HTML5, Using the whole PC: Sixth IE9 Platform Preview Available for Developers
We’ve had 10 million downloads in the six weeks since we released the IE9 beta. That popularity reflects the significant improvements in browsing that IE9 brings to the web. Users can pin sites directly to the Windows task bar, and sites can program jump lists and offer notifications just as Windows applications do. The web standard markup (HTML, CSS, and script) in pages runs faster and smoother, taking advantage of modern PC hardware.
The popularity of the beta also reflects the early exposure to and extensive impact on IE9 that developers have had. Developers downloaded the first five Platform Previews over 2.5 million times. The sixth Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9, available now, reflects developer feedback and delivers better performance as well as more standards support, like CSS3’s 2D transforms:
In addition to several new test drive samples, you can find more examples from the broader community of what’s possible with a great HTML5 implementation at https://kexparchive.org/ and https://10k.aneventapart.com/. Each of these examples shows how the web becomes richer and more immersive with HTML5, and how tapping the power of the whole PC is increasingly important to deliver the performance consumers expect.
Testing Performance across Browsers
We think people should evaluate performance with real-world scenarios. Real-world scenarios involve using all the subsystems in the browser together rather than looking at single subsystems in isolation. For example, the IE Test Drive site offers samples that deliberately represent real-world site patterns rather than microbenchmark-style samples. The visualization of the real-world samples is often more fun than a graph, as in browser hunt and speed reading.
Engineers design microbenchmarks to isolate and exercise very narrow and specific aspects of a system. That’s the opposite of real-world websites that use the different subsystems together in order to deliver something useful or entertaining. Measuring the performance of a browser, subsystem by individual subsystem, is inherently flawed because it’s not how real sites work.
The issue isn’t a specific flaw in a particular benchmark, but that the results so often have little in common with the actual user experience of the larger system when browsing sites. Microbenchmarks of ray tracing or Fourier transforms matter a lot if the sites you rely on use them. A ten percent difference in one JavaScript benchmark often translates to no actual difference in real sites. All benchmarks have some variability in measurement. When benchmarks run other benchmarks in turn, the errors often add up instead of cancelling. This post offers a good survey of what several different microbenchmarks measure.
Side by side comparisons of different browsers running real-world samples show significant differences. The new SVG Helicopter test drive shows performance differences between browsers on sites that use SVG and script together with HTML5 audio. In Track splash, you can see the performance differences between browsers when HTML5 video interacts with canvas. This customer model also shows performance differences in SVG when you zoom in and out, a common activity in wading through data. Unfortunately, you can also see differences in how different browsers display the same SVG in the real world samples as well; as an industry we have more work to do so the same markup delivers the same results.
SVG Helicopter in IE9 preview 6, speed: 282 mph
SVG Helicopter in FireFox 4 beta 6, speed: 34 mph
The performance differences between browsers can be striking, and reflect how we’ve designed for end-to-end performance rather than relative performance of particular subsystems like JavaScript or DOM.
Platform Preview 6 continues improvements to individual sub-systems, like the JavaScript engine. One measure of JavaScript performance is the Webkit Sunspider microbenchmark. Here is a chart of the latest results:
The differences between browsers on this microbenchmark are converging within thousandths of seconds on tests that repeat operations many, many times to find any differences at all.
Testing ‘Same Markup’ across Browsers
We think people should evaluate web standards compliance through an industry standard test suite. On the web today, individuals have many choices of tests to assess and use as shorthand for standards support. Unfortunately, each test in its own way is incomplete and has inaccuracies.
We look to the standards body for a test suite to assess the quality and completeness of a browser’s standards support. The W3C’s open and consensus-based approach is the best way to bring the community of browser vendors and web developer and design professionals together in building a comprehensive and accurate test suite.
Today, you can see an early version of the W3C’s Official HTML5 Test Suite Conformance Results on their website. It’s a great example of open and consensus-driven collaboration at work. Anyone can submit tests. The tests are available for public comment. Browser vendors submit their test results for public review. Microsoft has submitted a total of 2853 tests to the W3C across HTML5, CSS3, DOM, SVG, and JavaScript (ECMAScript 5) to date. We’re engaged in the process, taking feedback, and reviewing the tests that others submit as well. We listened to feedback on our previously submitted test cases and updated 53 of them.
Test suites are a crucial complement to specifications. The benefits to consumers are clear looking at USB devices and wireless networking hardware, and the market’s higher expectations around interoperability from those products.
The goal of standards and interoperability is that the same HTML, script, and formatting markup work the same across different browsers. Eliminating the need for different code paths for different browsers benefits everyone, and creates more opportunity for developers to innovate. Developers face a hard challenge today: they need to work harder than they should, to write more and different HTML, script, and markup, just to get similar but not always the same results across different browsers. When developers spend less time re-writing their sites to work across browsers they have more time to create amazing experiences on the web.
In the short term, developers will likely focus on delivering HTML5-enabled sites that work well (as designed, and with good performance) across browsers. That’s a pattern we’ve started to see as sites enable HTML5 video support, and it makes sense. Tuning sites for specific performance characteristics of different browsers may, longer term, make sense for developers as well.
At the IE test drive site, you can try some other samples of same markup running across different browsers. For example, Flickr Postcards shows same markup for CSS3 2D transforms in action. Semantic Notepad shows the same markup for HTML5 semantic elements, and A New Day shows the same mark-up for CSS3 box shadow.
Our investments in standards and interoperability are all about enabling the same markup to just work across different browsers. With IE9, we’re doing for the rest of the web platform what we’ve done with CSS 2.1. Developers should expect more from across the industry on this front in order to make HTML5 applications easier to write.
A Word about IE6 (and Why to Avoid Browser Detection)
People on our team actively work closely with Microsoft customers to reduce IE6 usage, helping them to migrate their key sites so they can switch from IE6 to a browser with better performance, standards support, and safety.
Sites that code browser detection rather than feature detection are one of the hardest obstacles they face.
As an example, someone recently asked me about this page because the site told him that “You are using an out-of-date browser version. Please upgrade! Many features of our new site may not be supported in your browser.”
The page incorrectly detects IE6 by running a script from this file – prompting any IE user running a version other than IE7 or IE8 (“ltIE7 = (client.isIE && !client.isIE7 && !client.isIE8)”).
You can see similar patterns in many other pages around the web. For example, this page incorrectly initializes a canvas library for users of any IE version, rather than using IE9’s native canvas support.
Sites that use feature detection are better off. As browsers and standards change over time, these sites will continue to work, and as a community we avoid part of the “IE6 phenomenon” of sites hard-coded to browser specific behavior.
F12 Developer Tools and Formatting Minified Script
To make the F12 Developer Tools even more convenient, we’ve added a feature in Platform Preview 6. Many developers minify their JavaScript to save bandwidth and speed up their sites, but minified code is painful to read and debug. With IE9’s built-in JavaScript formatting, you can keep your code minified while still having easy-to-read code in the debugger:
Getting ready for the Release Candidate
With the sixth Platform Preview, developers, designers, and partners are in a great position to prepare their sites for the IE9 Release Candidate that will follow Platform Preview 6 and precede the final IE9 product.
- Deliver the best performance and best experience possible for visitors with IE9 . We recommend sending IE9 the same standards-based markup your site sends other browsers, and sending it in the default IE9 mode that offers the best performance. Use featuredetection , not browser detection, to handle any cross browser differences in behavior or feature support. This pattern will keep your site working even as browsers change. If your site relies on legacy IE behavior, place an X-UA-Compatible meta tag or header on your site so IE9 users have a good experience.
- Take advantage of HTML5, CSS3, SVG, Canvas, WOFF, DOM, ES5, navigation timing, the new F12 Developer Tools, and more… described here in the guide for developers. With IE9, the amazing experiences you write using web standard markup have an advantage, running hardware accelerated and using whole PC.
- Please continue to report issues on Connect if you’re giving IE9 the same code as you’re giving to other modern browsers and your site doesn’t look or work right. With IE9 Platform Preview 6, we’ve fixed over 80 community-reported issues involving common user scenarios, commonly used frameworks, JavaScript, DOM, and aspects of the platform. We’ve also added support for additional standards. We will fix even more between now and the IE9 Release Candidate, and want your feedback.
Platform Preview 6 is an important milestone on the way to the Release Candidate (RC). The IE9 platform is nearly complete. We appreciate your help delivering a richer and faster web that takes advantage of the new web standards the IE9 Release Candidate will support. We continue to welcome your feedback via Connect.
Thanks,
Dean Hachamovitch
Comments
Anonymous
October 28, 2010
It will be great to have highlight o padding and margins and cookie tab like in firebug.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
how do I detect CSS support? like border-radiusAnonymous
October 28, 2010
Yes, http://crashie8.com/ still crashes Platform Preview 6...Anonymous
October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
These Javascript benchmarks are sort of misleading. All the browsers exhibit some performance degradation the longer the page has been running and that doesn't really get measured. I noticed when you run Javascript benchmarks, the last test to run on the page is always slower than the first tests. Chrome has the least problems. Firefox is very bad. I don't know if it's because of memory fragmentation or the garbage collector or what.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Yep text-shadow is the biggie still missing. Excellent to have 2d Transforms. CSS3 gradients would definitely be appreciated tooAnonymous
October 28, 2010
text-shadow: +1 This is a major shortcoming in creating beautiful, customised web-art. Text-shadow would be an easy way to identify the webpage amongst all the others. If done tastefully, it can really enhance the visuals. If not..., well, I don't have to bring up the blink tag, now do I?Anonymous
October 28, 2010
It is very good! I hope we can use Internet Explorer 9 RTM in February.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
Nice work, but text-shadow support would be very appreciated. A lot of pages are using it today, and emulating it is horrendous.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Yeah, text-shadow, gradients and css transformations would be nice... but, even if they are included, people would still find more stuff thats missing from IE9. Mostly cause other browsers get minor updates, like, every two weeks, and have an efficient update system. With IE we still have half the userbase using IE7 or lower. Even if IE got frequent proper updates, it would need an effective autoupdate system for distribution. Windows Update just doesn't cut it, sadly - especially since IE updates require reboot. Anyway, regardless of all that, I think IE9 already supports enough things. It just has to squash remaining bugs, and support customization instead of the completely frozen UI that came with the beta. It's an unexpected but good thing that you guys keep releasing platform previews even next to the IE9 beta, because I just can't use that thing due to changes you put in the UI (Favorites button to the right, favorites list having too much margins, tabs not having their own bar, extensions and many other info not showing up on the status bar, inability to change the new security bars location, among others). I understand that you have to follow some UI guidelines, but can't you just make an option to move stuff around, should do user so desire?Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Congrats on the new preview. Just downloaded and playing with samples. CSS transforms look promising but still missing CSS transitions and VP8. Text shadow would be nice but not for 9. The black preview 6 homepage looks cool. The best Christmas present we could get from Microsoft is upgrading the bazillion IE users and companies to 9 on Christmas eve while they sleep. Please be Santa Claus this year.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
Please add CSS Transitions!!!Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Please make sure that IE's CSS filters work fine with newest CSS features you have added. For example, gradient added with filter and border-radius. If you can add text-shadow support that would be great.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
awesome , go go go IE9Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Dean, why are you giving Chrome the benefit of nightly build tests where they're faster than their last beta or final release but you're not doing the same for Firefox? Firefox nightly builds are ahead of all the other browsers on SunSpider and yet you chose to exclude that from your graph.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Typical MS FUD behaviour. Chrome 9.0 nightly builds crushes IE9 in performance, GPU hardware acceleration support and HTML5 support. build.chromium.org/.../chromium-rel-xpAnonymous
October 28, 2010
Please, add support for text-shadow. If I'm not mistaken it's part of CSS2(.1?) and all other browsers support it. It's super important, IMO, too. Also, consider smaller, every-six-months-or-so releases for IE, such as "9.1", "9.2" or "9.5" with new HTML5 features on each of them, or you guys are going to fall behind again.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
I am really impressed of the progress made with IE9 :-) I guess there is a small table layout bug in XHTML (application/xhtml+xml): alexandre.alapetite.fr/.../20100915-XHTML-tbody.html Keep on the good work, and I look forward to see more IE9 shares, and less IE6! Alexandre http://alexandre.alapetite.frAnonymous
October 28, 2010
+1 for text-shadow - sometimes it's useful. @Chrome: Do you have any evidence, or is it simply typical Google FUD behaviour?Anonymous
October 28, 2010
What's the status of WebSockets support in IE9? I've googled all over and can't find anything except a bunch of hackish ways to "almost" emulate them in IE. I develop realtime data systems, XMLHttpRequest is a poor choice for my application, and WebSockets answers a lot of the problems that I have with old style AJAX. If as a developer, my choice comes down to reliably delivering data, or supporting IE, I'm going to drop IE support in favor of platforms that can handle the data transport better. This is a big change of mentality at my company, up until recently, IE support was compulsory.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
"Formatting Minified Script" - thanks for that, really nice! :)Anonymous
October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
Are VPC images available? Last time I had to get an IE8/Vista VPC, update Vista to SP2, then install IE9. Too much work! I know VPC will muddle performance tests, but standards-compliance testing is much more important imho.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
@Christoph >> What test are you talking about when you say "[Chromium 9 is] about 60x faster than IE9" ? What do you want to test if you exclude calculating and rendering?Anonymous
October 28, 2010
We want web workers :)Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Will support for say, border-radius:45px (for all 4 corners) be added? Seems only IE9 and Opera don't support this simplified version!?Anonymous
October 28, 2010
I can pretty much see web workers being supported. Javascript is very limited because there is no multi-threading. HTML5 and CSS3 will only make the web prettier as is. There is really no power without web workers. I don't think depending on HW accelleration is a great idea since we don't know what HW the code will be running on. Of course it helps, but there is no guarantee on what the user experience will be across machines. This is probably the most significant feature that will move the web forward.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Why does highlighting in IE work differently than most other browsers, MS Office, and nearly all other programs? Single click should highlight normally, double click should lock it to full words, and triple click to paragraphs. IE will go exactly to where you bring your mouse, independent of double/triple clicks.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
Bug # 608965 still open, please don't overlook this When a document is using standards mode and it is either a frameset or contains a iframe element(s), the selected frame cannot be printed or previewed on its own. Only the whole document or all frames separately can be printed. If the document is in quirks -> IE 8 mode, the selected frame can be printed or previewed. www.meadroid.com/.../doctypeAnonymous
October 28, 2010
Please add Html5 Form Elements & ValidationAnonymous
October 28, 2010
Is there any hope of Microsoft adding CSS3 transitions and CSS3 text-shadow before the final release of IE9?Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Geeze I wish people would just shut up about text-shadow lol. HTML5 forms are lot cooler and probably a lot easier to add, I would rather see them in IE9 than text-shadow.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
+1 for CSS3 Text-Shadow, CSS3 Gradients and CSS3 Transitions. Those are the most missed features and even MS Connect is full of bug reports about them. Also, HTML5 form input elements support for input type and placeholder would be great (instead of waiting another 2-3 years for IE 10).Anonymous
October 28, 2010
I also think HTML5 form support would be of the greatest benefit, even if implemented with limited support such as only input @type and @placeholder etc. Obviously presentation items such as CSS text-shadow and transitions would also be nice. Anyway, good work guys. IE9 is a massive improvement over its predecessor.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
@mocax: the only way I was able to solve this is using http://www.modernizr.com, it will just add classes to your htm tag. then you can style #borderid {border-top-right-radius:9x} .no-borderradius #borderid {background-image: url() } But apart from this script I the only other option wich is no-javascript solution would be conditional comments :(Anonymous
October 28, 2010
I want CSS transition!Anonymous
October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
Hopefully the ugly, badly thought interface of IE9 will be reworked prior Gold. As it is now, IE9 is still the browser with the sluggish/weirdest interface. Btw, and please have the many hardware rendering glitches fixed!Anonymous
October 28, 2010
@ssl .myclass { border-radius: 45px; } should work and be applied to all 4 corners in IE9. If you've found a case where it does not, please file a Connect bug.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
This build is consistently crashing my Windows 7 and causing BSOD. I was even not able to use feedback feature in the product. I observed that the IE9 is crashing my display driver (ATI Raedon Mobility FireGL V5700) and causing a recovery situation and then leading to a BSOD everytime. Now I am back to IE8.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Well done IE team. text-shadow for me would be the next best thing to add. Thanks!Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Hi, after adding -ms-transform: rotate(-3deg); to a website ( www.trendwerk-fashion.de ) IE9 Preview 6 keeps on it :(Anonymous
October 28, 2010crashing on it *
Anonymous
October 28, 2010
This is great, but what about the font issue: connect.microsoft.com/.../font-rendering-is-worse-in-ie9-than-ie8 Isn’t that more important than adding more features? IE9 will be pretty useless if fonts in IE9 mode are not good looking.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
@ MS IE Team Does installing PP6 also update IE 9 Beta (probably not)? If no: can you update IE9 Beta by copying the relevant .dll files from the PP6 directory to the IE directory? HarryAnonymous
October 28, 2010
It's curious that a Chrome 8.0 Nightly release was included in the SunSpider benchmark but a Firefox 4 Nightly release wasn't. I decided it try it for myself. I compared IE 9.0 Platform Preview #6 against the Firefox 4 nightly from the 28th of October, 2010 on the SunSpider benchmark. I ran the benchmark in each browser three times consecutively on my old and slow Windows 7 system. Results: IE 9.0 Platform Preview #6
- 984.0ms
- 1101.1ms
- 991.7ms Average: 1025.6 Firefox 4 Nightly
- 648.3ms
- 577.2ms
- 736.1ms Average: 653.867 Firefox 4 Nightly seems to have IE 9.0 Platform Preview #6 rather comprehensively beaten.
Anonymous
October 28, 2010
I second the question about the fonts issue - connect.microsoft.com/.../font-rendering-is-worse-in-ie9-than-ie8 I not only develop for this browser but also use it for browsing (as strange as it may sound).Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Microsoft, please support webworkers and websockets.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
The WebSocket API is still stable specifications that determines the final specification of version now not so until the browser is using The WebSocket API may cause serious compatibility problems. I want adopt The WebSocket API from browser public version of the specification is stable.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Great work, looks good. Nice to see CSS3 2D transforms in there and some performance improvements. A comment above about 'any web developer who knows what they're doing hate IE' - not this time. I've just built a site using IE9 to test it in 9/8/7 (plus testing in other browsers obviously) - it was great.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
How about blurry text/font rendering issue (as above posters mentioned)? I never heard any news nor blog topics specifically talk about it. Isn't it a critical issue? Any words MS?Anonymous
October 28, 2010
Chrome is best browser,cross platform and cross platform GPU acceleration,I use Chrome only on both Linux and Windows.IE is out already !!!!!!Anonymous
October 28, 2010
IE can accelerate with GPU only in Win7,it is a joke and trash.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
When My helicopter get crash, the browser itself crush. Weird..Anonymous
October 28, 2010
The download link above is misleading, it points to the main beta download. Only the "Downloads" link on top leads to the real download page: ie.microsoft.com/.../Default.html And that one has no explanations whatsoever. If an unsuspecting user who wants the beta download doesn't click the big orange button but the Downloads link he gets to the wrong page and may unintentionally download the preview because it has a newer date.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
@IEtrash Actually IE9 is accelerated via GPU on both Vista and Win7.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
I tried installing. Never had a problem in the past but it wants to install KB2028551 on my W7 PC and it won't install since it is for x86 and I have x64 installation.Anonymous
October 28, 2010
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October 28, 2010
Wow. I really expected a CSS feature freeze once the first IE9 beta came out. I'm very surprised to see that we're still getting more stuff. For those asking for CSS3 gradients, can you please specify what you expect Microsoft to support exactly? The Gecko based gradients are wildly different from Webkit based gradients (with Gecko being far simpler and more useful if you ask me). While it'd be nice to have something, Microsoft is taking the stance that it wants the "same markup" in multiple browsers. With no consensus between browsers how do you expect Microsoft to take this?Anonymous
October 28, 2010
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October 29, 2010
Yay! Redirects are now cached: www.browserscope.org/.../testAnonymous
October 29, 2010
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October 29, 2010
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October 29, 2010
I wonder why nobody mentions the missing CSS border-image feature... would really help creating resizable UI elements with minimal HTML...Anonymous
October 29, 2010
Did anyone comment or address the link posted way above about IE 9 still crashing from http://crashie8.com/ ? Out of curiosity I click on the link to check it out, and it indeed did crash. I'm not so much worried about what others are saying about GPU acceleration, Benchmarks, compatibility, etc... However what I am concerned about (for me), is stability. People transitioned out of IE to other browsers because stability, and security, etc.. So if one of you boys can take a look at http://crashie8.com/ and figure out why IE 9 is crashing, perhaps you'll be ahead of the game in fixing that bug, and perhaps finding another bug, which won't crash IE 9 right after being announced of it's release. Just a thought.Anonymous
October 29, 2010
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October 29, 2010
@DJ - they are adding the spell checker right after they fix innerHTML, and HTML5 forms.Anonymous
October 29, 2010
A minify for Visual Studio would be helpful for VB.net code and some C# code.Anonymous
October 29, 2010
Well well... when Google's Chrome Frame was launching MSFT put their arms up complaining that it was less secure than IE itself. Those in the know, realized this was a twist on reality as there is now another level of abstraction for bugs to have to attempt to navigate. Running the tests at: www.browserscope.org/.../test show interesting results. In IE8 on XP: 5 Security Failures The same test in IE8 on XP (using Google Chrome Frame): only 2 Security Failures finally running the same test in Google Chrome itself in XP: 1 Security Failure Long story short - if you care about security you should use Google Chrome - but if you are stuck on IE8, you'll likely want to install Google Chrome Frame code.google.com/.../chromeframe (not just for the performance and speed improvements) but for the added security too. Interesting.Anonymous
October 29, 2010
Multi-column layout, transitions, and gradients would go a long way to increase the visual appeal and readability with minimal code. @IE Team Are you folks going to fix the totally borked GUI or leave it horribly mangled and totally not-customizable? Performance doesn't matter is the product can't adjust to the users, users should NEVER be forced to adjust to a product. @mocax CSS property detection... if (document.getElementById('body').style.opacity!=undefined) {alert('Browser supports opacity property.');} else {alert('Browser does not support standard opacity property, try testing for proprietary support.');}Anonymous
October 29, 2010
Are there any plans to support for CSS3 Animations and KeyFrames?Anonymous
October 29, 2010
@FUD vs reality read this www.infoworld.com/.../internet-explorer-deemed-least-vulnerable-browser-593 And Microsoft's statement was that chrome frame increased the attack surface, not that it was less secure as chrome was more secure than internet explorer when they issued that statement. Using chrome frame will not reduce internet explorers vulnerabilities, it will only add on chromes in addition to whatever flaw internet explorer already has.Anonymous
October 29, 2010
Good work Microsoft Don't forget to implement web sockets and web workers. All other browsers do!Anonymous
October 30, 2010
I like Internet Explorer 9 so succeed, but people who hate it can make people switch to Firefox or Google intentionally. How to Crash Any Version of Internet Explorer with Simple HTML www.howtogeek.com/.../how-to-crash-any-version-of-internet-explorer-with-simple-html and http://crashie8.com/Anonymous
October 30, 2010
FUD: BrowserScope doesn't show security failures, it shows security FEATURES, most of which are not used on the Internet as a whole. And it obviously isn't intended as a comprehensive test (browsers have more than a dozen features). DJ: Integrated anti-malware is called "SmartScreen" and it's the best available protection in the industry. Souders: IE9 Beta cached redirects too. Enrico Pallazo: Turn off Script debugging and you'll see IE9 crushes FF in script performance. But FF4b6 doesn't have their new script engine yet.Anonymous
October 30, 2010
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October 30, 2010
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October 30, 2010
@Literacy: Script debugging was off. Turning script debugging on makes IE 9.0 Platform Preview #6 about 17 times slower on SunSpider. Here are some other benchmark results from my system. Now using the Firefox 4 nightly from the 30th of October, 2010. V8 Benchmark version 6 (v8.googlecode.com/.../run.html). Higher is better: IE 9.0 Platform Preview #6 - Score: 523 Firefox 4 Nightly - Score: 1074 Kraken Benchmark (krakenbenchmark.mozilla.com/index.html). Lower is better: IE 9.0 Platform Preview #6 - Total: 64,467.0 milliseconds Firefox 4 Nightly - Total: 20,444.0 milliseconds So Firefox 4 is just over two times faster than IE 9.0 on the V8 benchmark and just over three times faster than IE 9.0 on the Kraken benchmark. The current Firefox 4 Nightly, therefore, beats IE 9.0 Platform Preview #6 in three separate JavaScript benchmarks. Conclusion: Firefox 4's JavaScript engine is much faster than IE 9.0's.Anonymous
October 30, 2010
JPEG XR SUPPORT!! NOTE : en.wikipedia.org/.../JPEG_XRAnonymous
October 30, 2010
do you want jpegxr support? ie.microsoft.com/.../ImageSupportAnonymous
October 30, 2010
@Enrico: Comparing a browser against Firefox using Kraken is like comparing a browser against Chrome in the V8 Benchmark: Pointless, and useless.Anonymous
October 30, 2010
Hi there, the new Platform Preview is great so far, however, there are still some issues that haven't been fixed and whose status on Connect wasn't updated since their inception. Could you please give information about the status of these issues?
- innerHTML now does work on table elements, however, the result is completely broken, see connect.microsoft.com/.../600942
- An accessibility issue where cookie detection makes browsing websites impossible, see connect.microsoft.com/.../599371 This issue makes your life a lot harder when you disable cookies by default.
- A regression from IE8: white-space can't be set on the html element. In earlier Previews this caused a crash, but in more recent Previews it simply doesn't work like in IE8 and other browsers, see connect.microsoft.com/.../575100
- A more simple issue where the letter "ß" doesn't correctly compute its letter-spacing when capitalized, see connect.microsoft.com/.../557435 This issue is very annoxing when working on german websites.
- Another regression, but from IE7: The actual state of checkboxes and radio buttons isn't visible in Print Preview, see connect.microsoft.com/.../576035 Except for the first issue (where the original reprot was closed as fixed), none of those issues has gotten an Connect Status update yet. BTW, 80 community-reported issues are great, but 800 would be better, I personally reported about ~180 issues. About 60 have been fixed, ~30 won't be fixed; the other half of the reports could be reproduced and have seen some work - Yay - but I think there still is some potential :)
Anonymous
October 31, 2010
Speaking of white-space bugs, this one is an extremely annoying one that didn't happen in IE8: connect.microsoft.com/.../610311Anonymous
October 31, 2010
@Aethec: The sourness of your grapes is maximum. The Kraken and V8 benchmarks are no more and no less valid than SunSpider. The latest Firefox 4 bests the latest IE 9.0 in all three benchmarks.Anonymous
October 31, 2010
Hope we'll be able to locate the Console/Watch/Locals etc. window underneath the code window :)Anonymous
October 31, 2010
Thanks for bringing the arewefastyet.com IE9 detection bug to my attention. It appears to be a problem in the flot graphing library. I'll fix make sure it gets fixed tonight.Anonymous
October 31, 2010
@Enrico: V8 is fine as long as you don't include Chrome in the tested browsers. But testing Firefox on Kraken is rather useless.Anonymous
November 01, 2010
How can I feature detect IE6? Both linked articles don't give an example.Anonymous
November 01, 2010
Will IE9 RTM support Geolocation? dev.w3.org/.../spec-source.html. Geolocation is currently supported in Firefox, Chrome, and Opera.Anonymous
November 01, 2010
Chrome 8.0.552.11 was the Dev release from October 21 to 26, not a nightly. googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/.../dev-channel-update_21.htmlAnonymous
November 01, 2010
@Max - The real question is will IE9 RTM support GeoLocation before HTML5.innerHTML?Anonymous
November 01, 2010
Geolocation is not very important for IE9 as it is not a mobile platform browser. It is not used on devices with a GPS.Anonymous
November 01, 2010
Excellent job IE team!! test.w3.org/.../report.htmAnonymous
November 01, 2010
@the_dees. Thank you very much for your submissions. I have asked the engineers to review these Active issues and update the status through Connect as appropriate.Anonymous
November 02, 2010
What is this? My long and detailed comment isn't shown or published, but my short one??? STRANGE!!Anonymous
November 02, 2010
Ok, long and detailed comments don't work on your blog, this is a bug! Neither with IE8 on WinXP SP3 nor on Firefox 3.6.12! -.-Anonymous
November 02, 2010
Maybe too much of links in one comment? What is the limit to external links in one comment??Anonymous
November 02, 2010
Hi there, sorry IE-Team guys, but what is this???! Sure it is nice to see another IE9 PP aka snapshot, but the RC1 is almost there?! Are you joking? You must be joking! IE9 is nearly complete??! You're wrong! This is just laughable! This is the wrong way! We need at least four more snapshots aka PP's, then an IE9 Beta 2 at MIX '11, then another five IE9 PP's, then an RC1 and then the final IE9 in 3 quarter '11. Where are the other modern web-features?
- HTML5 Web Workers: dev.w3.org/.../workers and http://www.w3.org/TR/workers/
- HTML5 Web Sockets: dev.w3.org/.../websockets and www.w3.org/.../websockets and protocol www.whatwg.org/.../web-socket-protocol
- HTML5 Forms: dev.w3.org/.../forms.html
Anonymous
November 02, 2010
Ah I see, now it works. It's very bad to see, that MSFT is incapable to thoroughly test this blog comment system on msdn..! If you know that too much links are not working, why you don't inform the poster/user about this problem? The status message "Comment posted" isn't helpful at all, if it in fact isn't posted or shown at all! The comment system have to show an error or advice to the poster/user, that there are too much links/URLs in the comment or such warning!Anonymous
November 02, 2010
Ok, here we go, now the second part of my comment:
- HTML5 Offline Web Applications: dev.w3.org/.../offline.html
- HTML5 Webstorage aka/with Session Storage and Local Storage: dev.w3.org/.../webstorage and www.w3.org/.../webstorage
- HTML5 IndexedDB: dvcs.w3.org/.../Overview.html and www.w3.org/.../IndexedDB
- MathML: http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML/ (W3C Recommendation since 1999 (Version 1), 2003 (Version 2 SE), current version 3.0!)
- APNG: wiki.mozilla.org/APNG_Specification
Anonymous
November 02, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 02, 2010
"Shall we wait another 2-3 YEARS after IE9 final is released, to get these great modern web features?!" On the other hand, if they implement everything you want in IE9, it'll be delayed by 2-3 years. How would that be better?Anonymous
November 02, 2010
@ iNsuRRecTiON A lot of those specs are actually draft versions that are far from ready yet. Several browser Implementations are experimental at best. And all other browser have yet to support all the stable candidate recomendation css3 specs.Anonymous
November 03, 2010
http://www.modernizr.com/ I would like to mention Modernizr as a top-notch feature detection library. Using this library will make sure that IE9 isn't unfairly targeted. Also, the new transform properties don't work as expected when using jQuery 1.4.3. $('#some-div').css('-ms-transform', 'rotate(30deg)'); // doesn't work $('#some-div').css('msTransform', 'rotate(30deg)'); // hooray!! It works.Anonymous
November 04, 2010
please add the "placeholder" tag for input fields. This is a lot of unnecessary work to do otherwise and many, many pages use something like that. Chrome can do that. IE beta can't.Anonymous
November 04, 2010
@Stifu: Nope, it would be only delayed, like I already said, until Fall 2011..! @hAl: Right, but it's better to implement HTML5 WebWorkers, WebSockets and Forms, as they are very important and until MIX 2011 they are more refined and very useful. I bet until Fall 2011 we will see good and stable implementations of WebWorkers, WebSockets and Forms in all major webbrowsers (Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Opera), but NOT IE, if they decides to an too fast half-baked release..! MathML and APNG are ready and stable. The CSS3 specs I mentioned would be the same as for the HTML5 ones.. regards, iNsuRRecTiONAnonymous
November 04, 2010
Appendix: So it's now official, if MSFT releases IE9 as final before the end of the year 2011 then it will be HTML5 feature incomplete and maybe even worse API incompatible..! And then how long we have to wait for fixes or a new version or refresh? 2-3 YEARS??! See details here: www.infoworld.com/.../w3c-hold-html5-in-websites-041 Interview with Philippe Le Hégaret from W3C. He says and assumes that the HTML5 spec will be around mid 2011 nearly feature complete. So will MSFT release the final version of IE9 in the first quartal 2011? Half-baked, yes, as I already said..!Anonymous
November 04, 2010
By the way: ie.microsoft.com/.../Default.html Typo: "We recomend" -> "We recommend"Anonymous
November 06, 2010
+1 text-shadowAnonymous
November 07, 2010
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