HTML5, Hardware Accelerated: First IE9 Platform Preview Available for Developers
When we started looking deeply at HTML5, we saw that it will enable a new class of applications. These applications will stress the browser runtime and underlying hardware in ways today’s websites don’t. We quickly realized that doing HTML5 right – our intent from the start – is more about designing our browser’s subsystems around what these new applications will need than it is about a particular set of features. From the beginning, we approached IE9 with the goal of enabling professional-grade, modern HTML5 support on top of modern hardware through Windows.
At the MIX conference today, we demonstrated how the standard web patterns that developers already know and use broadly run better by taking advantage of PC hardware through IE9 on Windows. This blog post provides an overview of what we showed today, across performance, standards, hardware-accelerated HTML5 graphics, and the availability of the IE9 Platform Preview for developers.
First, we showed IE9’s new script engine, internally known as “Chakra,” and the progress we’ve made on an industry benchmark for JavaScript performance. With the differences between script engines on benchmarks approaching the duration of an eye-blink, we described our approach for making real-world sites faster. Chakra compiles JavaScript in the background on a separate core of the CPU, parallel to IE.
We showed our progress in making the same standards-based HTML, script, and formatting markup work across different browsers. We shared the data and framework that informed our approach, and demonstrated better support for several standards: HTML5, DOM, and CSS3. We showed IE9’s latest Acid3 score (55); as we make progress on the industry goal of having the same markup that developers actually use working across browsers, our Acid3 score will continue to go up. As part of our commitment to the standards process, we submitted test cases to the standards bodies. We also made these tests available for everyone to try in any browser.
In several demonstrations, we showed the significant performance gains that graphically rich, interactive web pages enjoy when a browser takes full advantage of the PC’s hardware capabilities through the operating system. The same HTML, script, and CSS markup work across several different browsers; the pages just run significantly faster in IE9 because of hardware-accelerated graphics. IE9 is also the first browser to provide hardware-accelerated SVG support.
Finally, we announced the availability of the first IE Platform Preview for developers, and our commitment to update it approximately every eight weeks. We want the developer community to have an earlier hands-on experience with the progress we’re making on the IE platform. The Platform Preview, and the feedback loop it is part of, marks a major change from previous IE releases.
Performance
IE9 has a new JavaScript engine, “Chakra.” Here’s a chart of IE9’s performance on a particular industry benchmark for JavaScript performance, the Webkit Sunspider test:
You’ll notice that IE9 is faster at this benchmark than IE8 and several other browsers. It’s interesting to note that the difference between today’s IE9 preview and the browsers to its right in this graph. It takes about 70 seconds to identify a 300ms difference between browsers.
As we continue to make IE9’s script engine faster for real world sites, IE will continue to become faster at this particular benchmark as well. To date we’ve done very little specific tuning for Webkit Sunspider. As with most benchmarks, depending on your machine, the differences may vary.
The performance you experience browsing actual websites often has less to do with JavaScript than with other subsystems in the browser. For example, some sites spend more of their time in laying out the page or rendering it than running script. The first chart in this blog post from the Professional Developers Conference illustrates this with data. Today’s PCs have specialized hardware to accelerate graphics performance. IE9 uses that widely available hardware to speed up all text and graphics rendering on webpages and make webpages faster.
To improve JavaScript performance even more, Chakra does something quite different from other script engines today. It has a separate background thread for compiling JavaScript. Windows runs that thread in parallel on a separate core when one is available. Compiling in the background enables users to keep interacting with webpages while IE generates even faster code. By running separately in the background, this process can take advantage of today’s multi-core machines – so, users with a Core2Duo or QuadCore or i7 or Phenom II can apply that power to making webpages faster without any additional effort.
Developers get the performance benefits of modern PC hardware without having to change anything on their sites. Users simply wait less and interact more, like a native program. This design enables better performance for the web development patterns that occur on many real world sites. The key here is bringing the best technology available to most important language you use, JavaScript.
Standards
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.
Many standards are still emerging. They are in committee in draft form, or partially implemented, often in different ways, across different browsers. Developers face a hard challenge here: 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.
We want the same markup to just work across different browsers. In IE9, we’re doing for the rest of the platform what we did for CSS 2.1 in IE8. IE8 delivered a high-quality CSS 2.1 implementation, sticking to the standard, and looking to other implementations in places where the standard is ambiguous. Developers should expect more from across the industry on this front in order to make HTML5 applications easier for developers to write.
Our approach here starts with data. The DOM and JavaScript APIs that developers actually use on the web set the baseline for which standards to support in IE9. To get this data, we built a tool that examined the web API usage of 7000 top sites. Here’s a graph of the distribution – how many sites used each of the APIs. This is data we will blog about in great detail separately.
We set out to do every standard that showed up in the data. In IE9 you’ll also see support for several standards that don’t appear in the data – in order to complete scenarios that HTML5 applications will need.
The main technologies to call out here broadly are HTML5, CSS3, DOM, and SVG. The IE9 test drive site has more specifics and samples. At this time, we’re looking for developer feedback on our implementation of HTML5’s parsing rules, Selection APIs, XHTML support, and inline SVG. Within CSS3, we’re looking for developer feedback on IE9’s support for Selectors, Namespaces, Colors, Values, Backgrounds and Borders, and Fonts. Within DOM, we’re looking for developer feedback on IE9’s support for Core, Events, Style, and Range.
Some people use Acid3 as a shorthand for standards. Acid3 tests about 100 details of a dozen different technologies. Some are still in “under construction.” Some of the patterns, like SMIL animations, are inconsistent with other parts of HTML5, like CSS3 animations, and need to be reconciled. Here’s a screenshot of how today’s IE9 Platform Preview runs today’s Acid3 test:
As IE makes more progress on the industry goal of “same markup” for standards and parts of standards that developers actually use, the Acid3 score will continue to go up as a result. A key part of our approach to web standards is the development of an industry standard test suite. Today, Microsoft has submitted over 100 additional tests of HTML5, CSS3, DOM, and SVG to the W3C. You can try out some of the tests we’ve submitted to the W3C here.
Microsoft works with the standards organization as part of the standards process to create comprehensive tests. We submit our tests to the appropriate group, and work together with other browser vendors as part of that group to establish a fair, accurate, and comprehensive test suite. Today, there are still too many scenarios in which developers need to use different HTML, script and formatting markup and get different results. A comprehensive test suite from the standards body helps developers and the industry.
GPU-powered HTML5
HTML5 applications will need great script performance and consistent “same markup, same results” across browsers. Great HTML5 applications will build on that foundation and go further, providing game-like interactivity and movie-like graphical richness to the user experience.
Today’s standards-markup web pages and today’s browsers are limited in this regard because they can use only a fraction of what PC hardware and the operating system can do. HTML5 applications will demand more.
In anticipation of these applications, IE9 uses Windows’ modern graphics APIs and the PC’s hardware to accelerate all the graphics and text that the browser draws on the screen. A basic example involves a small, simple web page that animates images, having them follow the mouse pointer:
Notice that running the same HTML, script, and markup, IE9 provides more responsiveness and more frames per second. Many of today’s websites spend much of their time drawing objects to the screen, as described above in the performance section.
IE9 is the first browser to provide fully hardware-accelerated SVG support. The IE9 developer tools support SVG as well, and we are excited to see what developers build on top of modern hardware with a platform that has great performance and internal consistency. We will discuss SVG in depth in a future blog post.
IE Preview
Today we also announced the availability of the first IE9 Platform Preview for developers, and our commitment to update it approximately every eight weeks. The Platform Preview, and the feedback loop it is part of, marks a major change from previous IE releases.
With these Platform Preview builds, developers have earlier access to the progress we’re making on the IE platform. They have a better forum to share and discuss feedback, available directly from the Platform Preview. Combined with our engagement with standards bodies and the development of industry standard test suites, this open community discussion and earlier and more frequent builds reflect our commitment to the web.
As an example of additional standards support to come in an update to the Platform Preview, we showed HTML5 video support at the MIX conference, as well as how HTML5 video (specifically industry standard HD-encoded, H.264 720p) has much better performance when it uses the operating system to take advantage of PC hardware for video decoding.
If you’re a developer or technical enthusiast, please download the Platform Preview. It’s the first preview of how standard web patterns that developers know and use broadly can run better by taking advantage of PC hardware on Windows.
Last week, Channel 9 interviewed several of the engineers on the team. You can find videos of the interviews here:
Introducing the IE9 Platform Preview
GPU powered HTML5
IE9 performance: from JavaScript to COM to DOM to HTML5
SVG past, present, future of vector graphics on the web
Thanks,
Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager, Internet Explorer
P.S. The IE9 keynote from MIX is now availble on demand.
Update 3/18/10 - Added a link to Dean's keynote and added Phenom II to the list of processors which will improve website performance.
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
The kitty is fattened by breaking standards not supporting them. Bill Gates would be rolling over in his grave, if the dude were dead. There is a 15 year history there of breaking standards, and producing lousy stuff. Its too little too late to win back those that know better.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Not a bad effort but it would be quicker to adopt Webkit, IE team should seriously consider Webkit as it has a better code base. Wow, 50 years later IE developers actually woke up and realize how inferior their technology is.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thanks MS for dropping support for XP. XP is a pathetic OS in 2010. I ditched XP as soon as Vista came out and now I'm using Windows 7. I haven't missed XP for one moment. The luddites who are still on XP can use IE8 until they upgrade to Windows 7.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
Hey, cool! You censored the comment where I pointed out that Microsoft was promoting h264, and thereby forcing smaller competitors out of the market. Truth hurts, doesn't it? I'll say it again: Microsoft is once again promoting an alternative which forces competition out of the market. This time Microsoft know it can't win against Google, but it will definitely not let anyone else gain a foothold. So the easy thing to do is to use the h264 cabal to prevent smaller companies from competing fairly. Microsoft as it has always been!Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Hey, cool.. You censored the comment where I pointed out that Microsoft was promoting h264, and thereby forcing smaller competitors out of the market. Truth hurts, doesn't it? I'll say it again: Microsoft is once again promoting an alternative which forces competition out of the market. This time Microsoft know it can't win against Google, but it will definitely not let anyone else gain a foothold. So the easy thing to do is to use the h264 cabal to prevent smaller companies from competing fairly. Microsoft as it has always been!Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@ted: if you're on XP, you're not really a developer.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Dear Microsoft, Congratulations on your new browser, which is finally something the web community can be happy with. But... XP SP3 support is necessary, as 60%+ of the browsing platforms on the Internet use XP. Without it, in a couple of years time, developers will be complaining about IE8 in the same way as they do now about IE6. Come on, lets sweep the slate clean, and establish a new level of standards support that websites can expect from browsers. To do that IE9 needs to be supported on XP SP3. It may not be possible to provide the hardware acceleration to XP SP3, but it must be possible to provide the enhanced standards support. Please, please, pretty please. Don't have me tearing my hair out, yet again. I know you care, you're trying your best to show it, but please, just this one thing, and I can forgive you almost anything. Seriously.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Sorry about the double posting. One more time and I can claim a draw by repetition! ;-)Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
@EricLaw: "E.g. RFC2397, used throughout ACID2 and 3, never even reached the working draft stage, as far as I know." Data URIs are an IETF standard (published in August 1998), not a W3C standard. It makes no sense to talk about them in terms of the W3C's standards track. Furthermore, it's clearly referenced in section 13.3.1 of the HTML 4.01 spec (a W3C Recommendation for over a decade); it's been listed in STD 1 in Proposed Standard state since September 1998. This seems like a pretty weak objection. Shouldn't you know all this?Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I don't use IE and never will use it anymore.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
IE9 has a new javascript engine....that's a wonderful news for developers....go ahead..guys...Anonymous
March 16, 2010
http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-phone-7-browser-is-based-on-internet-explorer-7 MS still sabotaging open web standards by pushing outdated, obsolete browsers that can't even render Acid2 correctly.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
very very nice , go on IE team good jobAnonymous
March 16, 2010
Excellent start. I look forward to to using IE9. Will there be a simple way of updating to the newest preview builds? Through Windows Update perhaps?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Is there support for CANVAS? I do not see it? Also, where is support for FORMS 2.0 and new elements such as Article, Footer, Aside, Header?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Will you guys support plugging in newer codecs into the HTML 5 video and audio tag engine? Or are we stuck with H264 and mp3? I'd at least like Vorbis support for <audio> and hopefully the future produces a codec that all vendors can use for <video>. I hope that the matroska container will be used for HTML 5 in the future, since it can support multiple streams, subtitles, and DVD-style menus...Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
WHERE IS <CANVAS>? (tested and it's absent!)Anonymous
March 16, 2010
The DirectWrite artifact of terrible rendering of light fonts on dark background is haunting IE9 too. http://www.iimmgg.com/image/67010445afaf747e896a159206e4fb74Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@soumyasch thanks for the report - we'll take a lookAnonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
Very awesome.Under promise, over deliver. Love the GPU support, HTML5 Video, DOM, CSS3, SVG, and performance improvements. Can't wait till we get to see full UI for it.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Greisha What GPU are you using? Please see the release notes for a fix, and send us a bug report. Thanks!Anonymous
March 16, 2010
http://gsnedders.html5.org/html5lib-tests/runner.html — html5lib parser tests in a browser. There's some HTML5 parser feedback. :PAnonymous
March 16, 2010
The flying images demo is an interesting benchmark test to put against other browser.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
I really feared there will be a WMV-based HTML5 video support, so at least that's a relief.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
<video> performance is much better than Chrome, especially in HD.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
IE9... LOOLL acidtest - 55% = 0% IE9 - IE6 very bad css3 support.. halooooo, it is 2010!!Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Guys! That's cool BUT WE NEED IT FOR WINDOWS XP you know?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
yes , scrolling has improved , but not as was expectedAnonymous
March 16, 2010
It's really just a minor point, but you may want to correct it as people might interpret this oversight as a lie: Mozilla has released Beta versions of Firefox for some quite time that accelerate SVG drawing, so labeling IE9 (preview) as the first browser to do it is false.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Hans They said first to be FULLY hardware accelerated, SVG in Firefox still relies on lots of software calculations.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@ondrej ACID3 is not a test of standards. A browser supporting 99% of all webstandards could still score zero on ACID3 tests. You should try working trough the W3C standards test suite to have some idea of standards support. In the keynote there were browser comparisons on standards support including some for for SVG and IE9 looked a lot better on that.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
It's a shame this isn't available for Windows XP, as it means I can't be a part of any testing, but I guess that is not a surprise.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
You have IE5, IE7 and IE8 legacy modes. Where is the IE6 mode? It is seriously the only one that matters.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
I love it, great work, stay on that track! But please, please, PLEASE let the CTRL+L shortcut jump the cursor inside the adressbar, insteadof opening this stupid dialog :)Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
Your RSS feed (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/rss.xml) has not been updated with this post!Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Raffi12 You can't implement something entirely in hardware that the hardware doesn't support. So without dedicated hardware SVG on desktop systems, you always rely on software in part.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@ Hans GPUs are very programmable these days, they're able to draw sub-pixel fonts entirely using pixel shaders for example. There is no reason why you can't draw simple vector geometry entirely on the GPU, its almost a perfect fit for it.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Raffi12 current Firefox beta does hardware accelerated font rendering for example. The point is simply that "fully accelerated" is really quite impossible, you always rely on software. So using it as a differentiator between Firefox hardware accelerated SVG rendering and IE9 hardware accelerated SVG seems pointless.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
Awesome! I can't wait to see where IE9 stands when it is officially released. That would be cool if we can some kick dirt at the Chrome, Safari, and Firefox users.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Small tears of joy here. Great work IE9 team! Now please share your code with the Win Phone 7 team, I heard that they are patching a 4 year old browser. XP users can download Firefox, Chrome or whatever. Win Phone 7 users will be stuck with their browser, please don't let it be based on IE7!Anonymous
March 16, 2010
I am delighted to see that this platform preview is released in a self-contained manner that doesn't replace Internet Explorer 8.0. However, I must ask how self-contained this preview really is? The MSI does initiate a UAC prompt and I am very concerned about it damaging my Windows 7 install. I would prefer to run this outside of a VM so that I can get the full effect of the hardware acceleration. While I'm sure that Microsoft offers no support on this preview I would like some kind of assurance that this preview can be installed and uninstalled without ill effects.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Congrats! Obviously canvas and open video are missing, but it's a great start.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
Please update EOT font embedding to include support for CFF/PostScript glyphs - the base operating system supports it, all we need is support for it in the EOT engine. Alternatively (or additionally), add support for WOFF files. If there are any plans in either area, a blog post would be nice. :-)Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Please tell whether the final version will run on Windows XP SP3 or not. If not please be clear about it. Really enough is enough of keeping users in the lurch about Windows XP support.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Really don't care about Windows XP support. XP is dead, and everyone should be able to manage a migration by now. Windows 7 is on 50% of the workstations at my company and climbing fast. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to drop Windows 7 into place in most of the simplistic Windows environments out there. You home users can go pick up a new-ish machine for $400 at a Best Buy.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Wow, I'm impressed at how well it runs under VMWare Workstation! The Speed Demos that are compatible with IE8 are faster with IE9 under VMWare than in IE8 native mode! And the new Network tab on the Developer tools?! SQUEAL! I use this a lot in Firebug so I'm very much looking forward to this! (as well as any other FB functionality you can bring over like the ability explore an object via "console.log(obj)" )Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
@Brad Laue: I don't plan on buying a new PC for IE 9, and I doubt I'm the only one, as XP is a fine OS!Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@dtrim Are you sure it isn't a WMV solution? I didn't read what container they want to use. They could be using WMVs containing H.264Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Nice work guys. This thing is so fast I can't believe it's trident under the covers. It's faster than Chrome and FireFox on the AJAX sites I tested. It even scored the highest on my script tests. You're moving in the right direction.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@IE Developers - congratulations on Chakra and JavaScript performance. The improvement from IE8 to IE9 is HUGE. I get a good feeling that IE9 is going to be fun to write apps for.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@al3 Not WMV. IE9 supports MP4 h.264 video, MP3 or AAC audio - just like Safari, Chrome.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
Does this version supports geolocation ?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
I was expecting SVG, and even addEventListener()... I mean, come on, they've been W3C standards for too long, and with X-UA-Compatible, there are no more excuses for not implementing them. However, this wasn't emphasized enough (and I wonder why), but I noticed something I only hoped for - XHTML as application/xhtml+xml is supported!!! Yay!!!Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/03/16/microsoft-letterAnonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
So ehm, where can I dowload this for OS X? I kid, I kid... Although it would be nice :pAnonymous
March 16, 2010
I see Microsoft answering some questions but very obviously & deliiberately avoiding the question on XP support. I get it that the current platform preview does not work on Windows XP. I want a definite answer on whether the final version of IE9 will run on Windows XP. It's better to say yes or no than to keep users confused and angry.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Chris: yeah. Just like Windows 95 and 98 were fine OSes... but at some point, it's time to move on. That's how technology has always worked, and that's good. And it's not like all XP installs are going to explode all of a sudden, there are still plenty of good browsers that work on it. So you can still hang on to it for a while. Anyway, I'm certainly not an IE fanboy, but congrats for your work on IE9. And don't mind the tireless anti-IE trolls.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Dropping Windows XP support is one of the worst decisions ever taken by IE team probably even worse than disbanding the IE team back in the IE6 days. Internet Explorer will fade into obscurity and face the fate of Windows Mobile 6.5 without support for the overwhelmingly dominant OS of choice at 65%.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
They must create a build for XP. While it may be old the fact that it is somewhere in the 70-75 percent range of ALL INTERNET CONNECTED COMPUTERS is too big to ignore.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
> IE9 is also the first browser to provide hardware- > accelerated SVG support. Wrong, FireFox on Linux supports this for ages now (back to FireFox-1.5, released 2003). Firefox uses Cairo to draw its SVG stuff, which itself is based on the XRender API, accelerated by the Xorg-DDX.
- Clemens
Anonymous
March 16, 2010
sounds excellent... just what we needed 4 years ago. IE has already messed up the internet, trying to catch up using trident is futile.. the various "compatibility" and "standards" modes on IE 8 taught us that. besides, when IE 9 is actually released (im guessing 2013?) everything in this blog post will be old news and every other browser will of moved on.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
@Stifu: It's certainly true that things move on, but I'd say (and could be wrong) that the desire for people to move on from XP will be reduced than that of 95 / 98, especially as Vista was seen by many as an inferior OS to XP. But I also say well done to the IE team - and remember the reason many XP users will be asking for IE 9 is because it's already shaping up to be a great browser.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Microsoft, don’t make XP the millstone that holds back the web, just as IE6 is now. XP support is mandatory.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
So far so good, but I do hope this is only a start point! With words such "accelerated, GPU, hardware, performances" I don't get why we do not read any official info about WebGL in primis, canvas tag after, and I do not get at all why this version could not run under XP when a GPU with DX support is there. I am sure it won't be fully accelerated in that case, but surely better than whatever IE you have released before. As example, my Netbook nVidia ION powered can run Counter Strike in HD 720p and about 60fps without problems, same is for WebGL engines and scenarios, and same is for any kind of software able to use DirectX or OpenGL. Please give us more details about what you are planning to put there, included all ES5 parts right now not present or just partially supported, thanks.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Let's see IE8 was announced with it passing Acid2 in Dec 2007 and ended up RTMing in March 2009. That's 16 months!! Then IE9 is announced a year later in March 2010!! In Sept 2008, Google introduced Chrome and 18 months later, it's at version 5.0 in beta. Do you see where the problem is? Will IE9 end up shipping in June 2011? Good luck with shipping it.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Kroc Camen has a point there. Those who choose to stay with XP will be forced to stay then forever on IE8 which will become the new IE6.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Congratulations! This is very exciting to hear. Best, Brad NeubergAnonymous
March 16, 2010
Will Vorbis and Theora be supported as well, like in Chrome ? Or is the IE team going the Safari route, supporting only h.264 ?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Good work, certainly good progress in the right direction. If you don't have time for the canvas tag, try and get the SVG support really solid out the door.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Don't forget clipping and gradients for SVG ! (As noticed by on of the good berghers of reddit)Anonymous
March 16, 2010
For those clamoring for an IE9 release for XP, why should Microsoft release new software for whose lifecycle expires on July 13th ( http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps/ )? Note that this is also the end of IE6 and IE7 support.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Well, I'm more than pleased to you supporting SVG, pushing acceleration, DOM events etc. Please, do not slow down and keep your speed in adapting all those cool standards...Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Vista Home Premium and Ultimate's support will end in 2012 and XP's in 2014. Windows 7 Home Premium and Ultimate support will end in 2015. So will Microsoft produce IE10 (which will defintely comes later than 2012) only for Windows 7 and no other OS?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
Great! Now Microsoft can successfully force smaller companies out of the market by backing h264.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Brian LePore, get your facrs right. XP lifecycle is ending in April 2014. XP SP2 support (the earlier service pack version) is ending in July 2013. In fact, support for Vista Home and Ultimate editions as ColdSpice pointed out ends earlier than XP Professional and Windows 7 Home and Ultimate support ends just a year later than XP in 2015.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
We are web developers who waste hours and hours every week trying to make our websites (which function fine on other browsers) work in IE. This is very slow, painfull and wasteful work. Please Please Please stop making your own browser platforms. Please pick a platform that works, either mozilla or webkit, then build the next version of IE on that platform. Thank you for listening.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Wow. Some Demo use real XHTML. Not a fake one. Looks promissing. However what about DOM level 3 core?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
I meant XPSP2 support is ending in July 13 2010.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
I used to spit on IE, but I am following the IE blog for couple of months. You show a lot of progress for IE9 and it is very encouraging even if IE still seems to be far behind from the other main web browsers. Please continue your work toward interoperability (HTML and DOM APIs especially !). Web developers have suffered enough from the browser war and API inconsistencies. Your graph about API usage is interesting. Could you publish the results (and not only a summarizing graph) ? Main feature that everyone is waiting for for the web are <video>, <audio> and <canvas>. Please work around those. And for the interoperability (and web developers') sake, please support OGG which is (as far as I know) the only format family that any browser can support with no patent or royalty constraint. The same way it was annoying to maintain different scripting branches or CSS or markup, it will be annoying to have 2 or 3 versions of the same audio/video file just to be sure to support all web browsers. It would be very hypocritical from your part to continue pretending supporting interoperability and at the same time, supporting only H.264 for video while everyone knows that Firefox or Opera "cannot" support them.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
What about copying and linking to Microsoft Halo's Ogg library to IE 9, and thus add Theora and Vorbis support? Your answer: no. Rationale: submarine patents on Ogg codecs (which are in the public domain, and have been there for quite some time, and have been scrutinized quite closely). Well then, why use them in Halo, which shipped millions of units? Not mentioning other small companies on incidental software (Blizzard, World of Warcraft). And h.264 is guaranteed submarine patent free. Moving on. What about implementing DOM 2 events? Your answer: no. Rationale: DOM 2 is only a Recommendation. Since 11/2000. Implemented by all other browsers, albeit with some variations in event orders and numbers. But then, it's not exactly coherent with the post, so there must be another reason. And what about backporting IE 9's engine to XP, even in full software rendering mode (whose development would still be required for Vista/7's safe mode)? Your answer: no. Rationale: well, IE 9 Final will be out only by the time XP has entered Extended Support period (security updates only), so we won't bother with it. Oh, I'd love looking at the download costs of Vista images for IE 9 testing, for those that can't install IE 9 on their development machine. You know, professionals... The post contained a lot of good news. Unfortunately, it also contained a lot of bad news. Sigh.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
A new logo and a new GUI would be a great addition. Less clutter and a simpler UI like Chrome and I will installing it on my systems.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
There are two things that I would love for the IE devs to do:
- Allow us to finally run multiple versions of IE on the same Windows install. I'm really getting sick of loading multiple VMs just to be able to properly test in all the versions of IE that are still out and about. It would seem that this is not an impossible task if the IE 9 preview build can coexist with another IE.
- Allow the browser to update itself like all the other browsers can. Windows Update is ignored or disabled by an amazingly-large number of people. The result? 10%+ browsers are still IE 6 and 15%+ browsers are IE 7. Make the browser handle telling people when an update is ready, and they'll pay more attention. Better yet, automatically upgrade them behind the scenes like Chrome. Want to support the enterprise users' need for a stable, unchanging browser? Add a simple settings option and group policy to control it. If this were in IE 6, we would be done with the multiple IE version tango 5+ years ago. It would also eliminate the need to spend millions in marketing bucks to try to sell people on upgrading their browser. Without this, web devs, such as me, will continue to hate IE as it will prove nothing more than a testing nightmare that causes me to do nothing but gripe and complain about IE every chance I get.
Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Tom Stack Any users registered on Connect should be able to see bugs. Have you registered on Connect? The IE Connect home page has instructions to point you in the right direction. If this doesn't resolve your issue, please email IESO@microsoft.com and we'll see what's up.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
Will JScript be retained in IE Compatibility mode?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
The motto "same markup, same results" must apply to video/audio as well. Please include OGG Theora/Vorbis for video/audio. We want to be able to use a single video file for all browsers, many other browsers only support this format. Re-encoding in multiple video formats will be messy, slow and VERY disk space consuming.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Problem is that Vista didn't ship till Jan, 2007 and then was a complete failure. That means nearly all computers sold between 2001 and 2009 are running Windows XP. Most of these would probably have trouble with Windows 7, due to weird old devices. Computers last much longer now. Most people don't upgrade their OS, just get a new one when they get a new computer. Seems to me that if IE9 has any chance it need to support XP. There are just too many out there.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Windows XP is as old as IE6. Let them rest together (this is coming from someone currently posting from XP). The fact they could add so many new things in IE9 was certainly made easier by the fact they didn't need to bother with XP. Newer APIs and libs are there to be used eventually. And not having to worry about older systems can help clean up the code, too. @browser: Chrome is a bad example. They increase their version number too fast for their own good. Besides, how would it be any different if the next IE version was IE15 rather than 9? It's just a number.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Why, even the Office team considers it worth supporting XP with Office 2010!! Why won't the IE team do that? Obviously because it's a free product whereas in case of Office 2010, there would be tons and tons of lost sales. IE9 HAS to run on Windows XP to be successful. Is Microsoft not aware of the market share figures with which XP dominates as of today?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@MarchRover and @Coldspice > XP lifecycle is ending in April 2014. Where exactly do you read/see that info? I do not see such info at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps/ thank you, GérardAnonymous
March 16, 2010
It's beautiful! wipes little tear awayAnonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
When IE9 comes out, it will not be available for XP users? Is that in the best interests of MS? When Google releases their Chrome OS sometime in 2010, and IE9 excludes XP, won't that create more incentive to give consideration to Windows OS alternatives, or, at the least, other browser alternatives?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Mitch74 >What about implementing DOM 2 events? > Your answer: no. Mitch, I would be extremely surprised if IE9 RTW would not support DOM 2 Events entirely. DOM 2 Events is much more powerful, more versatile than IE events model. FWIW, both bugs filed for DOM 2 Events support (can't provide bug number or links since connect IE beta feedback has been closed!) have been reactivated shortly after the release of IE8. I think it may be just too early to claim that IE9 is not going to support DOM 2 Events. regards, GérardAnonymous
March 16, 2010
Its time to switch. Not to a newer OS but to a different browser. I am on WinXP currently but I am thinking of dumping IE8 since I am spoilt for choice.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
Minus no mention of Canvas support in IE9, this is looking fairly promising. Will you comment on your plans for Canvas support?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Forget the trolls crying for feature X or Y, I feel IE is definitely going in the right direction and really appreaciate you releasing previews like this. I only hope you choose Ogg Theora for video to avoid fragmentation among browsers. If nothing else it would at least annoy Apple with their shiny iPhones :) Keep up the good work!Anonymous
March 16, 2010
great job so far guys, keep up the good work!Anonymous
March 16, 2010
XSL transform into real XHTML works too, wohoo!Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Gérard Talbot I think you can expect IE9 to support most of DOM L2 Events (sans some of the events not supported by any browser) -- but we're tracking to the latest DOM L3 Events editor's draft. I'll have more on this in a later post.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Imagine if the developer division decided to drop .NET or Visual Studio support for XP. Why such an important product such as IE is the first to drop XP support? Very disappointed Microsoft.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Tom Stack: Microsoft proves in the past that this is not important for they. One the other side, sometimes there is too much cost to build new IE for old systems.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
With the quality/freeness arguments over h.264 and Theora, has anyone thought of Dirac? It's supposed to be comparable to h.264 in quality and is patent-clear.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Why even provide Silverlight 4 for XP when it is such a dead platform? And I thought IE was a much more core essential product than Silverlight. Opera 10.10 supports Windows 98 today, and manages to get 100/100 on Acid3 and the fastest JS engine. Is hardware acceleration that important to not have an XP build that doesn't include it instead of altogether dropping support for the popular OS?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
For those that keep asking about Canvas support and DOM 2 support... have you read previous posts? Like this one? http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/03/09/Working-with-the-HTML5-Community.aspxAnonymous
March 16, 2010
Wow! It sounds like this was written by somebody who knows what they're talking about. I won't use it (being a Mac person) but as a web developer I'm thrilled! I'll be following.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
IE was one of the first big products to drop Win2k support, too.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
Not bad for a 5-year old browser but this is 2010.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Oh! Beware folks. In typical Microsoft fashion, they claim "support" for things without clarification of what "support" is. In the case of SVG, it's pitiful, it's more than IE8, which is none, but it's bad.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Rob, before making baseless accusations, how about you provide some context? From the MIX demo, looks like it works just fine.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=5572 "Update: Hachamovitch said in a Q&A with press and analysts following the keynote that IE 9 will not support XP." So web developers, tell your users to move away from IE8 to Firefox 3.7/4.0.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
This sounds great. It's exactly the direction I was hoping IE9 would go. Let's hope we get to THREE modern web platforms with interoperability on new standards. That would truly be excellent.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
so if we are on XP (which is a ton of us) just what on earth are we supposed to do to install../test this? does this run on a virtual PC image?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Dear Microsoft, Congratulations on your new browser, which is finally something the web community can be happy with. But... XP SP3 support is necessary, as 60%+ of the browsing platforms on the Internet use XP. Without it, in a couple of years time, developers will be complaining about IE8 in the same way as they do now about IE6. Come on, lets sweep the slate clean, and establish a new level of standards support that websites can expect from browsers. To do that IE9 needs to be supported on XP SP3. It may not be possible to provide the hardware acceleration to XP SP3, but it must be possible to provide the enhanced standards support. Please, please, pretty please. Don't have me tearing my hair out, yet again. I know you care, you're trying your best to show it, but please, just this one thing, and I can forgive you almost anything. Seriously.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@dUH - I certainly beg to differ!!! as a professional developer that has to develop content to render in multiple browsers across multiple OS'es XP is actually the BEST development platform available. Vista was and is a complete joke - not worth the time to install it. Windows 7 - "The best service pack for Windows Vista Ever!" - Jeff Attwood (and most users/developers) But Windows 7 only just came out - so moving up to this platform in a development environment that uses several tools that work on XP just fine isn't likely to happen until developers have a need and spare time window to do so. I certainly plan to upgrade to Windows 7 - but that will be on new hardware picked up in the fall - not a second sooner. Thanks for telling a massive portion of the professional developer community that the OS they build on is out of date. With no viable update option until last October - I think you need to lighten up on developers not jumping to Windows 7 until they're ready/need to.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Paul McKeown, Web developers will NOT be happy with IE9. So called "support" for things like SVG, which is incomplete, and lack of canvas means IE9 is already an inept browser behind the times. Why would anyone want to use IE9 when, today, you can get most everything it is supposed to do on any non-IE browser?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Gerald Regarding Windows XP support (end of Extended Support) see http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223 and http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifean23Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@Alex H.264 is not just about quality, it's also about power-efficient playback supported by graphics chips.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Here's an AMD developer blog comment about the fact that IE9 will support canvas, and canvas will be GPU accelerated. Hope it's true! http://blogs.amd.com/developer/2010/03/16/ie9-takes-advantage-of-the-gpu/ More proof of IE9 canvas as mentioned above... http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/03/09/Working-with-the-HTML5-Community.aspxAnonymous
March 16, 2010
Where is the WebGL ????? IE9 look like still trash,I use chrome yet.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Why are you censoring all the comments that are pointing out that going for h264 means that Microsoft is once again destroying the market and blocking smaller companies from competing?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
@Travia: THANK! YOU! *** goes all giddy and claps heels - no more need to support IE's half-baked event model *** Now I know it's not in DOM 2 spec, I can't find it in DOM 3 drafts, but if we could get DOMContentLoaded too, it'd be great - but I won't cry a river any more if we don't. About XP support: what Paul McKeown said. I'll add that accelerated rendering on XP can be discarded entirely (we won't ask you to write WDDM 1.1 for XP), a software-only version (even better, a mere Trident and Jscript update, keep IE 8's chrome) would be enough. That leaves Theora and Vorbis support. But I don't think I'll get an answer here.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Microsoft please support the Ogg video format, otherwise the <video> element is, for all intents and purposes, absolutely useless. With some browser (IE9, Safari) supporting H264 and others (Firefox, Opera) supporting Ogg, then we have a fragmented <video> codec landscape, which effectively means we can't use <video> if we want to make our websites to target all browsers. Also H264 is patent and licencing encumbered, whereas other web formats (jpg, png, html, css, javascript etc.) are not patent/licenced restricted in any way, and this is how the web has always been, a free open system where anybody can play a part. Introducing a propriatary format/codec for the web threatens this, and this bad for the web in general. So please Microsoft, support both Ogg and H264 and let the web decide the <video> format wars.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
@martin, "many other browsers only support this format." by "many", you mean "Firefox and Opera"? I never thought "two" can mean "many" here. Firefox and Opera and Chrome support Theora, IE and Safari and Chrome support H.264, so the two camps are even now. Remember Youtube is in H.264, and Content Is King.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
Good to see all the new features. Competition is always better and the end user will be the most beneficial. having said that I am not sure if there will be a version of IE9 for MAC OS. any plans on that? I know you folks have scrapped developing IE for mac.. Please do consider for the goodness of allAnonymous
March 16, 2010
excuse me , i need more info about " what is direct 2d ???"Anonymous
March 16, 2010
What strikes me here is that Microsoft seem to have won to gain trust back from the community. The level of aggressive comments has really diminished from what I read on this blog when the team ie8 announced that the default rendering mode would be non-standard. So congrats. Ps: what about JavaScript Harmony ?Anonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
@Kroc: I didn't say there was anything "wrong" with your HTML, I was merely pointing out that the issue was related to creation of an implicit body for generic elements. @Mohan: Sorry, no, there will not be a Mac version. @cens: Only comments which violate the comment policy are removed: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2004/07/22/191629.aspx.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Quiet impressive. Adobe is in real trouble now.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Will you be supporting the optional body tag as per the spec? I understand that it breaks in IE8 simply because of the legacy of IE and that’s the way it does it, I hope that changes in IE9; I have no intention of changing my markup, I expect browsers to support me, not the other way around—that’s what standards are for. I understand that adding a body tag is a workaround, but you are asking us on this blog post to look at spec conformance. When you say "We want the same markup to just work across different browsers" then I tell you that my site works fine in the other major browsers and the fault is with your engine.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Thanks to Microsoft for a much-improved browser. When Canvas support arrives, I'll be glad to start developing using it as a platform. I hope I'm right in writing "when" and not "if". Too often "we're working it" turns into "sorry, our priorities changed". And, for those who point to various sources saying it's coming, well, until we see it, it's hard to feel comfortable. Even after that, until the Silverlight/Canvas story is clear, I'll worry. Plus, the sooner it goes public, the sooner we can find the inevitable bugs and/or variances from the other implementations, which might be fixed, but the sooner we get our mitts on it, the more likely it is to happen.Anonymous
March 16, 2010
Thanks a lot for the IE preview. I hope MS IE team will lead all other browsers for a better and safer user experienceAnonymous
March 16, 2010
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March 16, 2010
@Kroc: It's absolutely a legit issue-- thanks for sharing it. I've passed your test case to the right folks. IE6/7/8/9 do support the notion of an implicit body, but as you noted, don't support starting an implicit body for generic elements. @grendelkhan: I don't know that Hixie's wishes really map to the test itself. E.g. RFC2397, used throughout ACID2 and 3, never even reached the working draft stage, as far as I know. That's not to say that it's not reasonable to support it, merely that the claim that everything is CR or better isn't necessarily correct. (Furthermore, keep in mind that CRs can and do get switched back to WD from time to time.)Anonymous
March 17, 2010
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March 17, 2010
Please, canvas support in IE9 !!!!!!! Not supporting Win XP is a big mistake, but ...Anonymous
March 17, 2010
@Ottmar Freudenberger Thank you!! You found the exact webpages to read! thank you and best regards, Gérard TalbotAnonymous
March 17, 2010
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March 17, 2010
Guys, please test this page in your platform preview: http://john.albin.net/ie-css-limits/link-test.htmlAnonymous
March 17, 2010
If you're not going to support IE9 in Windows XP, can you at least provide a free, easy to use tool for developers to test a website within all versions of IE that have a measurable market share? I'm sorry, but the actions, or lack of actions, you guys take in regard to older IE versions makes it seem like you don't give a rip about the problems older versions of IE cause, problems that won't go away with the release of IE9.Anonymous
March 18, 2010
grendelkhan: Errr, no, Data URIs are not an IETF standard, they're a proposal. While it's true that the document was authored under the IETF, that doesn't change the fact that this makes the statement "Every standard tested in Acid3 was a Candidate Recommendation" incorrect. (Incidentally, I don't see 2397 as a "reference" in HTML; http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/references.html) My intent was not to provide an exhaustive summary of the cases where your statement was perhaps misleading, merely the most obvious instance for a feature that I'm most familiar with. I personally have no idea whether Wikipedia's remarks are correct: "Controversially, [ACID3] includes several elements from the CSS2 recommendation that were later removed in CSS2.1 but reintroduced in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) CSS3 working drafts that have not made it to candidate recommendations yet."Anonymous
March 18, 2010
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March 18, 2010
I mean, seriously, nobody uses Vista. And whether Windows 7 will be rolled out to the enterprise masses by the time IE9 hits remains to be seen. There'll still be pelnty of XP systems running even in the corporate space, that's for sure. So Microsoft is firmly committed to keep an old browser alive needlessly, just so it can cause compatibility issues, yet again? The only reason this doesn't stink quite as bad as the old IE6 story is that IE8 doesn't stink quite as bad.Anonymous
March 18, 2010
Glad to see less comments calling for IE to use Webkit or Gecko - it's not going to happen, even if the whole IE team wanted it. We need to be realistic. Because I'm on WinXP, I can't run the preview, but I'm interested to know whether the CSS3 columns module is supported, if anyone can confirm? Things like this and advanced selectors that are likely to affect layout are much more important than border-radius etc which are just visual flourishes. To those who predict IE8 becoming the new IE6: it'll never be that bad. The reason IE6 has been such a problem was because there was such a big gap between its release and IE7. That won't happen again.Anonymous
March 19, 2010
What about support for html 5 sockets?Anonymous
March 19, 2010
IE9 is looking great with Chakra, canvas, and hardware acceleration. Any news about audio?Anonymous
March 19, 2010
I cannot test this. Is PNG alpha transparency property supported? Are CSS3 opacity and border-radius supported? Are .ttf fonts finally supported with @font-face?Anonymous
March 21, 2010
While XP was a great OS, it's time is now past. It's nice to the the IE team take advantage of advanced techniques like GPU rendering. Great job on starting down this path! If standards are more closely followed in IE9, I have no doubt it will be a great browser.Anonymous
March 21, 2010
Ummm, I think XP may be around for more a little while yet. Tying the browser to the OS - now maybe that is a thing whose time has past.Anonymous
March 22, 2010
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March 22, 2010
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March 23, 2010
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March 24, 2010
Jason, if Opera 10.51 is hardware accelerated, they're doing something wrong. The "Flying logos" demo has a low frame rate and looks terrible! IE9 Preview, otoh, looks awesome.Anonymous
March 27, 2010
All this fuss about standards, IE9 etc. Fine and dandy. But only silence regarding IE6. Offer a patch or something. Please. A haiku for Internet Explorer: IE6 tear drops four more years. Developers! ! ! ? No; money, money.Anonymous
March 27, 2010
Is Opera hardware accelerated via the GPU or via the CPU?