IE9 preview 3: better performance, HTML5 video and canvas, more awesome demos
That said, it's clear that Microsoft is serious about delivering a competitive browser. IE9 preview 3 has turned in better SunSpider and Acid3 results, and its hardware acceleration features really shine. The new release also features HTML5 audio and video support, as well as hardware acceleration for the canvas element. Support for Web fonts is now baked in as well.
Running the fledgling browser side-by-side with Google Chrome 6 I noticed very little difference on sites like Gmail, Facebook, and Google Reader... And good luck getting another browser to run Microsoft's standards-based demos as well as they run in IE9. They're pretty brutal without hardware acceleration (with the exception of Opera 10.60, which actually seems to perform better than Chrome and Firefox -- Sebastian has a video on the way). The SunSpider result has improved again, too, and is now roughly half what the first preview posted -- an impressive gain.
For full details about the new release, check out the official blog post from Microsoft.
Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsJarasMJun 23rd 2010 6:22PM
Eh, I wouldn't say "brutal". Opera 10.60 cracks those pretty well - the pictured asteroid belt demo hardly ever drops below 15 FPS (mostly keeping at 18 fps) on my laptop with a maxed number of satellites.
I don't know what's the big deal, I can run all those demos just fine for the most part.
SonnyjimbaJun 23rd 2010 6:23PM
Nice to see MS trying, this looks pretty good, but they need to remember about security too :) having a stable and secure IE would help alot in workplaces etc
skalpaJun 24th 2010 12:10PM
@sonnyjimba: Nowadays, one of the safest ways to browse the Web, is to use Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7.
Welcome to the 21st century...