you with your own musical ambitions, we’ve actually got a do-it-yourself mixer. Hey, everyone, this is the audio mixer using my audio samples, you can create your own song, just like I did for Firework. You can add tracks, set what the sounds play, adjust the volume, all using the virtual audio mixer. And when you’re done, you can save it and share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Cool, right?

So, let me show you this do-it-yourself mixer. I’ll start off by playing, and what we have here is each of the individual audio channels that I can begin to add sounds to. As you can tell, I’ve had a lot of training in music here. When I’m done with these, I can go ahead and share it on Facebook, or share it on Twitter. Again, it’s another way of taking a cool concept and making it much more interactive.

We’ve been talking about how the Web is taking its next big step forward. At the same time, there are some really cool things that you can do on the Web today, particularly with plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. In a world of hardware acceleration, and HTML5, what happens to these plug-ins? The answer is that they get even better. In fact, let’s take a look at a site built in Flash that takes advantage of hardware acceleration. This is built on a pre-release version of Flash. It’s a 3D game called Zombie Tycoon.

Zombie Tycoon is a gorgeous game built in Flash that takes advantage of hardware acceleration. You can see the entire game is built in Flash. This is a pre-release version of Flash 11 that includes the Molehill 3D APIs. With Molehill, you can get beautiful full 3D rendering on a Web page.

And as I start the game, we can choose either mild, or the chunky version of the game, anyone? Chunky it is. All right, you called it. The game will load up, and as it loads up, check out the gorgeous 3D rendering in this scene. Now, the goal of the game is to take over an unsuspecting city with your army of zombies. Our first target is this espresso stand. And so I’m going to send my zombies in that direction. And as they’re attacking that, let me scroll around, and you can see all of this beautiful rendering here. Scroll around the espresso shop, you can zoom in on the zombies a little bit.

Now, I’ve zombified that building. I get some more zombies, and we’re going to go after our second target, this not-so-friendly looking machine gun over here. So, I’m going to send the poor zombies toward the machine gun. You guys asked for the chunky version, you got it. As the zombies are getting mowed down, we’ll scroll around to get a different view. Look at the amount of detail in this, the lighting, the shadows, the green zombie blood. And this is a beautiful example of true 3D rendering on a website. All right. Let’s wrap that up there before the zombies go and attack the school. Things get ugly there.

The key takeaway here is that this is yet another example of how the Web as we know it today is taking a huge step forward.

Now, at this point, I would like to ask Ze Frank to come up on stage. I know Ze needs no introduction particularly at South by Southwest. Ze is an online performance artist, he’s a humorist, a composer, a public speaker. He’s spoken at South by a bunch. In fact, I think he had like four panels earlier today. He’s spoken at the TED Conference. And we reached out to Ze to see what he was working on. As it turns out, he was working on a really cool project called Star.me. So, rather than me tell you about it, please join me in welcoming Ze Frank.

Ze. (Applause.)

ZE FRANK: Thank you.

Hi. Usually when somebody says no introductions are necessary, there is one necessary. So, very nice to meet all of you here. And is anybody sort of feeling bad for the zombies? I was like watching that, and I was completely sort of mortified by the cruel violence on the undead, which I don’t think Microsoft supports just on premise.

So, the first thing, what a wonderful group of demos, I mean, really exciting, awesome, really exciting to be part of the launch, and really scary to be part of a live demo. So, the first thing is this, Beauty of the Web, I love this phrase. I have been around for the last 10-11 years in this space working pretty actively, and this phrase literally is why I am still here, is that there’s an inherent joy and wonder particularly that happened in sort of the late ’90s, which was a long time ago, where there was this sense of discovery and play that just all of a sudden surfaced online, and it was just a huge part of my life. And I just remember going to these sites as they kind of got more and more robust and wondrous, and joyous, and just constantly sort of just excited to move forward.

And so I have been in this world of trying to create play spaces, and joyous experiences. So, today I’m going to show you Star.me, which is in beta right now. And I’ll just tell you, it’s in a closed beta, but if you would like to go into it, anyone who is online who would like to go into it, if you go to Star.me, on the bottom right hand corner there’s a South by Southwest box. If you type in “wepooprainbows” into that box, you’ll get an invite into the system. Also something that you probably don’t endorse explicitly, but “wepooprainbows.”

So, this is Star.me. And this is my particular page on Star.me. And the way to think about Star.me is it’s kind of like a social game meets a social network where you’re kind of in kindergarten, but have just had a lot of espresso. The point is very, very simple. The idea is that there is a wondrous, amazing feeling that comes with telling someone that they’re great. And there’s another great feeling that comes with being told that you’re great. And in kindergarten, we got lots of stars. And then something, I don’t even remember the day when that stopped happening, but in retrospect I’m kind of bummed about it. So, at Star.me, you have a whole series of stars that you kind of have to unlock in different kinds of ways, but it really encourages you to, for example, figure out who your “bromance” is, or who your “frienemy” is, or who deserves mom jeans, for example, which is this star, which unfortunately I have not unlocked as of yet, who your BFF is. So, you can import your Facebook and Twitter contacts, and figure out who in your life is somebody that you want to reward.

Now, the idea here is that this is virtual gift environment where you give stars to people that you care about, but there is a whole range of other kinds of collectible stars that start revealing themselves. But, more importantly, the virtual gift becomes a rich virtual gift, which is a platform for deeper experiences, and in HTML5 is an amazing opportunity for us to create stable cross-platform ways of experiencing more fun things.

Once that “wepooprainbows” let me say it again, “wepooprainbows” coupon runs out, another way that you can get into the site very easily from the outside is to just come in and play this throwing stars game. If you beat level 5, you’ll automatically get into the system, and this is a game that I’m pretty terrible at.

The other thing that we’re actually launching today is something that is actually at the core of this. And obviously these are very simple emotional gestures that we’re after. And these experiences are naturally simple in that spirit. But this is something called “Thank It Forward.” Very, very simple premise, I get a seed star. A number of other people are now going to slowly get surprise seed stars, depending on where they are in the game, and I’m encouraged to thank five people for something very specific.

So, I thanked five different people in my environment. My mom for creation, that was a gimme. My really good friend for loyalty, my friend for inspiration, beginnings, and each one of these people gets five more stars to thank it forward. And this actually grows into a giant chain that just keeps on going, and it’s actually a competition to see. And I’m ahead. I’m in first place.

So, for me, HTML5, bringing these kinds of experiences back into the browser as a sort of natural place for wondrous, joyous experiences to start popping up again is awesome. And I think IE9 is a commitment to bringing that kind of joy and wonder into the browser and kind of back into the web. And I think that’s really worth celebrating. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

DEAN HACHAMOVITCH: So, what did you just see?

(Audience response.)

OK. For the studio audience who heard that, it’s great. For the folks at home, it was about the rainbows, again, just, you’ll figure it out, really.

So, what did you just see other than the rainbows and all that stuff. OK. So, you saw the Web in a browser that puts sites at the center of your experience. And delivers the Web with hardware-accelerated speed. It makes a more beautiful Web. It makes a more joyous Web. It makes a more star-full Web, as well. It makes a much more beautiful Web. And that’s the direct result of the engineering work to make IE9 fast, clean, trusted, and interoperable.

Now, earlier, we described IE9 as the backdrop for the Web. It’s the stage. It’s not the play. And what matters is the Web. And that’s why we’re celebrating with the release of IE9. We’re celebrating the Web. We’ve worked with many amazing designers, and technology companies during the development process of IE9. And some of them are here tonight in the room. If you turn around you can see a bunch of them by these demo stations.

I recommend talking with them one-on-one. It’s better than any big screen demo. It’s your opportunity to see and hear, first hand, how they’re taking advantage of IE9 in Windows. And how they are creating a more beautiful Web.

Over 250 of the Web’s top sites from around the world are doing the same thing. They’re making the Web better for their visitors through IE9 and Windows. And collectively, they’re reaching over 1 billion active Internet users.

Now, these include the biggest social and information networking sites, like Foursquare, Twitter, WordPress, and Facebook, commerce sites like Groupon and Amazon and eBay. Top video and radio sites like Hulu, Break.com, Daily Motion, Slacker, and of course Pandora. All these partners are using IE9 to deliver a more beautiful Web starting today.

Now, with that, let’s celebrate all the artists, all the designers, all the developers, and all the partners. In their honor we’ve set up a party next door. It’s at Austin City Limits Live, and you’re all invited.

On behalf of everyone who has worked on the product, thank you for your time. Special thanks go to all the partners who are here with us today. Please, please ask them about their sites, and about IE9. We also have several members of the IE team in the room to answer any questions you have. And thanks, again, and see you at the party.

(Applause.)

END

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