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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.'"
will ie9 support that?
We developed a web based game BattleCell that uses Ajax/CSS instead of Flash for all the heavy lifting. We discover at least one new bug in the IE rendering engine every month. Our pile of IE bugs in the back room that we have to track every time we develop a new feature is testament to the dread with which we view this new hardware-based rendering engine. We know what we're doing.
Just last week, we learned that once you have a stack of enough semi-transparent layers (combination of PNGs with alpha channels coupled with DIVs with various opacity CSS settings), IE fails to render the top-most layers. This doesn't happen after 20-30 layers. This happens after 5-7 layers. At first we thought our code was faulty, until we realized that scrolling down such a page with multiple layers will cause text that was previously "invisible" to suddenly be rendered in its specified color... as we kept scrolling, the text would then disappear again. You get the idea.
Obviously, this all works flawlessly in Safari, Chrome, Opera. For IE, we get to re-architect all sorts of work-arounds --a house built on sand.
Why not build the entire browser in OpenGL or DirectX for computers with a capable graphics card?
Why the smoke and mirrors?
See what you wrote above:
So basically instead of just writing a windows app, people are going to write IE-9 specific HTML 5 extended (or enhanced) pages that load only on Windows systems
That.
--
BMO
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?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I tried these canvas-based apps on Windows 7 in various browsers.
The ones I tried work in Firefox 3.6.6, Opera 10.60, and Chrome 5.0.375.99.
On Firefox 3.6.6, they're all horrifically slow.
Opera 10.60 worked a little better than Firefox did, but not by much.
Chrome 5.0.375.99 worked about the same as Opera 10.60 did.
Note: My nVidia drivers are from back in November last year, due to a bug in newer nVidia drivers with the game Shattered Horizons. Not sure if that would affect rendering speeds or not.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
And this time they would do it not by breaking standards, but by implementing them really well.
Those devious bastards, how dare they!
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Uh, well it depends on something that isn't clear to me: Is >canvas< and the specific features thereof they're talking about IE9 specific, or is it part of the html5 standard? If it's part of the standard, but hardware accelerated through IE9, then that's probably okay. Even if it means developers assume an IE9 target and do more with the tag than would be practical to do on non-accelerated browsers. I mean sure IE has a, shall we say, privileged position on Windows, but it's not like other apps can't access the graphics hardware.
If it's IE9-specific extensions to html5, then yeah, that's bullshit.
The enemies of Democracy are
Except that the only way to do so will be to use the standard, w3c provided tags... If other browsers accelerate it to (protip, they're working on that), then that's a win for everyone, no matter what.
We're not talking silverlight here, just plain ole html(5)
Canvas tag is in the HTML 5 proposal
And this time they would do it not by breaking standards,
You really believe this? Really? After Microsoft abandoning its *own* approved ISO standard for the busted ECMA document standard, the one that never passed ISO?
Shill or gullible. You pick.
--
BMO
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe you could take your non-IE9 browser to the demo pages linked from the article you'll be able to see if they're doing something standard or something non-standard.
Here's a link:
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/DeepZoom/Default.html
Rather than telling you what will happen if you go to that page in, say, Safari, I'll let you go ahead and experience it for yourself. Just think of the thrill you'll get when finding that you're totally right that MS just can't do anything to spec, or maybe you'll be thrilled to find that, OMG!!!!, they're adhering to the draft standards as they exist today.
Which do you think it is? The anticipation almost makes you want to pee, doesn't it?
(Next time spend ten seconds to find out before you shoot your mouth off and demonstrate the accuracy of the old saw: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.")
Even worse - they will be victims of new invented features by Microsoft that opens new interesting holes that nobody can think of yet.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
MS is rewarming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Chrome from the late 1990's.
Now we have the cpu, gpu, bandwidth and OS, they can rebuild that walled garden and milk us all dry again.
Pay per play 3d for the masses done MS style.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You mean standards like Flash and other rich content pages that don't make IE choke and take three minutes to load like Firefox?
You mean standards like full screen non-jerky/tearing video?
You mean standards like actually asking you if you want to upgrade instead of starting Firefox and five minutes later finally realizing that its taking so long because its upgrading and didn't tell you then every time you start it it brings up a restore session page along with its two minute loading :Choose your persona page" which takes so long to load because it chokes on "web standards"?
Or do you mean your standards like the fact that I have exactly four tabs open and Firefox is currently using 218,380 K and the plugin-container is using 209,572 K?
Cause my standards call for things to work. Kind of like IE 8 is doing right now with the same four tabs open and only using 91,912 K or RAM while Firefox is now at 216,652 and 213,905
Yes, lets dump ActiveX! Hell, why not just go back to Gopher!
IE9 now passes all of css3info's test suite for CSS3 and HTML5. (That doesn't mean it has 100% support for HTML5/CSS3, just the css3info test suite).
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.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Your ridiculous whining has nothing to do with standards, or with activex.
Why we would want this? The real question is why Microsoft is the one doing this first. What's the point of a canvas tag if we have to go back to rendering everything on the CPU? I have a video card for a reason.
Chrome doesn't use anything that is as cross-platform as XUL, its elements (esp. the engine; yes it's webkit but it's not the exact same version of webkit everywhere) are more local.
Huh? Canvas is canvas. Hardware-accelerated canvas is just faster and smoother to interact with. As a web developer I'm all for hating on IE, but Microsoft has made IE8 fully tolerable and it's looking like IE9 might actually be on the same level of other modern browsers.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
The internet is being viewed on a lot of tablets, phones and netbooks that don't have the hardware support for this. It looks like their share is only going up. I'm sure some dev in a hurry is going to use this feature, but the moment they do they lock out all the new market.
Yay me!
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. Look at what they did with kerberos, or like, *any other standard* they've dealt with. To Microsoft, "standards are for chumps."
Saying "Microsoft is standards compliant THIS time" is just too much to swallow.
Go ahead, softies, mod this one down too. I have more karma than you.
--
BMO
Direct2D? DirectWrite? 15 years ago, we were calling that DirectDraw, and accelerated rasterisation was the hottest thing since sliced time. I guess what goes around comes around, and these kids today will be laughing at the new kids in another 15 years when they discover the wonders of DirectFlatOGram. Also, their Goddamn DirectNoise is too loud on my DirectLawn.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I would try it, but I don't seem to be getting Direct2D rendering... their SVG rotation test page is still really SLOW when I make an image full screen.
Weird thing is, all my addons show up as disabled.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Passing every test suite on the planet now and in the future would keep me happy.
It's fine by me if they add bits, as long as they correctly support the existing standards, allowing the designers to create content that works on all borwsers. In a fast evolving browsers world like we have today, added bits have to be pretty convincing to make designers adopt them so fast that the other browsers cannot addapt.
I should note that this is after I set the font directwrite mode to true and font rendering mode to 6.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Uh no, this is a way of coding cross platform, cross browser applications that run on any platform. All MS are pushing here is that IE9 is especially fast at rendering them. It'll take not very long for all the others to catch up.
You're forgetting fast here. Remember Active-X? Microsoft supported HTML well back in the day, and extended it with their own active-x... Result, hundreds of websites that wouldn't work cross platform because they used active-x, not html.
You have a GPU generally for accelerating 3D things. What microsoft is doing is also accelerating the 2D stuff. For 3D, it's widely expected that WebGL will become the standard for drawing to a canvas, and as it's so so so similar to OpenGL ES 2.0, it's highly unlikely to not be hardware accelerated.
Microsoft finally caved and built the canvas tag! ActiveX: Bonk with radioactive danger signs. Silverlight: Bonk. SVG? Meh, retained mode scenes with tags all over again. Souped up VML. I'm going to give that a Bonk too (even though it was hardware accelerated).
But canvas, now that's a pixel buffer: simple and beautiful! Now we are *talking*. DING DING DING!
Microsoft's building in canvas is a huge concession that they are losing mindshare to HTML5. And what they're doing is half right by building theirs faster and all micro-optimized and kernel-hooked as they love to do.
But this won't save them, they won't recapture the mojo. Well... that is, not until they backport these new HTML5 features to XP. Here's my take: adding features to an IE that is locked to Windows 7 does not make consumers want to buy Windows 7. Not when it is far simpler for the consumer to install a competing browser that runs on XP (and earlier.) I will go as far as to say that adding canvas to Windows 7's IE is really just advertising new features in the competition's browsers.
I love this canvas tag move by Microsoft, and its far overdue! But they're not back in the game until they stop all this nonsense and backport IE9 to XP (and, heck, Win2K while you're at it!) If your retort is "oh it costs too much to support, oh the API's have changed, oh you should upgrade your 9 year old turd of an OS!". C'mon. Cost? API's? We're talking about moneybags Microsoft here! They can do whatever they want; I have no pity for them when or if they fail due to another botched marketing plan and neither should you. And I will not upgrade my XP/Server 2003 until the reboots get faster on Windows 7. It takes my friend 5 minutes on cherry hardware to get a usable desktop after reboot, and his harddrive is always doing something in the background when nothing is going on! On my XP, the harddrive is quiet unless I am doing something with it, the CPU is idle unless I do something.
Upon further reflection over canvas ... Here's a thought Microsoft, maybe I can meet you half way. How's about backporting canvas to IE7/8 but with no hardware acceleration? This way you can sell the merits of a Windows 7+IE9 upgrade. See, I can be reasonable. :)
Direct2D is for Vista and Win7 only. Which begs the question: what the hell was GDI for?
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
to be honest i'm happy to see this whole thing where they're competing without any crutches or advantages, i have nothing against microsoft except their abusing those things, if they make a better browser based on it's own merits then more power to them, about time. if they win then decide it's time to extend, then fuck them, they're gonna get some other company like mozilla screw them over again and it's gonna be a long road back, just like the last time.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
which mods? the downs or the ups? you do realise that it could have been down or up modded since your post? you do realise that what you have just said is basically irrelevant *even as you clicked submit* because it's passive aggressive wittiness makes it indistinguishable from white noise?
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
You seem badly misinformed as to what ActiveX is. It's a plugin API, serving exactly the same purpose as the Netscape-derived plugin API that Firefox, Opera, and Chrome use. It's a way to run binary code in the browser window. Flash uses an ActiveX control, for example.
Now, the fact that there was a time when the default security on the plugin API was very poor (meaning any website could run any ActiveX that was installed, and many of them weren't properly secured) is undeniable, but come on, IE6 is almost 10 years old... MS will never fully live down its bad products, but that doesn't mean that they won't learn from them. These days, you have to specifically approve ActiveX controls, and installing one takes three different clicks - you don't do it by accident. Hell, I implement a basic but functional Flashblock on IE by simply setting the ActiveX control to not allowed on any page save those I specify, meaning it'll work on Pandora and YouTube, and basically nowhere else unless I decide to add permission for a specific site I visit.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/DeepZoom/Default.html
That photo was awesome. Wonder how they took it.
Oddly enough it ran better in IE8 than FF3.6.
People look at GPUs for 3D acceleration because that's both the most noticeable improvement vs. software rendering, and because we're still pushing the limits on GPU 3D capability. However, GPUs are also widely used for 2D acceleration, and have been for many years - since before 3D hardware acceleration in conventional PCs was even available. Things that the GPU commonly does to speed 2D up include cursor rendering, font antialiasing, alpha blending, and more. The Direct2D API is just another way to utilize capabilities that are already present in the hardware, and replaces the legacy DirectDraw API which did the same thing. OpenGL has 2D acceleration capabilities as well.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
So basically instead of just writing a windows app, people are going to write IE-9 specific HTML 5 extended (or enhanced) pages that load only on Windows systems and pretty much perform the same things a windows app would do (hardware accelerated).
It's not "HTML5 extended". It's vanilla HTML5, there's nothing special the app has to do to enjoy accelerated canvas and SVG in IE9.
Consequently, an app written that way is still cross-platform. What's more, IE9 is not the only upcoming browser that's going to offer hardware acceleration - Firefox has it in unstable builds already, as well (though on Windows only so far, IIRC), and I believe Chromium is catching up as well?
In any case, the rationale is the same as why Chrome introduced V8, raising the bar for JavaScript performance in the browser significantly.
The provided demos really specifically test how fast the browser can draw N images (or whatever), with variations (alpha channel, scaling etc). I don't see what's wrong with such a test if you want to specifically test 2D rendering performance.
Eh? What rock have you been sitting under?
CANVAS is a standard HTML5 element.
Hardware acceleration is coming to, or already is in some browsers.
Why would you NOT want this? Microsoft are actually competing for crying out loud, that is like a miracle if i ever saw one.
The only stupid part about all of this is MS don't seem to be backporting IE9 to XP because "Direct2D" is apparently only possible because the pure AWE of Windows 7...
At least, this was the last time i heard about it, they could well be doing it now since they want as many people away from IE6, which is plain not going to happen since they seem incapable of understanding exactly WHY people still use IE6!
The only people who still have to suffer IE6 is businesses who Microsoft got stuck in the ActiveX trap, which they then killed...
I love that they are adding HWA to it, especially considering how i will be building something around CANVAS pretty soon. IE9 isn't all that bad actually. I wouldn't even mind if they were using that browser anymore as it passes a fair amount of standards to the point where worrying over layout is a very small issue now.
I still personally hate it, the UI is awful.
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?
http://www.xrez.com/yose_proj/Yose_process.html
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I'm not sure but it looks like Norway. They probably took like 20 photos and stitched them together.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Why we would want this? The real question is why Microsoft is the one doing this first.
Being first at something is good for PR, and implicitly casts shadow on the competition. For example, Chrome was first at JITed lighting-fast JavaScript, and that gave it a hefty popularity boost among web developers, and forced other browser vendors to scramble to reimplement their JS engines.
At the same time, canvas (and SVG) acceleration is pretty much pristine ground - and it is also easy to show off with cute demos...
Every time I hear "hardware accelerated" associated with the browser, I feel as though they have essentially given up trying to unbloat their browser and operating system so they are trying to make up for it by pushing off such tasks to the hardware. ... Other browsers get by just fine without hardware acceleration.
So fine, indeed, that Safari has already added it, and Firefox, Chrome and Opera are all scrambling to implement it.
Seriously, have you even seen the demos? It's not about "needs acceleration to be as fast as other browsers" at all. It's about "5-10x faster than browsers without acceleration".
The ammount of wrong on the IE team is amazing. I am looking at the test, and I want to murder these dudes.
Canvas is not create to replace Flash, to create fullpages in canvas. This is a idiotic idea, and if some people run with it, we are trully fucked. Canvas is to enhance our hability to create webpages with things that nowdays are not possible. This is things like graphics of sales and useage dinamically written. Using canvas to create a page mutch like flash, adds nothing to the web, actually make it worse.
The IE team is the people with the worst ideas of the internet. Is a dangerous grupo of people, that seems activatelly tryiing to make the internet a bad location :-(
-Woof woof woof!
Hardware-accelerated graphics are not a lock-in strategy, just like JIT-ing javascript engines aren't one either. IE9 will run the exact same code as the other guys, it will just run it faster. Notice how these demos are all compatible with all browsers, but just outline how much faster IE's implementation of the same standards is. It's up to the other guys to innovate and catch up. Firefox 4 will have hardware-accelerated graphics, Safari 5 already has it on the mac. Chrome will need to play catch-up for once.
Somebody has to go first with all of these things. The good thing with IE9 is that microsoft isn't playing the proprietary card. You may question their motives, but you can't question the results. IE9 (preview version) is a fast modern browser, with excellent standards support, and few proprietary extensions, aside from legacy support.
Saying "Microsoft is standards compliant THIS time" is just too much to swallow.
Cognitive dissonance hurts, but IE9 really is supporting standards well, focusing on open API's, and abandoning proprietary extensions. In IE7, 8 and now 9 they've gradually been disabling proprietary API's, and IE9 in IE9 mode will only have vendor extensions that follow the best practices we've come to expect from all the browser makers (vendor-specific name space, implementing features based on published draft specs).
ActiveX is a plugin API, the other guys all had one (netscape had NPAPI). What people blame microsoft for is ActiveX actually being successful, not the concept of browser plugins. ActiveX was used in apps to do stuff you couldn't do in HTML (and still can't do). Why not hold microsoft accountable for the stuff they did that was actually out of the ordinary? The main thing microsoft did wrong was not the development of proprietary features, but rather the complete lack of development between 2001 and 2006.
True, but was it really necessary to introduce the tag? :P
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
HTML5 scares me, because I think it will lead to a farm more annoying web. For example I run Firefox because of Flashblock. I've not yet found anything like it in IE (the ones I have found work for crap). So why do I block Flash? Because I am an anti-flash zealot? No. Because it slows down browsing? No, my system is a heavy hitting quad core, it can spare lots of power for shiny effects. So why then?
Because Flash is used for the power of annoying. All over the damn web Flash it used for ads in an extremely annoying fashion. The ads that block everything out and move all over your damn page and so on. I don't want to see that shit. So, I block Flash, except on sites I want it on, and the web suddenly gets way less annoying.
HTML5 means that they'll be able to do all this shit, and even MORE annoying stuff, and I can't escape it. It'll be an inherent part of the web.
Not at all looking forward to that.
DirectDraw was just basic graphics acceleration. Mostly what DD offered was the ability to write things quickly to video memory, as one could do in DOS. It had support for blitting, calling page flips, and so on. More or less the kind of stuff you could do when you had low level access to everything in the system, but which you couldn't really do with a GUI in the way directly.
This all got deprecated by default with the advances in Direct3D and so on. You could just use a texture quad to do all that to the extent it was still needed. Most programs these days aren't concerned with quickly pushing a bunch of raw pixels to the screen.
Ok well Direct2D is a vector graphics API. It is to allow you to design 2D scenes that scale well to any size, and then its partner DirectWrite handles all the nice n' flashy font stuff. Part of the idea is to be able to easily do resolution independent user interfaces and such. DirectDraw wasn't for that at all, and the GDI isn't all that well suited for it. Direct2D is easy interfaces to allow you to draw custom, scalable, content. Could all be done with D3D probably, and you need a card with some 3D features backing it up to use, but that would be rather complex.
The basic hardware accelerated rasterization is something that has just been assumed for years which is why you don't hear about it. The GDI would make use of graphics cards to accelerate basic drawing. However the new features are all about doing more than just speeding up putting pixels on the screen. Rather you have the graphics card actually do some heavy lifting and composite the image together. THAT allows for cool new 2D features, like truly resolution independent stuff. You tell the GPU "I want a line from here to here," it takes care of all the details.
What good is moderation and power for if you can't abuse it?
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Actually, I gotta say - that sounds like a browser that would find support here in our community. Hell, I'd use it! :)
"Gratuitous complexity is akin to chaos" - True Vox
Looks very nice and is even quite smooth on my sucky laptop with intel GPU. I got around 24 fps average when scrolling at a not very fast speed in a 1140 x 628 window. I'm running firefox 3.6.6 on ubuntu 10.04
What's wrong is that MS made them, whether the demos are legit or not is irrelevant, see. We must attack MS at every opportunity, whether it's deserved and rational, or not.
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
This means the first virus to infect a GPU is not that far away.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
And if you're a Firefox fan, there are quite a few moz- CSS properties, too. But I guess that's OK, as neither WebKit or Firefox are from MS... :-P
GDI was designed to work with any sort of plotting device, such as printers. The shortcomings of GDI were the reason that the HAL's for windows display devices were designed, the first of which was WinG, and while later incarnations of GDI gave greater performance and some hardware acceleration support, there are now many hardware features that simply cannot be incorporated into GDI.
Things like texture mapping, gradients, alpha blending, etc.. are just not efficient with GDI, and supporting them would only be for a single kind of plotting device (video cards) so it just doesnt make sense to roll those things up into GDI when there are HAL's specifically tailored for those purposes.
"His name was James Damore."
Haha, thanks for making me go to the link.
The waterfall (Yosemite falls) was were I proposed to my Fiancée in March. Brought a smile to my day.
Actually, the problem is that there is such a long history of dishonesty, that there is an equally long history of skepticism and mistrust.
Will the other browsers be able to do the same easily (and for other operating systems), or are there only Windows drivers available for much of this hardware? Many of the graphics cards around now under Linux seem to be only partially supported under Linux, and many of the drivers that do have hardware acceleration seem flaky/leaky.
I don't give a flying fuck about Microsoft and most of their business failures over the past few years have been their own fault, but I do like the fact that they are also, under great pressure of becoming irrelevant, moving towards a standards compliant browser.
Oh, you mean the css properties that are made for developers and may change at any time screwing over your site if you foolishly use them? No thanks.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
it works really well on an old MacBook without dedicated 3D graphics (Intel something)
Dennis Onstenk
Nobody has ANY problems if ms enhances css with ie- settings. really. they are welcome!
It's more or like, what you can do with those webkit- and moz- settings. like using css3 features already now. and so on. You can enhance specific browsers without breaking standards.
But MS does not enhance it with obviously local flavour, like naming their own finetuning tags "ms-" or "ie9-" or sth. They do crazy stupid exceptional stuff, that does not reveal itself and reinterprete standard tags breaking compatibility.
And that was horrible and we hope all, they never repeat it.
While nonstandard addons are a problem, nonstandard addons which aren't documented for other people to implement are much worse.
Many of the nonstandard css properties are in-development implementations of new standard features which don't properly comply to the standards yet... Having the beta features under their own properties until they're working correctly is arguably a lot better than having straight broken implementations.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
There's nothing wrong with their graphic API. If you use DirectX or OpenGL to write the canvas element, it will be hardware accelerated. But like all mainstream operating systems, Windows has several graphic APIs. Some are hardware accelerated, and some are not. Thats not a thing specific to Windows. Get a grip.
So... have you tested that in the ie9 tech preview and filed a bug if it hasn't already been fixed, yet? or are you just uselessly shaking your fist from a basement?
Not to mention that your average video chipset can do the same job with much less power usage, since it's more heavily optimized for pipe-line based jobs. And since you can set things up in video memory, and then leave it there, you save on system resources, since you're using less of the system's bus to transfer rendered content.
And let's not forget what we can do with the cpu power since it's now freely available.
Pushing stuff off to the video card is just an overall win.
IE 9 doesn't work on 72% of the machines out there and it never will. It doesn't run on Windows XP. How standard does such a fringe browser have to be?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You mean like a three way blink tag?
however I really don't think FireFox will ever be faster in this area exactly because of the overhead of its cross platform nature, IE on the other hand, can utilize DirectX & Windows API
How is utilizing DirectX and the Windows API going to make IE9 faster than FF on Linux?
Or doesn't that count?
No, I mean stuff like this which people use today already to make iPhone/iPad-specific websites that break everywhere else.
It's funny how history repeats... MS has considered "-webkit-text-size-adjust" so popular that IE in Windows Phone 7 will support it, despite it not being any kind of standard. Can you say "document.all" and "innerHTML"?
Not every property that starts with "-webkit-" is part of the upcoming standards. Some are pure extensions, including some very commonly used ones.
In any event, they're not part of the standard now, and they're already being used, breaking portability.
I'm not seeing the problem here when using Firefox on that link.
Extensions like -moz were made for testing and use in addons. The addons are hard wired against specific Firefox version numbers giving the devs flexibility in their implementation of their test css extensions between versions. You use them in webpages without fallbacks, you're just asking to shoot yourself in the foot. These things are likely to change or disappear in the future.
MS never removes their extensions for backward compatibility. If they added a -ms-css extension and some big webpages started to use it, they wouldn't remove it for at least 10 years.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Fff can't moderate since I posted, but thanks for posting this. I actually tried the demos in Firefox and they were pretty fast, I just assumed it was because I have a nice processor though.
I'm not seeing the problem here when using Firefox on that link.
Um, it's not a demo page. It's a book which describes how to make such websites.
I have a GPU for accelerating anything a GPU can accelerate (3D, 2D, physics, video decoding..).
Many? Ati has support. Nvidia has support. Intel has support. For what the browser is doing, you'd have to struggle to find a video chipset that *isn't* supported.
You are linking about future CSS3 tech. Read http://www.jungus.com/b/2010/01/03/what-you-need-to-know-about-behavioral-css. The big issue is if Safari and co don't deprecate their extensions when an official W3C version become available. HTML5 is where we will see this. You do remember that Safari brought us the W3C canvas tag, right?
These Apple css extensions were originally for the iPhone apps that were only supposed to be written in html if I remember. My how things change.
The Webkit guys have not shown me anything that overly makes me thing they are trying to speed us toward a proprietary web yet. They have done mostly the opposite. Fixing their acid test scores and sharing new technologies with the W3C so they can be standardized.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Microsoft is getting that many licenses, yes. So many people are trying to say that that means the thing is popular. Vista licensed 10 Million units a month in the face of a global recession. What does this mean? That license figures have nothing to do with adoption rates for Windows versions, nor for popularity of the software. It's just a measure of how effectively the company has cowed the industry that enterprises automatically get a license seat of their latest software under Software Assurance and most OEMs purchase a license for every machine shipped whether the machine will even run the software or not, or even if the end-user gets that license. It's a measure of the pent-up demand in a market that avoided purchasing hardware to avoid Vista and just can't wait any more. It's also not new money: Microsoft would pretty much get that money even if W7 was a blank disc.
Where is W7 adoption at really? 13.7%. That's doing pretty well but 1/3 of that was taken from Vista - the widely reviled product people can't get off of fast enough. As a whole Windows share is off by 2% in the past year. That's not a free-fall, but it's not a move in Microsoft's favor either.
The article is about IE9. IE9 will not install on Windows XP. Enterprises looking to migrate to IE9 services and applications cannot do so until they migrate to Windows 7. Application developers can't target the market for services that leverage IE9 technologies until the market moves to a platform that supports IE9. It's a catch-22. It's a real problem and you shouldn't pooh-pooh it.
On the other hand, other standards based browsers use the latest technologies and run on whatever platform you're running, so they make the better target for the application developer.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
People hate me for saying this but, MS JVM in first incarnations was perfect. Good performance, the stuff worked, it was well integrated to OS and was using OS features.
What happened to a point that Sun sued them and won? They "extended" it putting windows only features, completely breaking compatibility. I lived that nightmare just months ago when I naively tried to make a favor to a business by upgrading to Sun Java latest. Their intranet broke and we had to hunt for unsupported (by law!) MS JVM to install it to XP. Thank God some guys still keep it on their websites (including 3 trojaned versions we had to ignore).
That is just Sun Java. There are several other examples. MS is capable of supporting standards. They are also capable of influencing them to a point that, nothing will work except on Windows. That is the part people are afraid.
Which "mainstream operating systems" would that be? Neither on OS X, UNIX, or Linux do you have to do anything special in order to get hardware acceleration of 2D graphics if the hardware and drivers support it. I got my first hardware accelerated 2D graphics card for X11 more than 20 years ago and even back then, it just accelerated all apps through the existing APIs.
Not anymore. Non-Windows marketshare is great enough that most websites intended to attract an audience don't include platform-specific elements. We waited a long time for that, you know.
I noticed something strange. In the thumbnails on the bottom. I click the right-most thumbnail and it zooms in at hi-rez. Any of the other thumbnails zoom in blurry. If I wait, it eventually loads the hi-rez. Bug or....?
Anyways, it's too slow to be usable.
11Mbit down
Firefox 3.6
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
agreed
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
that doesn't mean they can't *add* their own little bit of kit to "extend" it in an incompatible or even *patented* way.
Adding extensions to CSS is totally acceptible, even encouraged. All the browser vendors do it. As long as they do it using the blessed means built into the W3C standard there is no problem with that. It is precisely through such means that the standards actually move forward.
You are linking about future CSS3 tech.
Like I said, not all "-webkit-*" properties are part of the CSS3 standard, or even drafts. In fact, not all of them are even in WebKit trunk - some of that stuff Apple keeps to itself. I dare you to find "text-size-adjust" in any CSS3 draft. While you're at it, RTFM, and pay attention to numerous references to "optimizing for iPhone". You may also find this discussion on W3 mailing lists interesting.
And that is something that is heavily used already, not some abstract future problem.
So, yes, it really is "embrace & extend" all over again, and this time Apple is doing it. It's just that they've got awesome marketing, so much so that most geeks are absolutely convinced that it is all about HTML5 and standards in general.
now use it in ie9. its much faster, quite usable.
and thats the point in making html demos. you can compare browsers on their rendering, speed and smoothness.
not like the horribly shitty and locked down apple demos.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
The fact that all the HTML 5 stuff that I have tried that were not provided by MS makes me wonder if these are legit.
That said, the asteroids one they linked to ran as fast as a native app in my chrome nightly build (I use the nightly build because they come in a self contained zip file which allows me to get around the no-install restrictions from my work which still uses ie6)
http://www.kevs3d.co.uk/dev/asteroids/
Euugh. I'm sure that demo could be a lot faster in other browsers. Aren't they doing anything sneaky in the background code?
I am not devoid of humor.
That doesn't make sense. Since when do cross-platform apps *have to* be any slower than platform-specific apps? Sure, they may run better or worse among different platforms, but that's a different comparison than the one phizi0n was making.
I am not devoid of humor.
Believe what you want. Safari and Firefox have been pulling which direction the CSS level 3 standard was going by creating live examples. Given the background of Webkit on supporting W3C code, the size of webkit share market share as compared to Firefox and Explorer, and the fervor that extensions have been happening, things call for cautious optimism. Not tin foil hats.
Do you remember the opacity css attribute? All modern browsers support -opacity now. Safari went from -khtml-opacity to -webkit-opacity to -opacity. You're playing with fire as long as you do not use the W3C official equivalent. Speaking of which, have you seen all the depricated mozilla css styles lately?
Just like the mozilla equivalents, the Safari equivalents were mostly created for internal usage. Why the hell do people think Apple was seriously pushing html as an alternative to native application development for the iphone? Does no one remember that Mac OS X dashboard widgets are written in html too? Selective memories I guess... Not really any different than the usage of the Mozilla extensions.
I'll say it again, but cautious optimism is called for. You act like a tin foil hat and people will ignore you.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Uh, well it depends on something that isn't clear to me: Is >canvas< and the specific features thereof they're talking about IE9 specific, or is it part of the html5 standard? If it's part of the standard, but hardware accelerated through IE9, then that's probably okay. Even if it means developers assume an IE9 target and do more with the tag than would be practical to do on non-accelerated browsers. I mean sure IE has a, shall we say, privileged position on Windows, but it's not like other apps can't access the graphics hardware.
If it's IE9-specific extensions to html5, then yeah, that's bullshit.
All the new IE9 features they've showcased are in open standards and already implemented interoperably by other browsers. IE9's <canvas> demos work perfectly fine in all other browsers – but they're much slower due to the lack of hardware acceleration. Actually, IE9's Standards Mode even removes some proprietary IE extensions from earlier versions (e.g., JS extensions; scroll down to "Same Script, Same Markup").
Microsoft is now actually trying to beat the other browsers by being actually better, as they did with IE6, so they can regain lost market share. They have the advantage that their browser only works on one platform, so they can rely on Vista/7-only APIs like Direct2D and DirectX 10 while other browsers need to support OpenGL, DirectX 9, etc.
In other words: be afraid. The enemy has learned from its defeat.
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
Who cares about Linux, we're talking about Windows, when the 93% of the world talks, the other 1% should shut the fuck up.
a) Firefox is also faster on Mac than IE8, and I suspect IE9.
b) Then maybe that 93% should "talk" by not simply accepting the OS that comes with Their PCs.
Yep, so that would make Firefox faster, wouldn't it?
I don't actually mind "embrace & extend", truth be told, so long as the basic standard is supported. After all, this has been the case with C/C++ compilers pretty much for as long as they existed - with the FOSS one, GCC, offering perhaps the widest variety of extensions - and the sky hasn't fallen. In some cases, useful extensions have propagated from one compiler to others (e.g. "#pragma once").
I do see a problem in the fact that some extensions are offered that enable people to "optimize" websites for a particular platform - this reeks of "best viewed in IE6" all over again. But this is more of an artifact of mobile Safari's disproportional market share today than issue with extensions as such.
My point is that it doesn't make sense to criticize MS for providing HTML extensions in IE, and not retiring their old extensions, while completely ignoring the fact that other browser vendors - and most notably Apple - do the same. It was in reply to this post.
And how is Internet Explorer 8 faster than Firefox on Mac?
I agree that we don't need another "best viewed in" web built up, but you're comparing apples to oranges.
It all comes down to MS having their history which makes people more afraid of them. Not to mention that their rendering engine is closed sourced and not cross-platform. I can't think of a worse place for new technologies to appear from. If IE starts having extensions, people can't even see the source code to see how they did it. They haven't even been working with the W3C on standards since around IE5 from what I can tell.
MS doesn't even try to fake being a team player.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Firefox runs on Mac OS; Internet Explore 8 doesn't (not natively, anyway, there's always Boot Camp).
that is a comparison.
Hey, Microsoft could make IE8 native, but they chose not too. As for comparing a native with a virtualized application, if the only way to run the app is virtually, then yes, it's as fair a comparison as one can get.
Do Windows box users still have to wait for IE to catch up with Web standards?
I don't know what idiotic platform you use, but on Windows - and many others - you don't have to use IE. So in answer to your question, No.
Really people!!! Don't we want to use something that will work across all platforms?????
We can, how would MS' implementation of the canvas element in IE possibly stop you from using a cross-platform browser?
But today we are working with multi-gigahertz multi-core processors on nearly every machine. It's truly a lot of processing power. Is it being wasted?
Other browsers get by just fine without hardware acceleration. Why does MSIE need it?
Utilising the display hardware for rendering the display sounds like a pretty logical and effective use to me. I'd say it would be a waste not using the specific hardware for it's intended purpose.
It's HTML5...any retard can go look at the source to see if there's any shenanigans going on.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Like they are adhering to some specs and completely fucking with others (that aren't in their hand crafted test suite)? I doubt it.