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Microsoft Previews IE9 — HTML5, SVG, Fast JS
suraj.sun sends this excerpt from CNET on Microsoft's preview of IE9 in Las Vegas just now. "At its Mix 10 conference 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 designed to show off the company's effort to improve how the browser deals with the Web as it exists today and, as important, to add support for new Web technologies that are coming right now. Coming in the new version is support for new Web standards including plug-in-free video; better performance with graphics, text, and JavaSript by taking advantage of modern computing hardware. One big change in the JavaScript engine Hachamovitch is proud of is its multicore support. As soon as a Web page is loaded, Chakra assigns a processing core to the task of compiling JavaScript in the background into fast code written in the native language of the computer's processor." Microsoft didn't say what codec they were using for the HTML5 video demo, but the Technologizer says it's H.264.
That's great and all, but Microsoft isn't competing with other browsers for market share, it's competing with its own older browsers. Anyone who knows anything about browsers is already using Firefox or Chrome or Opera, and anyone who knows nothing about browsers is using whatever came pre-installed on their computers:
IE6 if they're still on XP, Safari if they have a Mac, or IE 8 if they're running Windows 7.
Unless this is a mandatory upgrade to IE 8, it's not going to gain any ground.
And of course, the 30% of users still using IE6 will continue to do so until their computers die, or a techie relative replace it with Firefox.
It seems that even IE beat Firefox in Javascript performance now. Firefox sure has been slacking recently.
The chart you linked shows IE 9 and FF 3.7 more or less at a dead heat. So, even if this were an unfortunate turn of events, it's not as if IE 9 had a terrible lead.
But I'm not sure it's unfortunate. High performance javascript in what will likely be the world's most highly used browser for a while? Sounds pretty good to me.
Tweet, tweet.
Show the results from more than one test, and I'll be happy. As the browser showdown that was posted last week, one test doesn't prove anything. And considering the numerous open source tests that are available, why not show us all of them?
All that skepticism aside tho, if this is the truth (that IE9 will be standards based --and push the performance envelope--) then MS may be on the road to redeeming themselves... But the question remains, how tight will it be to the OS? Would a simple security flaw give a bit of JS access to the kernel? Or are they going to significantly sandbox the JS, and try to do everything right (as opposed to just the rendering)... Only time will tell if IE will become a browser friendly to geeks and developers (although something tells me it won't)...
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PNG was developed because of patent problems with GIF. Alpha channel, 24 bit color and better compression were just extra bonuses.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.