Microsoft Announces IE9: Focus on Standards and Speed
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).
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Wonder if IE9 will support the canvas tag? Or will that dig into the massive base of silverlight users?
"...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 ).
I wonder if they will finally start supporting SVG in this one and I hope they support the HTML5 video tag too.
Heard it all before. They said IE8 was going to be using WebKit underneath and finally embrace standards. That didn't happen.
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?
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.
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.
Calling PC guy, more work for you.
Looking for IE9..
me too...
expecting advance from IE8
@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.
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.
IE9 cannot help, Firefox will overtake Internet Explorer in 2010 .. http://tinyurl.com/yapbtvy
are u kiddin me wblg 319?
that's a frikin blogspot... NOT a trustable source of information!!!
LOL, Silverlight required to see the videos? Put them on youtube!
@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.
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.
Yeah, I wonder about the Canvas tag too. And HTML5.
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!
I still use IE6 in my computer, but right now, IE9 is coming soon. hahahaha LOL
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.
are u kiddin me wblg 319?
that's a frikin blogspot... NOT a trustable source of information!!!