IE 9

bigdogchris

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javascript performance looked good as well, within 10% of firefox 3.6, and they've only been working on it for 3 weeks. Personally I can't wait, I'll be downloading on day 1.
 
IE9 will be interesting to watch develop but they need to keep in mind that catching up to the current browsers won't really be enough. They need to be able to keep up with whatever, Mozilla, Google and Opera have out there.

Saying they're within 10% of Firefox 3.6 beta isn't saying much. It means they're still behind and 3.6 will only get faster.

MS really needs to step it up with IE9. I hope they do another broad beta like they did with IE8 to let people hammer the shit out of it and actually use the feedback to correct the problems and get their web standards support under control.
 
really, Microsoft is showing their hand here. So, they're offloading javascript rendering and they're moving 2D component rendering to DirectX. There is absolutely _nothing_ about that which Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Opera can't do. The other browsers could easily be modified to do exactly the same thing and could probably get the features out faster than IE9.
 
Firefox/Safari/Opera still haven't adopted Sandboxing like IE's been doing since IE7, so presuming they'll implement any feature in IE isn't exactly a correct sentiment. But we'll see.
 
I think Vista for sure, but XP is TBD. But almost certainly it will work in XP but without the graphics acceleration.
 
I'd be very surprised if they didn't release it for Vista.

I wouldn't be (though they may release a similar version without the features that can't be used on Vista). If I remember correctly, IE9 will use Direct2D to render text, and that's only available on Windows 7.
 
If I remember correctly, IE9 will use Direct2D to render text, and that's only available on Windows 7.
The newer members of Direct X (Direct3D 11, Direct2D, DirectWrite, WARP10) were made available for Windows Vista as part of the October 2009 platform update [wiki].

Saying they're within 10% of Firefox 3.6 beta isn't saying much. It means they're still behind and 3.6 will only get faster.
IE9 is only a month into development, it will likely be faster by the time it is finalized and released.
 
IE9 is only a month into development, it will likely be faster by the time it is finalized and released.

Which will be when? Late 2010? 2011? By which time we'll have FF 4.xx and that will be running circles around it.

Seriously, I like IE8, but the IE development is a huge joke.

Rounded corners? About time.
32/100 on the Acid3 test? Mozilla Firebird scored 34/100 in 2005. FF 3.5 scores 93/100, chrome gets 100/100.

As many of the commenters and a few articles on the web have pointed out, they should just adopt the open-source Webkit rendering engine and call it good. They could focus on other things than trying to get rounded corners so late in the game.
 
Which will be when? Late 2010? 2011? By which time we'll have FF 4.xx and that will be running circles around it.

Seriously, I like IE8, but the IE development is a huge joke.

Rounded corners? About time.
32/100 on the Acid3 test? Mozilla Firebird scored 34/100 in 2005. FF 3.5 scores 93/100, chrome gets 100/100.

As many of the commenters and a few articles on the web have pointed out, they should just adopt the open-source Webkit rendering engine and call it good. They could focus on other things than trying to get rounded corners so late in the game.

The problem is they can't just adopt Webkit. Enterprise companies and government agencies have built their own software or use software that was built around Trident (good or bad is up for debate). The USPS still uses IE6 because of in house software that is incompatible with anything else. USPS isn't in a hurry to take the money (especially right now) and update the software for later versions of IE or any other web browser for that matter.

At my current job (another one government based) we are stuck with IE7 because of an add-on for a 3rd party piece of software we use. The add-on is incompatible with IE8 (it makes it hang). The 3rd party is not interested in fixing the add-on either. So our only option is to put a bid out to no less then 3 other vendors and replace the ENTIRE software package. Not a cheap or quick process and we won't even talk about the problem with training everybody again. This same add-on also potentially stops us from moving to Windows 7.

Honestly the better bet for MS would be drop the number in the name and just call it Internet Explorer. Just build on the current one and update it. The current interface isn't bad. They should just spend 80-90% of their resources for the time being bring IE up to par with standards like Acid3, CSS3 and HTML5. Spend the rest of the resources on speeding it up and other advancements.
 
Myself, I'll look forward to it. I may be in the minority here, but I don't like IE8 in the least and would like to retrograde to IE7. I have lost speed and experienced crashes that I never had in IE7.....so bring on IE9 and hope for the best.
 
The problem is they can't just adopt Webkit.

Actually, MS could do whatever they want. Just make a standalone enthusiast version that doesn't interfere with the OS-embedded version of IE.

That way, the enthusiast version can leave behind all the baggage and companies can continue using the OS-embedded IE like they want. That way, they're not forced to spend big $$$ to upgrade all their apps and they won't be able to ruin things for everyone else.
 
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Little IE8 bashing here. It's a very good browser, sorry.
I still prefer it over any of the others. It's there, has the features I ant...and just works for me. All the anti-MS, IE sucks rhetoric is old and stale. Any decent, open-minded review puts it on par with the others....so to me, it is now simply about personal preference.
 
I still prefer it over any of the others. It's there, has the features I ant...and just works for me. All the anti-MS, IE sucks rhetoric is old and stale. Any decent, open-minded review puts it on par with the others....so to me, it is now simply about personal preference.

I like IE8, too, actually. It's far better than IE6 or IE 7, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. On par with other browsers? Hardly.

Maybe you didn't even read the article. If you had, you would have seen MS's own graph of performance.

2009-11-26_125129.jpg


And that's just performance. Never mind add ons, developer tools, rendering, etc.

I'm not saying IE 8 sucks or trying to bash it, but "any decent, open-minded review" will plainly show that IE 8 is not really on par with other browsers.
 
I'm not saying IE 8 sucks or trying to bash it, but "any decent, open-minded review" will plainly show that IE 8 is not really on par with other browsers.
You must be incredibly observant because I don't notice a difference between milliseconds of rendering/loading.

Anyways, where I work, users are doing work on a java based web application. They're on IE7 and inside the java app, the windows flip/change and otherwise render completely instantaneous, no slowdown what so ever. Considering IE7 is 4x slower that basically everything else, its' hard to be impressed by these synthetic browser benchmarks as everyone else seems to be. It's almost as worthless as 3d mark scores.
 
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You must be incredibly observant because I don't notice a difference between milliseconds of rendering/loading.

You're right, I probably can't notice differences in milliseconds.

But since IE 8 is at 6 seconds and Firefox 3.5 is at 1 second... yes, I can probably tell the difference in several seconds.

That, coupled with the differences in standard support and support for other non-standards (rounded corners, etc)... yes, it's not really on par.

Anyways, where I work, users are doing work on a java based web application. They're on IE7 and inside the java app, the windows flip/change and otherwise render completely instantaneous, no slowdown what so ever. Considering IE7 is 4x slower that basically everything else, its' hard to be impressed by these synthetic browser benchmarks as everyone else seems to be. It's almost as worthless as 3d mark scores.

Point taken. Obviously, these aren't generalizations and don't hold true for every machine. Overall though, I do feel as though Firefox is faster than IE8 in almost every respect. Chrome is on par with Firefox... perhaps a bit faster. I've just started playing with it and am very impressed so far.
 
This argument is just like the console, OS, and hardware wars that happen here everyday. The truely amazing part regarding this argument/debate is that people will fight tooth and nail for browsers that they will in no way benefit from if they can convert someones opinion. Watching internet arguments where people get upset and start yelling over a product they dont sell or didn't help make always astounds me. It's a personal choice based on your opinion, try them all, decide, browse happily....
 
i hope the speed up IE9. I find IE8 WAY to slow, just opening new tabs is slow. I'll stick with Chrome until I can test 9. Chrome is just too fast to go back to IE
 
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