Microsoft Shows Developers IE9 Platform Preview

[engine]

Microsoft Shows Developers IE9 Platform Preview [news.cnet.com]

At its Mix conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Microsoft gave programmers, Web developers, and the world at large a taste of things to come with its Web browser. Specifically, Microsoft released what it's calling the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview, a prototype that's designed to show off the company's effort to improve how the browser deals with the Web as it exists today and, just as important, to add support for new Web technologies that are coming right now.

The new software is only a framework, raw enough that it's still missing a "back" button. But with "a few" updated preview versions set to arrive at eight-week intervals, the project will develop into a beta, a release candidate, and eventually the full-fledged product IE9, said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer and the executive who'll describe the project at Mix.

[StoutFiles]

When Microsoft showed IE9 technology in November, it didn't shy away from IE's poor showing on the Acid3 test of compliance with various standards and technologies. IE8 scores 20 out of 100, the November IE technology reached 32, but the IE9 Platform Preview makes it up to 55. Microsoft also dings the test as imperfect, adding in a blog post, "A key part of our approach to Web standards is the development of an industry standard test suite.

If you can't beat it...bash it. Why can't Microsoft just match what other browsers are already doing?

[mattur]

Demos and downloadable from [ie.microsoft.com...]

(Vista SP2 or higher, can be installed alongside your current IE - allegedly)

IE9 has XHTML and SVG support!

[mattur]

But it looks like IE9 won't be available for XP:

Q: Does Platform Preview run on Windows XP?
A: No. Internet Explorer 9’s GPU-powered graphics take advantage of new technologies available in Windows 7 and back-ported only to Windows Vista. These technologies depend on advancements in the display driver model introduced first in Windows Vista.

Q: Will the final release of Internet Explorer 9 install side by side with earlier versions of Internet Explorer 8? Will Internet Explorer 9 run on Windows XP?
A: It’s too early to talk about features of the Internet Explorer 9 Beta.[...]

from the FAQ [ie.microsoft.com]

[aspdaddy]

Enhanced DOM events & multi-core JavaScript, Looks like this client is designed for their app developers

[ChanandlerBong]

MSFT developing "an industry standard test suite"? Coming up before that, the Unabomber gives a talk on the positive role of cutting edge technology in the workplace and the Pied Piper gives his thoughts on responsible child care.

[incrediBILL]

It would make the online world a much better place if MS just adopted the Safari WebKit like Chrome and others are doing instead of continuing down separate paths.

Imagine if MS were helping contribute to a single browser spec instead of off doing their own thing.

Whoops! Did I just see a snowball in Hell?

Nope! False alarm.

[sgietz]

I think this move will give HTML 5 a much needed nudge.

[WesleyC]

I tried the demo out, and it's very impressive, so far as their tests go.

However, I'm more interested in ACID3--and the 55/100 score it gets is far behind where other browsers were quite some time ago.

I realize this is still a preview, but it loads an average page somewhere between 25% to 50% slower than Firefox. Their Javascript engine is completely fubar when it comes to running several apps using Mootools, JQuery, or other JS frameworks, and it seems to render some colors incorrectly (where "correctly" is defined by what FF, Safari, and Chrome agree on when displaying the same webpage).

I'm excited for HTML5 and CSS3 support, and the JS engine shows potential if they can fix some of the bugs, but I really hope they don't write the browser to follow MSHTML5 or MSCSS3 standards--I've had enough of coding for Microsoft's derivations of standards rather than the standards themselves.

[drhowarddrfine]

Similar demos were/are available for the other browsers 3 years ago. I question this XHTML support. They only show it for SVG and their SVG "support" lacks quite a bit. ArsTechnica has a review and question why Microsoft is so tight-lipped about it, including when it will come out. Last I heard it was next year.

So far, IE9 looks like a browser from 3 years ago.

[mattur]

MS apparently confirms IE9 won't run on XP:

"Building a modern browser requires a modern operating system," Internet Explorer general manager Dean Hachamovitch said at a press conference at the Mix10 event.

[news.cnet.com...]

[weeks]

I think this move will give HTML 5 a much needed nudge.

Agreed.

What's interesting is MS appears to be making Explorer a means to sell their OS. It's going to be a feature. This could be an opportunity or a problem for FF and others.

[drhowarddrfine]

Hachamovitch ... said that building a "modern browser" required a "modern operating system."

Hmm. IE9 so far is lacking compared to where all the other browsers were 3 years ago yet they run fine on XP while IE9 will not? Hmm.

[drhowarddrfine]

Tests are starting to come out. The SVG people say it only passes 10 of 28 tests and Schiller gives it a 28% compliance ranking along with listing standards support.

[J_RaD]

c'mon microsoft how many tries is it going to take before you get it right.

It almost seems they don't get it right on purpose for some reason.

[tedster]

Here's the challenge I think they face that most browsers do not:

Looks like this client is designed for their app developers

My guess, it's not just MS app developers but all the businesses that use IE for internal apps and need to have legacy support.

[drhowarddrfine]

One question I have is why some of these people are all excited about the new features in IE9 when they can get most of that in any non-IE browser right now?

[JS_Harris]

Q: Does Platform Preview run on Windows XP?
A: No. Internet Explorer 9’s GPU-powered graphics take advantage of new technologies available in Windows 7 and back-ported only to Windows Vista. These technologies depend on advancements in the display driver model introduced first in Windows Vista.

I'm sorry but my computer can perform at 100x the max capacity IE9 is touting as advanced so I see not being able to run it in XP as a serious flaw. My computer can handle it Microsoft so why are you designing a product that intentionally can't?

"IE9 looks great, very glad to see it. Congrats to the IE team!"

Since that was said by the Firefox CEO, it must be really bad ?

[Solution1]

The Platform Preview not only has the IE9 rendering engine, but you can switch also to the IE5, IE7 and IE8 engines (Debug menu). This makes it easy for developers to test in those older browser engines, if they want to.

As this solves a major problem for developers, I wonder whether Microsoft is going to keep this in some form, after IE9 is out of future beta.

[johnnie]

SVG, finally?

[incrediBILL]

I'm sorry but my computer can perform at 100x the max capacity IE9 is touting as advanced

It really has nothing to do with raw CPU speed, it's hardware and OS advances they're leveraging.

For instance my computer has a sheer powerhouse CPU yet it's mostly idle thanks to the video hardware doing the work.

That's where they're heading, offsetting more display work to video cards vs. CPU and XP simply doesn't provide the same video platform.

Nothing saying it couldn't, but it's 10 years old, time to put XP to pasture.

[drhowarddrfine]

SVG, finally?

A poor man's version. It only covers a few parts of it. Jeff Schiller, a SVG board member, says it only cover 28% and fails something like 18 of 28 tests.

[StoutFiles]

Having a browser that only runs on Vista and up can only help them. It'll make some people look to upgrade when they're told their computer is too outdated to run IE9.

The people who don't use Windows aren't using IE to begin with. The people still on XP...well, they hate those people. They want them all on Windows 7.

Microsoft doesn't need to make a good browser, they just need to market it like it's a good browser. Clearly their browsers have always been awful but when you're dominating the OS market it doesn't matter. Regular people just use what's there and don't care about web standards.

[drhowarddrfine]

when you're dominating the OS market it doesn't matter.

It does matter, otherwise they wouldn't do anything at all but, in any case, IE has lost 1/3 of its market share in the last 5 years and it's still dropping.

Regular people just use what's there and don't care about web standards.

The whole discussion is not for or about regular people anyway but, actually, they do care about standards but don't realize it. When people complain their browser doesn't work with a certain web site, they're complaining about standards compliance without knowing it. Should they walk by someone looking at a site and notice display features not seen on their IE browser, then they do care about standards.

However, as I said, IE being 12 years behind modern standards and compliance is more of an issue for us web developers since we are the ones who have to cover up all of IE's issues so those regular users don't have to mess with them.

[mattur]

One question I have is why some of these people are all excited about the new features in IE9 when they can get most of that in any non-IE browser right now?

Because having them in IE means we will be able to use those new features* to do cool stuff for all users not just those users on non-IE browsers.

We're approaching a new era where the all latest versions of browsers will offer reasonably up-to-date support for open web standards, and more predictable, more compatible behavior.

*At some indeterminate point in the future. Hopefully...

[J_RaD]

That's where they're heading, offsetting more display work to video cards vs. CPU

and its about time the OS takes use of that video card it has sitting idle.

[sgietz]

In response to a point that was made earlier ... If IE has to have legacy support it would explain a lot of things, but why not build in a legacy mode that's turned off be default? Is that possible? I don't know. Perhaps turning on legacy mode could launch an entirely different executable altogether. In other words, two separate browsers, but the second one would be transparent to the end-user.

[iambic9]

IE9 is a year away. Opera, Fatterfox, Safari and Chrome have made some great improvements over the last year and unless they all immediately cease development and build in some ugly bugs, IE9 is not going to claw back any market share.

By the time IE9 is out it'll already be another crappy dinosaur lagging behind modern web development still forcing me to do my work twice, we saw it with antique6, transitional7, and marginally-better-but-still-quite-rubbish8. I'm not expecting much from too-little-too-late9.

[graeme_p]

A poor man's version. It only covers a few parts of it. Jeff Schiller, a SVG board member, says it only cover 28% and fails something like 18 of 28 tests.

Its better than nothing. I expected MS to really drag its heels over SVG, because SVG + Javascript can do a significant subset of what Silverlight can do (I mean stuff like this: [croczilla.com ] and [statistics.gov.uk ].

[drhowarddrfine]

You notice it doesn't support canvas which is significant.