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Final Internet Explorer 9 preview released -- tons of fixes, speed-ups, and only 8 weeks until the beta
From the outset, the news is much the same as the previous release: More hardware acceleration! Faster! More standards compliant! But there's some juicy stuff under the hood, too -- read on, if you want technical details. If you want developer-level stuff, check the IE team's new blog post.
First, it looks like audio is now hardware accelerated. There's both a multi-track mixer/sampling demo, and some daft Hamster Dance Revolution game -- both show off strong audio processing abilities. I've never really thought of audio as being important for the Web platform, but I guess if we're going to see increasingly-complex in-the-browser games and applications, having hardware audio access is highly desirable.
Next, there's yet more support and hardware acceleration for SVG animation. Have a go with the dice rolling demo or the aforementioned music games -- pretty damn cool for in-the-browser animation, eh?
Finally, with JavaScript performance (they've moved Chakra inside the rendering engine, it seems) and standards compliance (Acid3 score of 95/100!) both getting very close to both Opera and Chrome, IE9 looks in fine shape to regain the trust of developers. With the platform now finished, it's now up to the IE team (and Microsoft!) to woo the big-money developers and content providers. There's a lot of new and exciting functionality in IE9, but it's going to take time and skill to utilize it successfully.
My only real concern is that the Internet Explorer team has put a lot of its eggs in the hardware accelerated basket. Firefox 4.0 will be hardware accelerated, and Opera has also confirmed that hardware acceleration is in the pipeline. It makes you wonder what Google has up its sleeve -- the Internet isn't just about JavaScript performance, and when you take that ace away from Chrome, it doesn't have much else. But when every browser has hardware acceleration, what can IE9 bring to the table?
Surely it then becomes a matter of end-user experience. If IE9 launches later this year, it might have the edge for a while, but the whole point of open standards like HTML, CSS, JS and SVG is that every browser can support them. I worry that the Internet Explorer team might produce a fantastic browser, but one that simply isn't as usable or functional as either Firefox or Opera. We shall see!
Comments
16
Subscribe to commentsAnthonyAug 4th 2010 4:05PM
Even if it's not as "nice" as Firefox, Chrome, or Opera, it's the default browser on Windows. If MS pushes this down through Windows Update, that's millions of PCs that will get updated from IE 7/8 to IE9. That's that many fewer IE-specific hacks that web developers have to deal with. It also means that high performance HTML, CSS, SVG, and JavaScript are the norm, not the exception.
Ziyad SaeedAug 4th 2010 5:07PM
Thats what MS did with IE7. it pushed it via windows update and now we don't have IE6 anymore everyone updated to IE7. Oh wait that didn't happen.
Lets try it again
MS pushed IE8 via windows update and now we don't have IE6/7 anymore and all is well. Oh wait that didn't happen either.
Third try is the charm with IE9.
master811Aug 5th 2010 6:27PM
You can blame legacy corporate Intranets and business applications for that. It's the only reason IE6 is still around.
monnayageSep 1st 2010 12:14AM
In tech support, you'd be surprised how many people I talked to that were still using IE6 because updates take too long to download (on dial-up, but it can be annoying on DSL). I've even talked to a few people on IE4 and 5.
ChrisSskAug 4th 2010 4:57PM
As the article says at the end the whole point of open standards is that every browser can support them, so what it says earlier that MSFT needs to woo developers and content providers and that it will take time and skill to utilize ie9's features doesn't make sense.
hectormaciasa79Aug 4th 2010 5:01PM
The mere fact that it respects standarts is a huge step. Its my own decision to try it or not, speaking as users, Im on ubuntu so its not really an option for me, I only care developers can face a better and simpler environment thats compatible with everybody.
Opera promised hardware acc would land before IE9 arrives, and right now thats the only thing and waiting for from them
Ziyad SaeedAug 4th 2010 5:06PM
Thats what MS did with IE7. it pushed it via windows update and now we don't have IE6 anymore everyone updated to IE7. Oh wait that didn't happen.
Lets try it again
MS pushed IE8 via windows update and now we don't have IE6/7 anymore and all is well. Oh wait that didn't happen either.
Third try is the charm with IE9.
alpesh hindochaAug 5th 2010 3:27AM
Absolutely right!
Plus it won't be available for XP so IE6,IE7 won't die just yet!
KualaBeeAug 4th 2010 7:03PM
Will firefox 4.0 also have html 5 and svg animation GPU accleration too? I bit a confused on IE 9 and Mozilla claims on what exactly they are using hardware acceleration for.
Sebastian AnthonyAug 4th 2010 7:15PM
I'm not sure! Firefox has D2D font rendering at least -- and HTML5 canvas acceleration. But I'm not sure where SVG fits into that.
I'll have to have a look-see.
KualaBeeAug 4th 2010 8:10PM
@ Anthony, yes please, if you can go further and conceivably make a post on exactly how is IE 9, and Firefox 4.0 hardware acceleration different. The general tech press has been throwing out IE 9 and Firefox 4.0 "hardware acceleration" interchangeably so it is confusing to say the least.
eturkAug 4th 2010 9:13PM
What does Chrome have? How about a really clean interface (that firefox 4 seems to be copying)? and 217/300 on http://www.html5test.com while IE9 is still just 97/300. So much for standards adoption. MS is always behind, just as any big slow corporation usually is.
EliasAug 5th 2010 12:10AM
-- and Chrome is just like a confused child -- still a lot of growing up to do. The new Firefox, still in beta, is a buggy browser .. If what the IE team has preached is going to be in the final product you can keep your 97/300 because that number means nothing.
GilbertoAug 6th 2010 10:44PM
Good point. This are the reasons I started using Chrome...Clean and very fast interface...Also the idea of each tab being a different process was genius. And yes, the compliance with html5 is a good thing to have. People that don't care about it, probably it's not a designer and don't know how hard it is to have a good design done for IE.
IE is still heavy and the interface is not clean. And it has a long history of not following standards.
MS has a lot to prove.
BucksterMcgeeAug 26th 2010 12:33AM
Where is the source for these numbers?
BucksterMcgeeAug 26th 2010 12:39AM
I think the article and a few other people miss understand what Microsoft is doing with IE9 and acceleration. It sounds like the article thinks that programmers/developers have to write new code to take care of Microsoft's new hardware acceleration.... that is simply not true. What Microsoft has done here affects all webpages automatically, no developers have to change a single line of code. So I'm not sure where the confusion is coming from for this.
Furthermore, Microsoft is actively trying to remove the differences between browser rendering. They believe that if you open a web page in IE or Chrome that they should look exactly the same, as the standards describe, which isn't true for all these browser that people tout as being standards compliant. In good faith of that, Microsoft is telling developers to stop designing with the IE code in mind, instead they should just develop as the standards say, and IE will just work and should look the same no matter the browser.
All of that sounds great to me.... so I don't know what the issue is with people and why they think Microsoft is doing the opposite of what is actually happening. /shrug