IE9 Flaunts Hardware-Accelerated Canvas

An anonymous reader writes "Over on the IE blog they have a rundown of IE9's hardware accelerated support for the canvas element. They write, 'With the recent release of the latest IE9 platform preview, we talked about how we're rebuilding the browser to use the power of your whole PC to browse the web, and to unlock a new class of HTML5 applications. One area that developers are especially excited about is the potential of HTML5 canvas. Like all of the graphics in IE9, canvas is hardware accelerated through Windows and the GPU. In this blog post we discuss some of the details behind canvas and the kinds of things developers can build.'"

Comments

Zero to botched in 60 nanoseconds?

[MikeFM]

It's fast but can it render the page correctly? It doesn't much matter how fast it is if it doesn't do it right. IE8 is still a big turd - have they actually fixed IE9 or is it all smoke and mirrors by posting speed results? The last results I saw proved that they could pass the tests they wanted to pass but that they failed horribly at real world results. I guess if it's good enough for the education system then it's good enough for web browsers eh?

Re:Zero to botched in 60 nanoseconds?

[hairyfeet]

Glad to see I'm not the only one thinking PC resources are there to be used not to just sit there. One of the things I like the most about Windows 7 is that unlike XP my RAM actually is being used for something useful, instead of sitting empty most of the time. I have about 500Mb of my 8Gb free, because thanks to Superfetch Windows knows which programs I use and when and has them waiting in RAM for me.

I fell the same about the GPU, I have a GB of RAM and a fast stream processor sitting there and if I'm not gaming use the thing! But while I have been personally playing with IE9 and it is shaping up to have some cool features, I'm too hooked on FF to give it up. The guy at Mozilla that invented the extension framework needs to be given a company car and a big fat raise, because they couldn't have asked for a better lockin! Once you have a set of extensions you like giving it up is VERY hard. Even my dad who is about as clueless when it comes to PCs as they come is hooked. When he visits a relative that doesn't have FF he calls me to walk them through "giving them something that doesn't suck like that damned blue E" because he simply can't stand the web without ABP and Imagezoom.

Re:A house built on sand cannot stand.

[MikeFM]

Just drop IE support. It's not worth the effort. At least I wouldn't bother with anything alter than the newest version. Unfortunately IE still makes up half the visitors to my none geek sites but non-IE8 has dropped down to under 10% and those users convert to less revenue than other users.. so I've gradually dropped support. Nothing new is being tested for old versions of IE. I'm seeing the dropoff from IE accelerating as a whole. Firefox is at about 25%, Chrome and Safari make up another 15%, and Opera and iPod/iPhone/iPad/Android devices most of the rest. The speed of Chrome and mobile device growth is most impressive. Seriously considering versions formatted to the screen sizes of popular mobile devices.

Re:I seem to have missed why we'd want this

[VGPowerlord]

Side note:

I installed the IE9 Preview just to see what they would run like in there... they run quite fast.

Then again, MS provided demos aren't exactly the best way to test this.

Re:I seem to have missed why we'd want this

[shutdown -p now]

Yeah, it could pass every test suite on the planet, but that doesn't mean they can't *add* their own little bit of kit to "extend" it in an incompatible or even *patented* way

You mean, like every other browser out there does? Have you seen how many "-webkit-*" CSS properties are there?

Re:what about the video tag?

[cjjjer]

Where have you been? The video tag debate is over seems flash won.