Comments for Microsoft Announces IE9: Focus on Standards and Speed

Microsoft Announces IE9: Focus on Standards and Speed

2009-11-18T18:01:20Z

Microsoft just announced that it started work on Internet Explorer 9 three weeks ago. Steven Sinofsky, the president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, showed an early build of IE9 during his PDC keynote today. In this presentation, Sinofsky announced that Microsoft will focus on support for new standards like HTML5 and CSS3, as well as developing a faster JavaScript rendering engine. Sinofsky candidly acknowledged that IE8 did not do well on the Acid3 test, though this early build of IE9 only scored a few points higher than IE8 (24 vs. 32).

]]> According to Sinofsky, there is still a lot of internal discussion about how much of HTML5 to support in IE9. HTML5 is still in its draft stage. Sinofsky did not say when the company plans to release IE9.

JavaScript Performance

Today's presentation of IE9 was refreshing, as Sinofsky noted that IE8's JavaScript performance was clearly slower than that of its competitors. The current build of IE9, however, has already closed this gap significantly and the difference in performance compared to the latest builds of Chrome and Firefox were only minor. As Microsoft notes, given how fast modern JavaScript engines have become over the last year, improvements in the JavaScript engine don't influence real-world performance at this point and other browser sub-systems become the bottlenecks that impede improvements.

Hardware Acceleration and Font Smoothing

Microsoft also plans to make use of DirectX-based hardware accelerated graphics and text in IE9. In his demo, Sinofsky showed that Bing maps can render about 14 frames per second in IE8. With hardware acceleration in IE9 turned on, he got 60 frames per second. In addition, this technology will also increase font quality and readability in IE9.

Videos

Microsoft already published a number of videos with the engineers working on IE9 on Channel 9 (sorry, these are Silverlight only).

Comment from Adam Borzy on 2011-02-07

2011-02-08T03:14:26Z

Hopefully. IE can bring their success in in overruling the internet browser as they went down when goolge chrome was released. Hopefully, with this new features , they can gain their success.

by carport

Comment from Rajesh Solse on 2011-02-04

2011-02-04T12:53:16Z

IE8 is the first version of the browser to pass the Acid2 test. However, the browser scores only 20/100 on the Acid3 Test..
http://www.tec-idiomes.com

Comment from real miners on 2010-11-28

2010-11-28T18:19:44Z

I think we should all send MS an invoice for all the hours we spend making good code work on their crap browsers.

Comment from شات مصر on 2010-09-14

2010-09-14T07:21:03Z

don't have the time to develop my own suitegave us a $100K check - we realized that it would be used towards building stuff -
nice The funy thing about the location problem is that it was solved quite a few | دردشة | years ago by the API دردشة مصر. But, since they're not so cutting edge, and managed by an old school mentality, people either forgot about them or never knew about them. It's sad | شات | really, because their API for venues is quite comprehensive and has been around for friends and family money a large part of They moved very far in

Comment from ดูหนังออนไลน์ on 2010-09-07

2010-09-08T03:56:46Z

Additionally, they did embrace standards. They moved very far in their CSS 2.1 support. Not as far on ACID3 as some would like, but they certainly made great strides on standards. I myself am not a fan of ACID3, but I don't have the time to develop my own suite, so I guess it'll have to do.

Comment from anthonyx26.myid.net on 2010-04-05

2010-04-05T23:11:07Z

I've generally been a big fan of MS products, but I have to say I'm really disappointed in this interview. I just wished the interviewer would just shut up and let the developers actually talk. The interview seems to merely be pushing a stupid corporate agenda.

I'd bet if the engineers were actually free to talk they'd probably say "You know what, this Acid3 test, isn't perfect, but we recognize its importance to the web community and consequently our customers. We're working towards making IE9 capable of passing that test along with meeting our other performance (fast javascript) and feature goals (directx browser access)".

If MS were serious about scaring FF, Opera and Chrome, this is the only statement they'd need to make in the interview.

- anthonyx26

Comment from devsmt on 2010-03-18

2010-03-18T12:59:54Z

a step in the good direction, finally.
we do realy need tests and benchmarks based on pure standards.
stop throwing non standard waste of cpu cicles stuff in the browser that nobody will use, if not standard, people will not use it.
do you understand that?
canvas, movie and audio are also extremely desiderable, so that we can throw away flash, too.

Comment from kaja on 2010-02-26

2010-02-26T12:55:40Z

@jube2: u realy should upgrade to IE8...

Comment from moderndesign on 2010-02-03

2010-02-04T06:40:08Z

are u kiddin me wblg 319?

that's a frikin blogspot... NOT a trustable source of information!!!

Comment from Yuriy Mizyuk on 2010-01-22

2010-01-22T10:56:14Z

I heard that Internet Explorer 9, currently in development, has complete or nearly complete support for all CSS 3 selectors, border-radius CSS 3 property, faster JavaScript, and hardware accelerated rendering using Direct2D and DirectWrite. Microsoft has continued to downplay the importance of passing the Acid3 test.

Comment from jube2 on 2010-01-02

2010-01-02T11:36:47Z

I still use IE6 in my computer, but right now, IE9 is coming soon. hahahaha LOL

Comment from dibs on 2009-12-20

2009-12-20T21:09:23Z

MS need to wake up from their dream of what a browser should be capable of and just make it work like all the other leading browsers.

Then people will be able to advance web technology without the need to carry their little crippled cousin (IE8 and his brother IE7 and 6) to the party.

I think we should all send MS an invoice for all the hours we spend making good code work on their crap browsers.

Give me all those hours/days of my life back MS!

Comment from Thiago A. V. Menezes on 2009-12-19

2009-12-19T15:24:21Z

Yeah, I wonder about the Canvas tag too. And HTML5.

Comment from Erie Limo on 2009-12-10

2009-12-11T03:41:18Z

I highly doubt that IE9 will be worth it. It is insane that Microsoft can spend millions promoting Bing but can't come up with a browser that can realistically compete.

Comment from murven on 2009-11-23

2009-11-23T23:20:40Z

@Todd: 100Mb!?!? what are you talking about? SL is 5MB for Windows and 9Mb for Mac. Check it out:
http://silverlight.net/getstarted/

@shamunda: What libraries are you talking about? SL is a stand alone product and it does not require the .NET Framework to be installed.

Comment from Silver Dark on 2009-11-20

2009-11-20T10:14:27Z

LOL, Silverlight required to see the videos? Put them on youtube!

Comment from Nandan on 2009-11-19

2009-11-19T18:04:43Z

are u kiddin me wblg 319?

that's a frikin blogspot... NOT a trustable source of information!!!

Comment from wblg 319 on 2009-11-19

2009-11-19T16:59:18Z

IE9 cannot help, Firefox will overtake Internet Explorer in 2010 .. http://tinyurl.com/yapbtvy

Comment from shamunda on 2009-11-19

2009-11-19T14:50:10Z

Maybe you need to use an antivirus scanner for your downloads, or simply pay attention. Silvlight is at best 3-6megs on any current Windows OS and .9megs on linux (moonlight).

Note I said current because you'll already have the .net libraries need for silverlight to begin with.

Try again.

Comment from Justin on 2009-11-19

2009-11-19T13:08:03Z

@Jeff: See also time between release of Windows Vista and Windows 7. Microsoft doesn't take time to "fix" anything. Find an exploit? Report it to them. See how many Tuesdays it takes before they finally relase Windows 8.

Comment from Vinoth on 2009-11-18

2009-11-19T04:04:04Z

me too...
expecting advance from IE8

Comment from Ramesh on 2009-11-18

2009-11-19T03:39:22Z

Looking for IE9..

Comment from ed on 2009-11-18

2009-11-19T01:31:56Z

Calling PC guy, more work for you.

Comment from Ken Jackson on 2009-11-18

2009-11-19T00:31:32Z

I find it hard to believe that MS ever said they were going to use WebKit. I've heard them say they'd look into it, but I'm sure they look into a lot of things.

Comment from Jeff Bernheisel on 2009-11-18

2009-11-18T23:46:34Z

Ahh great, just what the world needs...

We're still having issues with the previous versions. Why can't they just fix what's already out there?

Comment from Ray Scott on 2009-11-18

2009-11-18T23:45:46Z

Heard it all before. They said IE8 was going to be using WebKit underneath and finally embrace standards. That didn't happen.

Comment from Richard Cunningham on 2009-11-18

2009-11-18T21:31:57Z

I wonder if they will finally start supporting SVG in this one and I hope they support the HTML5 video tag too.

Comment from Todd on 2009-11-18

2009-11-18T21:07:44Z

"...sorry, these are Silverlight only."

Requirement to install 100 MB of Silverlight is proof IE9 doomed to just repeat all the same mistakes that 8 made.

Also proof Microsoft corporate culture has not change one bit ( never will ).

Comment from Bastien on 2009-11-18

2009-11-18T20:26:09Z

Wonder if IE9 will support the canvas tag? Or will that dig into the massive base of silverlight users?