Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 9 RC

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate. The new RC build includes a Tracking Protection feature, which gives users the option to control what third-party site content can track them when they're online, as well as a new ActiveX filtering option, which allows users to turn on/off ActiveX plug-ins. Best of all, Microsoft has addressed what was arguably the biggest complaint with the new version: if you want your tabs on a separate line from the address box, there's now an option to turn that on from the right click menu at the top of the browser. At the same time, IE9 RC is significantly faster than the beta version. Furthermore, many site rendering issues have been fixed, although we can't say that it's working perfectly. Last but not least, the new build includes hundreds of bug fixes."

Comments

Does it support...

[Lendrick]

...OGG and VP8 out of the box now?

Re:Does it support...

[sakdoctor]

No.
But then again, firefox has a show stopping html5 audio bug, which renders it useless for probably most applications.
It doesn't respect the preload="none" or depreciated autobuffer attributes. If you have a long list of OGG, such as a playlist, FF will hammer your server until it gets a header for each one.

Re:Does it support...

[sakdoctor]

I should add, the browser is fishing for X-Content-Duration headers.
If you don't serve them, you'll get an orbital bombardment of '206 partial content' requests, as it attempts auto-discovery on every single track.

Re:Does it support...

[GrBear]

...OGG and VP8 out of the box now?

Do your parents, grandparents, or 95% of the population care? I'd wager not..

Re:Does it support...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a codec installed in windows, yes.

Re:Does it support...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then no html5 audio for them.

On pure browser statistics, including segregation by version number, I'd serve OGG.

Re:Does it support...

[C_amiga_fan]

I have 500 gigabytes of torrented songs & approximately 700 movies on my USB drive, and not one file uses those codecs. So I could care less if IE supports them.

Re:Does it support...

[Johann Lau]

wait, what? you watch downloaded movies in your browser?

Re:Does it support...

[JackieBrown]

But then again, firefox has a show stopping html5 audio bug, which renders it useless for probably most applications.

Oh cool. Can you post the link for the release candidate for Firefox 4?

Re:Does it support...

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd based on that, I'd be serving .WAV, not ogg or mp3. However, we will most likely be serving .mp3 and let the firefox guys cry themselves a river (or get a plug in).

Re:Does it support...

[Lendrick]

I'm a web developer. When I put up audio and video files, I'd like to be able to put up one single format and have every browser be able to play it, and do so without bringing netbooks to their knees with flash.

Re:Does it support...

[Anonymous Coward]

...OGG and VP8 out of the box now?

If you have the codec IE9 will support it. But where are these defined as web standards again?

Re:Does it support...

[sortius_nod]

The Fail Whale called, he wants his job back from you.

Re:Does it support...

[jellomizer]

OGG will never get mainstream. Get over it.

Re:Does it support...

[starofale]

Firefox 4.0 is still in beta https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/

Re:Does it support...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd serve MP3. It's the de facto standard for audio, everybody knows what it is and it will work on all software and hardware players out there.

Re:Does it support...

[smash]

Do any significant number of sites require this?

Re:Does it support...

[bonch]

Nobody cares about OGG or VP8, least of all Windows users.

When can I get the final version?

[mosb1000]

When will I be able to get the final version? I'm not normally a Microsoft fan, but I use IE a lot at work and I am legitimately excited about the prospect of a new version. I wish they would release a Mac version.

Re:When can I get the final version?

[uglyduckling]

Why on earth do you want a Mac version? That's like putting a Skoda steering wheel in your BMW.

Re:When can I get the final version?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Microsoft products religiously for years[1], and really appreciate the effort that Redmond put into their code[2], but over the last year or two I've switched to Google Chrome for all my browsing needs simply because it's fast and runs on all my different platforms. I wish Microsoft would port IE to Android, or Ubuntu, or Mac OS/X, or even make it work properly on Windows, since I still have a Win XP box in emulation somewhere.

[1] From 1995-1996.
[2] Seriously.

Re:When can I get the final version?

[mosb1000]

So that I can work from home without feeling the wrath of an unsupported browser. I wouldn't have to use it all the time.

Re:When can I get the final version?

[commodore6502]

Camino (firefox) for newer Macs
Opera or iCab for older Macs
Classilla (seamonkey 1) for pre-OS 10 Macs
- Never IE

Re:When can I get the final version?

[commodore6502]

>>>feeling the wrath of an unsupported browser.

Use Opera 10 or 11 with "mask as internet explorer" turned on. Problem solved. It won't look like IE but it will act like IE and display the same pages.

You can also use Opera's online web-stored bookmarks to access your work links from home (and vice-versa). And the built-in email/torrent clients to do stuff in the background.

Re:When can I get the final version?

[knarf]

That's like putting a Skoda steering wheel in your BMW.

You mean one of these?

"The in gear acceleration times are 50-70 mph in 5.6 seconds, quicker than BMW's 330i which takes 6.0 seconds. 20-40 mph in 2.4 seconds is as quick as the Lotus Elise 111R. Despite this the Fabia vRS can achieve better than 6.2 L/100 km (46 mpg-imp; 38 mpg-US). If driven carefully some drivers have experienced MPG rates of 65-70 mpg over long periods. The Fabia VRS has a top speed of approximately 130 mph (210 km/h)."

Nothing wrong with that I'd say?

Re:When can I get the final version?

[bloodhawk]

The IE and Skoda comparison seems appropriate, But Mac and BMW?? I would have thought 1960's combi van would be a better comparison.

Re:When can I get the final version?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, one of these:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki?search=koda+Estelle

Re:When can I get the final version?

[dudpixel]

When will I be able to get the final version? I'm not normally a Microsoft fan, but I use IE a lot at work and I am legitimately excited about the prospect of a new version. I wish they would release a Mac version.

excited about a new version of IE?

you need to get out more...

Re:When can I get the final version?

[juasko]

You can also have Safari to pose as IE windows. You might need to turn on developer menubar in preferences advanced. But then you can pose as many different webbrowser.

But I assume, that it's not about blocking other browser but about they supporting only IE functions, or IE specially coded incompatibility functions. You know, MS tried to have their own HTML standard.

Re:When can I get the final version?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>feeling the wrath of an unsupported browser.

Use Opera 10 or 11 with "mask as internet explorer" turned on. Problem solved. It won't look like IE but it will act like IE and display the same pages.

It will? The inhouse business applications made for IE using activex etc. will work on Opera?

Re:When can I get the final version?

[tehcyder]

Why on earth do you want a Mac version? That's like putting a Skoda steering wheel in your BMW.

If I had a Mac, which I don't because I hate Apple, I would rather have any other browser in the world than Safari. My wife accidentally installed it when she downloaded iTunes onto her Windows laptop, and having played with it, it is without doubt the most horrible piece of software (apart from fucking iTunes itself, and Quicktime of course) ever to appear on a home computer.

IMHO.

Re:When can I get the final version?

[tehcyder]

The IE and Skoda comparison seems appropriate, But Mac and BMW?? I would have thought 1960's combi van would be a better comparison.

I'd have thought a shiny two seater "sports" car with a one litre engine and an iPad slot.

Re:When can I get the final version?

[drinkypoo]

That depends on where it is made. We had Golfs made in Mexico for a while and they were some of the least reliable cars ever produced. They switched to building exactly the same car in Wolfsberg (the original VW plant... VW owns SEAT, Skoda, Audi, and many others, being the world's largest automotive group) and it became one of the most reliable vehicles ever produced. Skodas are known for disintegrating.

Re:When can I get the final version?

[knarf]

Skodas are known for disintegrating.

Humbug. Here in Sweden we have mandatory inspections on motor vehicles and trailers. Those inspections could until recently (in true Swedish form) only be performed by a state-mandated partly privately owned commercial entity ('Aktiebolag Svensk Bilprovning' or 'publicly traded company Swedish Car Inspections'), giving this company a good overview of brand- and model-specific problems. They publish these statistics on the web, making it possible to compare on overall reliability as well as specific model-related problems. Skoda actually turns out to be more reliable than average and more reliable than VW - this also goes for corrosion resistance.

If you read Swedish or use an online translator you can have a look at the current incarnation of Bilprovningen's comparison site for more information on this subject.

Now if you really want to see some problematic cars, have a look at eg. Chrysler, Chevrolet, Jeep, Pontiac (you might start to notice a pattern), Landrover, Renault and others. If it comes from Asia it generally does allright. If it comes from Europe it varies (Renault is worse than average) but most do allright. If it comes from the US it generally has more problems than average.

What's MS up to?

[qmaqdk]

There are two strategies MS can play:

• Old school IE: Make own standards to try to vendor lock-in people with the MS platform
• Standards compliant IE: Try to closely adhere to standards and basically render like all the other browsers

I don't think the first strategy will work anymore. People learned what IE6 really costs in the long run. That leaves strategy two. But why bother? It a huge investment development wise, and I don't see them gaining anything from it without the vendor lock-in. So is this just "we want a browser too", or what?

Re:What's MS up to?

[Locke2005]

You're forgetting option 3: Leverage Windows 7 sales by providing a free browser that only works with Windows 7, then telling everybody about all the gaping security holes that exist in all previous versions. Standard MS marketing tactic. Hopefully MS is moving away from the "embrace and extend" philosophy it has used in the past.

Re:What's MS up to?

[Kryptonut]

Perhaps because all services / "accelerators" offered by Internet Explorer point at other MS services by default and the average user will click "use defaults"? Great way to up your usage statistics for your own services.

Re:What's MS up to?

[dave562]

You almost got it right. It's more like, "Provide a free browser that fully supports .Net so that the thousands of developers who develop against the Microsoft stack (SQL Server, Sharepoint, etc) will have a stable target to aim for."

I get the sense that as a company, Microsoft could give two shits about which browser home users are using. They do care about their developers though. They do care about the enterprise. They need a known platform for their developers to target. That is why they need IE.

Re:What's MS up to?

[alvinrod]

Easy, point the default search at Bing and grow their market share in search without having to improve their search.

That's the reason that makes the most business sense. I have a feeling that the real reason is, like you alluded to, because Balmer thinks they need to have a browser.

Re:What's MS up to?

[shutdown -p now]

Provide a free browser that fully supports .Net

How can a browser "support .NET"?

Re:What's MS up to?

[Anonymous Coward]

They have to continue to support the IE engine in some form because of all the 3rd party windows apps that make use of IE's rendering engine and expect the libraries to be installed somewhere. I guess they might as well throw in the end user interface with it.

Of course they could just phase out IE and keep the legacy IE libs buried somewhere for backwards compatibility. Backwards compatibility is important to MS especially in the corporate world. It's both a pro and a con.

Re:What's MS up to?

[KingMotley]

<script type="text/c#"> ...
?

Re:What's MS up to?

[dave562]

It hooks into the .Net APIs that are on the client OS. I'm thinking about it in terms of a lot of the applications that I have dealt with over the last couple of years. They all seem to be built in .Net, and leverage IIS and SQL. The client workstations all need .Net and IIS for the application to work.

I think it is a lot like what Google is doing with Chrome. Google has a vision about what applications and services they want to offer via their platform. Rather than pin their hopes on "browser vendors" to adopt specific ways of doing things, Google made their own browser. That browser supports the functionality that Google devs need.

Re:What's MS up to?

[spells]

The client workstations all need .Net and IIS for the application to work.

Find a new company. Quick.

Re:What's MS up to?

[caywen]

I think given the work they've done to bring IE9 standards compliance up to par, it's more the second one.

Also, vendor lock-in to a browser just isn't a reality anymore. IE might always be part of Windows and thus gain wider adoption on that platform, but given that smartphones (of which MS has like 2% market share) have outsold laptops, and both tablets and Macs are poised to further erode the PC market share, web developers would be crazy to code to IE-specific features, even in intranet applications.

It's really a different world than the IE6/Windows XP world of almost a decade ago, and I think IE9 reflects a welcome attitude change.

Re:What's MS up to?

[dave562]

Right. Let me go ahead and leave a multi-million dollar firm that does business with the SEC, DoJ and just about every major law firm out there because the best document review and eDiscovery tools are built around a Microsoft stack. I don't care who makes the tools I use. I care that the tools get the job done. FYI - I have a bunch of LAMP and WAMP servers up too.

Re:What's MS up to?

[tgd]

Microsoft is a company made up of hundreds of development groups working on hundreds of products in a dozen divisions.

Most of the people who are on those teams care about the work they're doing, care about the products they release and want to release the best products possible.

So, relative to IE9, what it Microsoft up to? If I had to guess, a hard-working team of engineers, program managers and test engineers are busting their asses to make the best browser they can. They care more about standards than I'd hazard a guess most people on Slashdot do, and they want to make something that gives the best experience there is on the web.

There isn't some grand Microsoft conspiracy. IE6 wans't about vendor lockin, it was about needing to support scenarios that customers were asking for. The younger crowd on here may not remember it, but back in the late 90's, IE was the best browser out there. Microsoft's dev tools were pushing intranet development long before open source tools caught up. These days its easy to look at what people want to do with browsers and say "jeez, I can use XmlHttpRequest, and JSON, and *insert buzzword here* to do it". But in 1998, those technologies *didn't exist*. And, you may be surprised, people weren't any dumber than today. Developers wanted to be able to do the same things people are doing today, and Microsoft provided them. IE6 was a point on that path where they needed to support their corporate customers while trying to match advancing standards. For every web developer griping about standards, there were *paying* enterprise developers who needed the backwards compatibility.

So why does Microsoft need a browser? Because, frankly, developers need the controls. They need the network-level APIs. Lots of parts of Windows need to display HTML content, and no sane OS vendor will leave the security of their system and the functionality of core parts of it to a 3rd party. You could just as easily ask why Apple bothers with Safari!

Thinking it was some thing nefarious is just falling blindly into the anti-Microsoft FUD on places like Slashdot, and doesn't reflect the reality of how IE has progressed over the years.

Re:What's MS up to?

[sootman]

I agree that the "old school" route is no longer a viable option and the progression of MSIE, from 6 to 7 to 8 to 9, shows that the IE team knows it and Corporate accepts this fate and allows the team to release decent browsers. To your question "why bother", that answer has two parts: one, because as a leading tech company with their own OS, they absolutely can't NOT make a browser (think of their image in the tech world if they didn't) and two, because of a slightly different kind of lock-in. If Windows ships with a decent browser, people will stick with it instead of moving to alternatives. This way MS can get a little bit (maybe a lot) of their browser share back--which, besides improving their image, leads to Bing revenue.

Think about it: why did technically-minded people start recommending Firefox to their friends and family? Not because it was more open or more standards-compliant, but because using FF instead of IE meant less calls to come help fix their computer. If Windows ships with a browser that is "good enough" and doesn't generate support calls from friends and family, there won't be nearly as many recommendations to switch. Seriously: if IE truly becomes a good, solid product, its market share (of desktop computers) could grow back to 75% in a few years.

The only thing that remains to be seen is how long traditional desktop computers will be the primary WWW browsing platform. MS is two solid years from having an as-good-as-an-iPad (or even Android) touch interface (if they EVER reach that goal), and that is a BIG head start to give to all their competitors in the modern tablet space.

Re:What's MS up to?

[cyber-vandal]

Sounds like a bit of overkill needing SQL Server, ASP.NET and IIS on a client machine. What applications are these?

Re:What's MS up to?

[dave562]

SQL and IIS are on the back end. The client is just IE with the .Net environment.

Re:What's MS up to?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an ASP.NET developer who uses IIS, SQL Server, .NET etc. and this simply isn't how it works! All those technologies run on the "server-side" and send pure standards compliant HTML,CSS and JavaScript to the client, nothing propriatary such as .NET code. So wweb apps built in .NET can be made to run on anything, Chrome, IE9, FF, iPad, Playstation 3 etc. etc.

Re:What's MS up to?

[westlake]

There are two strategies MS can play: Old school IE: Make own standards to try to vendor lock-in people with the MS platform Standards compliant IE: Try to closely adhere to standards and basically render like all the other browsers

There is a third option:

"Bullet point" compliance. But support for whatever "de-facto" standards evolve as well.

The geek's "open standards" are a highly politicized commitee product and typically finalized about the time the Last Trumpet blows.

That is why Google tried for a pre-emptive strike with WebM.

But it is also why Google has been remarkably soft-spoken about Flash and Microsoft's H.264 extension for Chrome -

and quieter still about HEVC/H.265 - which is only two or three years out.

The target for HEVC is scaleable HD video and theater sound at something like half the bit rate of H.264. That is good news for Netflix. But also for the enterprise which wants to stream HD security video and other content on the corporate intra-web.

The integrated "app" looks like the future for the home user.

You won't launch Netflix, Pandora, Rhapsody, or OnLive gaming through your media PC or your browser, you will launch them through the Universal Remote that serves your Internet enabled HDTV and home theater sound system.

The supporting hardware and codecs used will those which make most sense to the content provider like Disney and the brand name hardware manufacturers - industrial giants like Mitshubishi and Samsung.

Re:What's MS up to?

[yuhong]

AFRIK it is actually IE 5.x that focused on the first one, when they were competing with Netscape 4.x. IE 6 tried to be little more standard compliant. For example, they made it slightly more CSS1 compliant (enough to pass Acid1 I think), and added it as a "standards mode" triggered by DOCTYPE switching. But then they sat on it for five years, and guess what people did with the IE6 "standards mode" during the time?

Re:What's MS up to?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF would a client workstation need IIS running on it for?

Also, IE9 AFAIK doesn't hook into any of the .Net APIs, it is more like the other way around. The .Net APIs hook into IE (via COM) to provide a web browser in client apps.

Re:What's MS up to?

[Aphrika]

You don't appear to know what you're talking about. Remove your first sentence and you might have a point.

.NET is server-side code in the shape of ASP.NET; it just delivers HTML, CSS and JavaScript to the browser - any browser - nothing more and nothing less. As for the Microsoft stack? Well, I use Visual Studio 2010 to code in IronPython against a Postgres DB. The days of the 'stack' are long gone... and the browser hasn't been part of it since ActiveX, which predates .NET...

That said, if IE is more compliant (and IE9 pretty much is as competitive as the rest of the pack), that does mean that more sites will work in it, and that's a good thing for everyone; developers, business and users alike.

Re:What's MS up to?

[dave562]

.NET is server-side code in the shape of ASP.NET

If .NET is ONLY server side then why is there a downloadable version of it for clients? There obviously has to be some sort of processing going on with the client that requires certain DLLs.

Re:What's MS up to?

[Lennie]

What century have you been living in ?

Why get caught with your pants down and not use HTML,CSS,JS,SVG,WebGL and all the other webtechnologies, so it instantly works on all browsers and devices, from PC's, netbooks, pads, pdas all the way down to smartphones.

Re:What's MS up to?

[shutdown -p now]

It hooks into the .Net APIs that are on the client OS. I'm thinking about it in terms of a lot of the applications that I have dealt with over the last couple of years. They all seem to be built in .Net, and leverage IIS and SQL. The client workstations all need .Net and IIS for the application to work.

This sounds like BS to me, since IIS is server-side software. It's like saying that there is software that requires client workstations to have Apache - I can see an extremely convoluted architecture that'd have such a requirement (a "local web app" of sorts), but that's hardly best practice.

Your typical ASP.NET (MVC or not) application certainly doesn't require any of that - IIS, MSSQL etc all run server-side, and that is the part that is "locked in", but client is just served HTML/CSS/JS. You can definitely serve him IE-specific stuff, and many ASP.NET apps for internal use do just that, but that's up to developers.

In any case, that still doesn't tie into .NET, except for WPF browser apps. But those are extremely rare, and seem to have been superceded by Silverlight.

Now, Silverlight - yes, there is a big push for that as the "rich client-side" tech, alongside the standard HTML/CSS/JS, for solutions built on Microsoft platform end-to-end, especially for in-house solutions. But Silverlight is separate from .NET proper, and is browser-agnostic.

Re:What's MS up to?

[shutdown -p now]

Let me go ahead and leave a multi-million dollar firm that does business with the SEC, DoJ and just about every major law firm out there because the best document review and eDiscovery tools are built around a Microsoft stack.

This has nothing to do with MS stack, and everything to do with the fact that (per your claim) your software requires client machines to have server software deployed on them to work. Architecturally, that's braindead.

Re:What's MS up to?

[shutdown -p now]

That's what Silverlight is, in a sense. But it works in browsers other than IE.

Re:What's MS up to?

[Shemmie]

The client workstations all need IIS installed??

Re:What's MS up to?

[dave562]

It was a typo. I put IIS where I should have put IE.

Re:What's MS up to?

[Lennie]

They are still behind all the other browsers. Other browsers have many, many more features. They are a whole range: from the smaller pieces like CSS columns or webworkers, to whole standards like WebGL and an important part of the HTML5-spec offline cache and HTML5-local-storage and -session-storage, indexeddb which allow you to build applications which also still work when you are not connected.

Re:What's MS up to?

[dave562]

Typo alert.

Should have read..

The client workstations all need .Net and IE for the application to work.

Re:What's MS up to?

[aeoo]

Microsoft is a company made up of hundreds of development groups working on hundreds of products in a dozen divisions.

Most of the people who are on those teams care about the work they're doing, care about the products they release and want to release the best products possible.

So, relative to IE9, what it Microsoft up to? If I had to guess, a hard-working team of engineers, program managers and test engineers are busting their asses to make the best browser they can. They care more about standards than I'd hazard a guess most people on Slashdot do, and they want to make something that gives the best experience there is on the web.

You're saying that the wishes and desires of the Microsoft executive management are irrelevant and that what Microsoft does is all about its "in-the-treches" teams? I don't buy it.

How much did that low id cost ya?

Re:What's MS up to?

[smash]

my low id agrees with him

Re:What's MS up to?

[dudpixel]

option 2 could be the beginning of a second phase of 3 E's (embrace, extend, extinguish...)

Re:What's MS up to?

[gbjbaanb]

no, it works in plugins in browsers other than IE. The other browsers have no idea what Silverlight is.

It does make a difference if you've disabled the plugin, not downloaded it, or otherwise run a browser on a platform that doesn't support the plugin. You have to consider that when saying Silverlight is supported as many times it won't be.

Mind you, Silverlight is not supported by Microsoft anyway so the argument is moot :)

Re:What's MS up to?

[shutdown -p now]

Please read the entire thread to see the context of my comment. GGGGP was talking about "free browser that fully supports .Net", in the vein that IE should be that browser. But it doesn't make sense, because Silverlight is the current "browser support for .NET" offering, and it's not tied to IE already. That's all there is to it.

Re:What's MS up to?

[BitZtream]

What? Client Apps don't need IIS, web server apps do, which has nothing to do with .NET support in the browser. If you're running IIS so you can use the app then its a server app and has 0 to do with this. .NET support in a browser just means its capable of loading native .NET runtime objects as plugins without needed a loader/shim. Instead of needing the .NET plugin loader (you know, that thing MS keeps sneaking into the firefox addon list during updates that people get so irate about) like other browsers, IE can just load them directly with its native loader.

The plugins have better integration with the browser and can take advantage of the fact that .NET really is just a big plugin system with lots of built in features a browser would want anyway like built in sandboxing and security features.

Its just like saying 'it supports the Netscape plugin API (NSAPI that pretty much all other browsers use)' but instead saying 'it supports .NET plugins'

Its really no relation to what Google is doing with Chrome.

Its a safe bet this is just Microsoft preparing to move to a new plugin/extension mechanism. The .NET runtime works perfect for this purpose. I'd be happy to use it in my apps if mono wasn't such a steaming pile of crap, having the only useful implementation tied to Windows only kind of kills it unless you develop only for Windows.

How the fuck did someone that clearly has absolutely no fucking clue what he's talking about get modded to 5?

Re:What's MS up to?

[BitZtream]

The same way it supports plugins like Flash. It supports the .NET plugin architecture now, so it can run native .NET plugins for IE without needing a loader/shim like it used to, and like Firefox and other browsers do.

Basically, they took that plugin that Firefox users get pissed about when a .NET update installs a firefox extension without asking, and built that into IE directly instead of as a plugin using IEs older plugin mechanism. They just moved the code from a plugin for IE into the IE codebase itself.

It allows for better security (in theory, but that assumes .NET security isn't broken anywhere, which probability is unlikely) and better integration with the browser. If used correctly it would be a good thing, it makes writing an IE plugin a cakewalk if you know any .NET runtime compatible language. Its likely however to have just removed one of the barriers to make it harder to exploit IE via plugins too.

In reality, we're probably just looking at ActiveX part 2. The .NET runtime, for all intents and purposes is just OLE version 3, where as ActiveX was version 2, DCOM 1.5, and standard COM/OLE version 1.0. They all just build on the same interface.

I would also like to point out before some idiot goes ranting about it, the security flaws with ActiveX were not because of the ActiveX interface, they were because of the way IE implemented access to ActiveX, which basically started out as a free for all where any website could do whatever it wanted by just throwing an ActiveX at you which IE blindly accepted and ran. That is no longer the case, its pretty much on par with Mozilla extensions from a security stand point now days, with the obvious caveat that bugs blow it. Its actually far easier to get an extension to work on a plugin capable Mozilla based browser than it is in IE now days, so no one needs to go spouting off about how unsafe it is ... unless you intend to argue the implementation is flawed. The idea and intended implementation are more or less identical.

Re:What's MS up to?

[Stuarticus]

But now the friends and family have finally been convinced to switch are you actually going to recommend they change back?

Re:What's MS up to?

[Anonymous Coward]

It hooks into the .Net APIs that are on the client OS. I'm thinking about it in terms of a lot of the applications that I have dealt with over the last couple of years. They all seem to be built in .Net, and leverage IIS and SQL. The client workstations all need .Net and IIS for the application to work.

I'm pretty sure that you don't understand any of what you just claimed. There is only one situation under which a web-served application would require .NET on the client machine and that would be with ClickOnce and/or XAML Browser Applications. Both are explicitly supported in Firefox via a plug-in shipped with the .NET Framework. That technology has absolutely no dependence on IIS and can be served from any web server or media source. Silverlight officially supports Firefox, Safari and Chrome.

A ClickOnce or XAML Browser Application communicating back through IIS would be using either Web Services or WCF, which is a superset of Web Services. In both cases the communication protocols are W3C standard and based on SOAP. You could replace a .NET WCF version of that service for an Apache-hosted PHP version or a self-hosted Java version and the application would be none-the-wiser as long as the SOAP messages were compatible.

As for database engine, that would be handled within the service tier and abstracted away to the point where the client was entirely unaware. Even within the service layer, most of the data access mechanisms in .NET are database agnostic. ADO.NET Entities is the most recent of those data access APIs and it has a pluggable provider mechanism for databases, supporting MS SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Firebird, SQLite, Sybase, Informix and others.

If anything it seems that Microsoft has done much more to allow for mix-and-match compatibility of platforms.

Re:What's MS up to?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not saying that .NET is only server-side. The use of .NET is ASP.NET is only server-side. .NET itself is a general purpose environment and runtime. Desktop applications can be written in .NET.

ASP.NET has no reliance on any libraries at the client. The only thing shipped to the client is HTML/CSS/ECMAScript. You can display ASP.NET web applications in Lynx. ASP.NET is synomymous with JSP, which doesn't require Java to be installed on the desktop to work.

It is possible to write applications that do rely on the Microsoft technologies at each point, but the layers are all abstracted through standardized messaging protocols. A local .NET application can communicate to a middle-tier through WCF which is just SOAP. The server can be replaced with another technology and the client would not notice as long as it followed the same W3C standards.

Re:What's MS up to?

[man_of_mr_e]

That's simply not true for the vast majority of web apps. The only web apps that require .net on the client are WPF web apps, and i've never actually seen one in the wild... Just not something anyone will build.

asp.net apps just genearte HTML, javascript, css, etc.. While various versions have had varying levels of standard compliance, the new .NET 4 stuff has been largely redesigned to be completely standards compliant out of the box.

Silverlight requires a client side runtime that's based on .NET, but IE is not required for it...

Re:What's MS up to?

[man_of_mr_e]

The client download is to run desktop applications, not web applications. ASP.NET does not require any special client, or any framework installed on the client.

Re:What's MS up to?

[man_of_mr_e]

I'm sorry, since when did all other browsers implement the things you're talking about? I'm not sure any of them have implemented all of it.

What's more, all of those things are draft standards, and subject to change. In my opinion, it's reckless to implement things and call them standards when they're not actually standards yet. People can use them, and then the standards change...

Re:What's MS up to?

[man_of_mr_e]

Microsoft executives wish to do whatever makes them the most money, and they don't make money by giving customers what they don't want.

You may bitch about standards conformance as if it's something everyone wants, and perhaps they do... but they also don't want their old apps to break. That's a very sharp razor to walk, and I think Microsoft has been successful in gradually moving their legacy customers forward into modern browser standards.

You can say "they did it to themselves", but that's just ignoring history. Think about it like this... When IE6 was released, Mozilla didn't even exist, at least not as a 1.0 product. Mozilla 1.0 was released in November 2004.. that's 3 years after IE6.

In effect, there was no "standards compliant" browsers when IE6 was released. Opera existed, and was pretty conformant, but few people even knew it existed. Standards conformance is an ongoing effort (partially because standards progress and change as well), but more imporantly, the interpretations of the standards change over time. When IE6 was released, it was considered the most standards conformant browser. That quickly changed, as other browsers became more conformant, and IE6 sat idle, but IE6 was not any specific attempt by Microsoft to inflict proprietary standards on people.

Re:What's MS up to?

[naoursla]

I'm a developer on IE9 and this is one of the most accurate and insightful comments I've ever seen on slashdot.

(I don't know anything about what the team was like in the IE6 timeframe)

Re:What's MS up to?

[Lennie]

I think you don't know how webstandards are created.

First some browser vendor creates a draft or add the feature to demo it to others, then browser vendors argue about how it was implemented and then they add a draft module to the spec and after that it will be part of the spec.

Then browser vendors decide what parts of the spec the implement and do so.

The word standard literally means it was adopted by most vendors, so if that happends, then yes it is a standard.

It has nothing to do with specs and drafts.

Re:What's MS up to?

[man_of_mr_e]

That's funny, since from your comment above, you say "an important part of the HTML5-spec offline cache and HTML5-local-storage and -session-storage".

So how exactly does it have nothing to do with specs and drafts when you actually called it a spec? And, it's a Draft Specification, not a final one.

Re:What's MS up to?

[Lennie]

Ok, my arguments stink, but what my first comment was about was this:

http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/ie9/

Re:What's MS up to?

[man_of_mr_e]

Great rant, but he is either being disingenuous, or missing the point.

Microsoft says that the W3C tests should be used to validate compliance, because the W3C are the ones that create the specs. If Mozilla doesn't like that, then they should submit more validation tests to the W3C, just like Microsoft has. Their failure to do so indicates they have no interst in a true standards conformance measurement.

Instead, they choose to use other tests that merely test for features, not whether the features are actually implemented correctly to the standard. Don't like that, then submit tests to the W3C for features that IE fails in.

Microsoft is doing the right thing here, they're trying to promote a single, unified conformance test and have put their money where their mouth is by donating thousands of tests to the W3C. Why hasn't Google? Or Apple? Or Mozilla?

Re:What's MS up to?

[Lennie]

W3C did not create the specs, W3C is where the browser makers deside what goes in the spec normally. But HTML5 actually came mostly from WHATWG and was for Web applications. Which is Opera and Mozilla which came up with HTML5 and started on it years ago. Apple and Google got added later. All browser makers are in W3C so also Adobe, Microsoft and others.

Whatever, here is a longer explanation:

http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/2011/01/26/the-zen-of-html5-london-web-presentation

Canvas.globalCompositeOperation

[QuoteMstr]

Canvas.globalCompositeOperation works now!

Re:Canvas.globalCompositeOperation

[Lennie]

I hadn't seen that one yet, nice catch.

April

[mosb1000]

Ok, I read the fucking article, and it's supposed to be available mid-April.

Re:April

[Loki_666]

Ok, I read the fucking article,

Yeah, you see where you went wrong there? This is Slashdot.

This is such a bummer

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody actually submits stories anymore. The front page is just crap picked up by the pooper scooper. This fucking place has become so bland... UGH!

Only disables third-party tracking

[IICV]

The new RC build includes a Tracking Protection feature, which gives users the option to control what third-party site content can track them when they're online...

Third-party tracking is disabled, but I bet you first-party tracking gets cranked up a notch - after all, now IE knows you're doing something you don't want other people knowing about, and that's definitely a "signal", as the Microsoft representative said :)

Re:Only disables third-party tracking

[commodore6502]

Install the addon called "ghostery" to monitor and block tracking cookies. For example right now I see /. is tracking me with Adhere, Doubleclick, DoubleVerify, Google Adsense, Analytics.

Of wait. That only works in Firefox and Seamonkey. Not IE. Oh well.

Re:Only disables third-party tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

The new RC build includes a Tracking Protection feature, which gives users the option to control what third-party site content can track them when they're online...

Third-party tracking is disabled, but I bet you first-party tracking gets cranked up a notch - after all, now IE knows you're doing something you don't want other people knowing about, and that's definitely a "signal", as the Microsoft representative said :)

Jesus, hope you are just disengenious and not that ignorant - that was from an opt-in feature in an extra fucking toolbar, that told you exactly what it would do - and that the Google people installed and in effect poisoned as signal by training it with the "sting" searches (well, managed to do in 7 of 100 attempted cases).

Does it track my Google habits?

[mackil]

From the article: "The new RC build includes a Tracking Protection feature"

Does this preclude my Google search habits?

Re:Does it track my Google habits?

[NoSig]

The point of Google's complaint was not that IE was tracking users - after all Google does that too in many ways. The point was that through tracking IE users while they interacted with the Google search site, Microsoft was in effect transferring search results from Google's search engine to Bing.

Re:Does it track my Google habits?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The new RC build includes a Tracking Protection feature"

"Tracking Protection feature"

Unfortunately, the wording of that allows it to be construed as meaning "This feature tries to protect the tracking."

Re:Does it track my Google habits?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are presumably tracking the search results of opted-in people when they visit any search site (that they have listed, or is OpenSearch compatible, or whatever).

Microsoft was only transferring search results from Google to Bing if you have a bias against them. They were transferring search results from the user to Bing. If they were sending the whole list of Google results to Bing and then adjusting their search to more conform to those, then there would be a point, but they were only getting the page the search ultimately lead to. If a search's most popular result was the 19th, this could hardly be considered as transferring Google's result.

Re:Does it track my Google habits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well well well... a Microsoft Employee.

No.

[commodore6502]

Just no.

It's bad enough my ISP forces me to use Microsoft Explorer 7 (to enable web acceleration/compression) - I'm certainly not abandoning Firefox for IE9. I'd sooner switch to Opera with its web-stored bookmarks or Chrome with its tiny 25 MB footprint or even PuppyBrowser for Puppy Linux.

And it still doesn't support XP

[gstrickler]

I understand that MS wants users to move off of XP, but given that means new hardware for most of the people still using XP, and the economy being where it is, and businesses still having internal stuff tied to XP & IE6, do they really think that IE9 abandoning XP will actually give people an incentive to upgrade? I hope they're not foolish enough to believe that. Anyone on XP who wants a faster browser will just use Chrome, Firefox, or Opera (sorry Apple, Safari on Windows is not competitive in speed unless you're only comparing to FF3.x and IE6-8, and it doesn't have anything to recommend it over the faster browsers).

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Support has to end at some point. It might be time to move forward grandpa.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Combatso]

Exactly. It might take time, but its gotta happen... This wont push XP users to upgrade en masse, but it will show the writing on the wall.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Support has to end at some point. It might be time to move forward grandpa.

Why?

My machine works fine on XP. I have all the software I need and Mozilla is still supporting XP versions. And even if they stop, my version of Firefox and Thunderbird work quite fine.

All this needless upgrading of hardware does nothing but increase the hole in my pocketbook and fill in landfill holes in poor Asian countries - and adding to the World's pollution.

There's got to be a time when we have to slow our consumption down; especially with the highly toxic electronics.

--Yours,
Pops

P.S. I kinda like to leave some semblance of an environment to you kids.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[commodore6502]

Can't I just use WINE to run IE9 on my XP machine?

>>>that means new hardware for most of the people still using XP

Windows Seven will run fine on 1/3rd gig of RAM. i.e. My ancient 2000 laptop could be upgraded to it (although it's cheaper to just buy a used laptop with 7 already installed).

>>>IE9 abandoning XP will actually give people an incentive to upgrade?

Yes.

>>>It might be time to move forward grandpa.

(hugs C64 and Amiga and Mac G1) What are you saying? I love these machines - just like I love my GMC Pacer. ;-)

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[gstrickler]

Time to replace that '92 Mustang you're driving too. Or was it a '68 Camaro, or a '65 Corvette, etc.

You completely missed the point. You have to support what out there in common use, not just the latest and greatest version. When they reformulate gasoline, it doesn't mean you have to replace your old car. When then changed to OPD valves on propane tanks, you didn't have to replace you grills and heaters. It's only in electronics that we allow companies/industries to make 3-5 yr old devices obsolete by discontinuing support and maintenance of compatible hardware and accessories. In today's networked world, if you can't get security updates for an OS or networked app (e.g browser), that machine quickly becomes unsafe to use, changing it from "obsolescent" to "obsolete". XP isn't in that category yet, but MS is trying to put it there, and Vista is right there with it (check MS support lifecycle). And this isn't MS bashing, Apple is even worse about this than MS. Consumer electronics companies are even worse. This is about industrywide practices that promote waste and screw customers for whom older products work just fine.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Anonymous Coward]

I am using FF4, Opera and Safari on XP. I have had no performance problems with Safari and it is comparative to FF4 and Opera.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[tuppe666]

60% of the market is currently XP that's a lot of people to insult. XP was sold on many machines esp those running the atom processor in the last year. I own one.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Reapman]

Weak analogy.. does that mean that we should be patching hardware and software written in '68? or '65?

No.. because technology of computers moves a LOT faster then technology of cars. Should Microsoft still be releasing patches for Windows 95? Bob? DOS 6.22?!?

If you want to drive a Model T, I imagine it's still legal on most roads, but don't expect Ford to be responsible to install the seat belts and airbags and all the other safety features that have happened in the last 80 years or so. Same with Windows XP.. want to run it? Go ahead, but it's not Microsoft's (or Apple's or whoever's) problem that it doesn't support hardware X or software Y.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[gstrickler]

Do you always jump to illogical extreme conclusions, or do you only do it when posting on /.?

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Gerald]

60% of the market is currently XP that's a lot of people to insult.

No it's not. XP's market share has been dropping steadily for a while now. I wouldn't be surprised if that trend accelerated over the next year as companies get around to infrastructure upgrades they put off during the recession.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[antdude]

My father/dad still uses his old Windows 2000 SP4 so he has to use the latest Firefox v3.6.xx.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[RebelWebmaster]

Firefox 4 is going to be the last release that runs on Win2K, for what it's worth.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[antdude]

Oh wow, I thought v4 wasn''t supporting in W2K. Cool. By v5, then he will have a faster and newer OS! :)

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they give a shit about the people still running XP. They're the kind of people who do not patch and do not upgrade their browser anyway.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Reapman]

What part of my argument is illogicial or extreme? Let's not degenerate this thread into baseless acusations.. please elaborate what you mean.

Yes, you can drive an old car on the road (or use old software), but don't expect the manufacturer to patch "security" vulnerabilities (like, say, airbags in a '69 Camaro)

You are saying that because we drive '68 car's on the road, the industry should be keeping patched "older products work just fine". Sure you said common, but you also use cars made in the 60s as your argument, those are NOT common out there, as much as I would like otherwise..

If my parents can get by with Windows 95, does that count? What about someone running DOS (I know a company that does).. should MS be patching security vulnerabilities in it? I bet it wouldn't be hard to find a Win95 box, or even Windows 2000 (last touched a production W2K box a couple weeks ago).

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[SadButTrue]

I don't follow browser development very closely but IE9 seems to be getting pretty nice reviews. Figured I would give it a whirl and....

"To install Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate (RC), you need to upgrade to a more recent version of Windows."

So this is going to be a DX11 type excuse I am guessing? Oh well, would have been nice to play with but given the choice between having to upgrade my OS for a new browser and having to have chrome transparently upgrade in the background..

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[ZXDunny]

Some of us /can't/ upgrade - we're not allowed. I've been asking my workplace (UK NHS Hospital in the north of England) IT department to *please* upgrade to a better version of IE than v6, but they won't - their contract with MS which got them copies of XP for free doesn't allow for upgrades.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[VGPowerlord]

I don't follow browser development very closely but IE9 seems to be getting pretty nice reviews. Figured I would give it a whirl and....

"To install Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate (RC), you need to upgrade to a more recent version of Windows."

So this is going to be a DX11 type excuse I am guessing? Oh well, would have been nice to play with but given the choice between having to upgrade my OS for a new browser and having to have chrome transparently upgrade in the background..

It requires a version of Windows with DirectWrite and Direct2D support... which would be Windows Vista SP2 (or possibly SP1) and Windows 7.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[gstrickler]

What part of my argument is illogicial or extreme? Let's not degenerate this thread into baseless acusations.. please elaborate what you mean.

How about this part?

... does that mean that we should be patching hardware and software written in '68? or '65?
...If you want to drive a Model T,...

You exaggerated my 3-5 year comment on computer support to over 45 years and my 45 yr extreme example with cars to nearly 100 years. Exaggerating what someone said to the point of absurdity is called a Straw Man, it's one of the logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are by definition illogical.

I made no assertions about using computers from the '60s, or the '20s, or even the 1990s. I didn't mention DOS and I didn't even mention Windows 2000 which XP replaced 10 years ago. However, MS was still selling XP less than 2 years ago for Netbooks. XP is stiil a significant portion of the installed base. They still represent over 50% of users browsing the Internet. Ignoring XP isn't just ignoring mom&pop, it's ignoring the majority of the user base.

You can still get parts and service for those 20-45yr old cars. Mostly, you can still get parts and service for 3-10 yr old computers, but it's getting hard to get security fixes for applications that will run on them. Applications, while not physical parts, are vital "parts" of a computer. Cars don't get less secure or more vulnerable to attack, computers do, so the analogy of not being able to get replacement parts for an older car is about the closest analogy you can get to being unable to get applications and security fixes for a computer. Once a networked computer can't get secure applications or security patches for the OS, it's life on the net gets very short.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Microsoft want to spend development cycles making XP users happy? I somehow doubt folks that haven't upgraded their 10 year old OS are a big priority to them.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Reapman]

"Time to replace that '92 Mustang you're driving too. Or was it a '68 Camaro, or a '65 Corvette, etc."

Soo... taking Windows XP (it's what, 10 years old? Last sold 2 years ago?) and comparing it to 45 year old cars is... what.. NotStrawMan?

"Once a networked computer can't get secure applications or security patches for the OS, it's life on the net gets very short."

Not really, not if your Enthusiastic Enough about it, there's options, 3rd party or even, let's say "After Market" options you can install - firewalls etc. There's no reason why it cant exist in a limited quantity. Same as a 69 Camaro. Sure you can install after market, but I don't expect Chev or Ford to sell me airbags (about as close as you can get to a security feature in a car) because it doesn't make any financial sense for them to do so.

Windows XP is now two version of their OS old, and has been out for years and years. They stopped selling it, as you said, 2 years ago. Move on already. Yesh..

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[DaFallus]

Whenever you want to upgrade is up to you. If you want to use a 10 year old machine with XP, then more power to you. But why should Microsoft care? Maybe IE9 runs like shit on XP and they don't want to keep their staff busy dealing with all the issues and backwards compatibility for an OS that is definitely in the saturation/decline stage of the product life cycle.

Do you go to Best Buy and complain that they don't sell Beta tapes?

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[DarkXale]

Not quite. And if we examine certain groups in more detail (e.g. steam users) - then we get a weak 25% usage-base, with roughly 70% covered by Vista and 7. Most of todays XP coverage is corporate (and highly likely to be stuck with IE6 anyway) and Chinese. XP is loosing relevance otherwise - and the market is showing it.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[yuhong]

but given that means new hardware for most of the people still using XP

I think 32-bit Win7 can at least in theory run on most Win2000-era and later hardware as long as you have enough RAM, thanks in part to driver compatibility.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[yuhong]

To be more precise, Vista SP2 with the Platform Update. Actually there is another supplement to that update required too to fix some problems with the original for Vista SP2 and Win7 RTM but that is automatically installed when you install IE9.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[yuhong]

their contract with MS which got them copies of XP for free doesn't allow for upgrades.

Upgrades to IE?

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[ZXDunny]

Apparently not - it will cost them a *lot* to upgrade for some reason that I couldn't get a satisfactory reason for... IT seemed to just sort of wave their hands about and said "nope, sorry mate, can't do it". So we're stuck in XP with IE6. Not a good thing in a hospital.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 4 is going to be the last release that runs on Win2K, for what it's worth.

as if this wasn't informative

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[judeancodersfront]

Sounds like a BS excuse, tell them to install FF and just use IE6 for intranet apps.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[raftpeople]

Support has to end at some point.

No, it doesn't really.

It might be time to move forward grandpa.

The problem with this sentiment is that it assumes the start date for the OS is how best to measure it's age and relevancy. But it's only been a relatively short time since there has been a reasonable replacement, Win7 (Vista was not).

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[raftpeople]

an OS that is definitely in the saturation/decline stage of the product life cycle.

Do you go to Best Buy and complain that they don't sell Beta tapes?

XP=75%. Win7=10%. It's not impractical to write a browser that works properly and runs on XP. I'm using one right now from an organization called "Mozilla", you may have heard of them.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[foniksonik]

From a web dev POV I don't care if you use XP - I do care if you use IE6. It costs me 2-3 times as much effort to support a non-standard browser. That is pointless effort. The costs can not be reclaimed. IE6 is unsustainable and has been adding a web tax for half a decade. MS should be sued IMHO.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[smash]

Vista was, despite what bandwagon the media may have jumped on.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[smash]

So where can i get this magical "chrome" for my copy of os2 warp? Or Windows NT4?

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not an "excuse", it's an entirely new driver model that everyone would be in apoplectic nerd-rage over if MS had gone and overhauled it in a previous OS.

How do 10 year old Linux distributions do for support of new features these days?

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[SheeEttin]

MS is moving everyone off XP by only putting Windows 7 on new computers.
It's the least-effort method of migrating everyone. It'll happen a little more slowly, but for certain. (Corporations, etc. will still use XP on the desktop for a while, but they'll change too as hardware gets replaced.)

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Billly Gates]

Yes I do think they want to leave XP

The key is activeX and not WindowsXP. If IE 9 supports activeX which can be turned on by IT only for intranets then businesses can switch to Windows 7.

Yes, Microsoft prefers sharepoint but it can not do everything that activeX can and companies like Oracle refuse to support it and still use activeX.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[MareLooke]

Because it's usually companies that still run XP, and a lot of them aren't exactly jumping to adopt Vista or Vista SE, I mean, Windows 7. Alienating your corporate customers usually is not a good idea.

The only reason for anyone to upgrade past XP is 64bit support, there is nothing else. And the only reason most users NEED said 64bit support is because the new Windows versions eat your ram like there's no tomorrow to start with.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[MareLooke]

I don't get why people consider 7 to be better than Vista. It's the same OS, the same underpinnings (the same bloat), just a different UI and a minor version increase, so even Microsoft doesn't consider it a different version...

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[BitZtream]

It does support Windows 7 Thin Client, which should run on a lot more older hardware.

The reality of it is, as a developer, MS doesnt' care about XP any more. Why should they? Its been over 4 years since it was replaced, and another 2 since the version that replaced it was replaced. They aren't going support old OSes forever and as a for profit company, people who aren't going to upgrade 5 year old hardware probably aren't going to be spending money on a lot of new software either, so they aren't part of MS's target audience ... and why should they be, MS is a for profit company.

Its great that you can run Chrome on older hardware, but Firefox? A recent version? On hardware that won't run Win7? No thanks, I'm pretty sure that will suck far more ass than using Win7 thin client and IE9. Firefox isn't exactly slim anymore, its just the new navigator with all its glorious bloat (what do you expect, its Netscape). Chrome, sure. On that same note however, my wifes 5 year old laptop with a gig of ram runs Win7 just fine for web browsing by itself.

As far as speed ... outside of Google and Slashdot, people haven't cared about 'how fast' the browser is for ... oh I don't know ... have they ever actually cared? I doubt it.

If you don't want to upgrade, Microsoft doesnt' care, you will have to eventually and its just a dumb business move to spend a bunch of time worrying about people who aren't going to contribute to your bottom line when the other 99.999999% of the population will.

Supporting XP is a bad move all around, for everyone involved.

Are you pissed off that no one is upgrading your gasoline car to a hybrid or all electric for free too? Thats really what you're saying ...

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[AmiMoJo]

I would have though the /. crowd would be happy to see MS ditching the legacy stuff that has plagued them for so many years. For once they are really trying to do the right thing by cutting ties with the bad old ways.

Windows 7 runs very well on low end hardware. At work we have a Pentium 4 Hyperthreaded machine with 512MB RAM and a GeForce 4MX that runs it at a usable speed. No slower than XP, even a bit quicker in some areas.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[man_of_mr_e]

Mozilla plans to release 4 versions of FF this year, according to another slashdot article i read, FF4, FF5, FF6, and FF7.

So, will your dad have a newer OS in 3 months?

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Bengie]

My company switched to Win7 several months ago. We only have XP on remote desktop virtual machines. All of our company apps are web based and finally work even on Chrome.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[antdude]

Oh wow, but will they all support old Windows 2000 SP4 though only v4?

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[MaDeR]

"Should Microsoft still be releasing patches for Windows 95? Bob? DOS 6.22?!?"
Which word from "You have to support what out there in common use" you do not understand?

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[Reapman]

Was just using his own analogy, I didn't realize '68 Camaro, or a '65 Corvette are in common use today.

Re:And it still doesn't support XP

[DaFallus]

If you have ever actually used Windows 7 then you know there is a big difference between it an XP, and I don't just mean 64 bit support. Companies phase out old legacy hardware and software all the time, and their clients can either rely on in house or third party support or they can upgrade to the new product. Its pretty common in the world of business, which it also sounds like you have little experience with.

Impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to what I could have ever expected in a million years, I'm sort of impressed with IE9 so far.

Excellent

[metrix007]

IE9 really is an excellent release. I personally don't like it because it lacks the extra functionality that browsers like Firefox and Opera have. However it is standards compliant, fast and very secure. Given that it is also more configurable than Chrome (which doesn't let you configure a fucking thing) I do recommend it.

Power users may not want it, but that is not important. What is important is that average users at home now have access to a secure and well performing browser. No more shitty toolbars or Active X crap, just a fast browser that works.

I don't like the limited space for tabs, but people who use IE are generally not the types to have a large amount of tabs open at once.

Mention should also be made of the security aspects. IE and Chrome are the two most secure browsers by far. They are the only browsers to fully support WIC and to make use of ASLR and DEP. Firefox 4 has support for DEP but not ASLR or WIC, nor does Opera.

People are going to bash Microsoft because they are Microsoft, but they have really done a good job here.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with chrome: You can't change ANY of the data save or temp file locations. I use an SSD with an HD for data storage, and my SSD only has so many rewrites in it. Using those up on internet sites? No thanks. I actually uninstalled chrome b/c of the lack of configurability.

Re:Excellent

[asa]

And all of this can be yours for the low low price of a $200 Windows upgrade if you're one of the hundreds of millions (more than 50% of the Web) users on Windows XP.

Re:Excellent

[yuhong]

No more shitty toolbars or Active X crap, just a fast browser that works.

Not exactly true, but they added ActiveX filtering in the RC to limit the impact.

Re:Excellent

[metrix007]

Actually, it's more like $50 which isn't bad for 10 years worth of improvements.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Google "symlink." It's a workaround, but it works on Windows Vista or newer. Not sure if any of the UNIX variants allow cross filesystem symlinking, it may require games with mount.

Re:Excellent

[asa]

Actually, a sizable chunk will have to upgrade their entire PC to get Windows 7 so it's a lot more for lots of folks.

Re:Excellent

[BZ]

> Firefox 4 has support for DEP but not ASLR

That's just false. Firefox 4 supports ASLR, as do current 3.6 security updates. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=405523 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=559133 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=567134

Re:Excellent

[Colonel Korn]

And all of this can be yours for the low low price of a $200 Windows upgrade if you're one of the hundreds of millions (more than 50% of the Web) users on Windows XP.

Or, you know, $110/3 on Amazon. By all means don't let reality get in the way of your ranting, though.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that it is also more configurable than Chrome (which doesn't let you configure a fucking thing) I do recommend it.Power users may not want it, but that is not important. What is important is that average users at home now have access to a secure and well performing browser.

Home users usaully don't customize their applications, also there already are existing secure and well performing browsers.

Re:Excellent

[BZ]

And for what it's worth, I agree with you: the MS team has done a good job here. Much like with IE5, in fact...

Re:Excellent

[shutdown -p now]

I don't like the limited space for tabs

Sanity has been restored in that department with this release: right-click on tab bar and choose "Show tabs on a separate row", and then it all works as God intended.

Re:Excellent

[tao]

Soft links can be cross file system. Hard links cannot (I'm pretty certain this applies for Windows too). The easiest solution using mount (at least on linux) is via bind mounts, where subtrees (or indeed a single file, or using rbind, a subtree and its underlying mounts) of a file system can be mounted in other locations.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll have to pay for the utility company to drop electric service to your home if you don't have that already, too. Making up stupidity seems to be all Mozilla is good at lately.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

> Firefox 4 has support for DEP
oh yeah? IE has support for DERP. Not to mention HERP.

Re:Excellent

[yuhong]

Well, at least in theory 32-bit Win7 will run on most Win2000 and later hardware as long as you have enough RAM.

Re:Excellent

[foniksonik]

Look into chrome runtime options (add the arguments to the alias) and/or compile your own from source.

Re:Excellent

[ace123]

Chrome has a lot more options than you might think. In your case, to change the profile location:
--user-data-dir=D:\foo\bar\chrome-profile

For temp files it uses your system temporary directory -- chrome won't be the only program using this, so make sure your TEMP is set to a reasonable place -- but regardless, most of its data goes into the user-data-dir.

Also, if you don't like Google Chrome deciding when to update and where to install, you can download the Chromium nightlies, which come in a portable format that you can place wherever -- with the same features.

Mac Version?

[RManning]

I know I'm being overly optimistic, but wouldn't it be nice if we could get an OSX version if IE9? I have to run XP in Parallels just to test in IE. Dropping Windows for good would be so nice. :)

Re:Mac Version?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure MS can't wait to enable you. I mean, why would they want to sell you a Win 7 license (because XP won't work for IE9) when they could commit resources to develop a mac version for free?

Re:Mac Version?

[WeatherServo9]

Remember how different the Mac and Windows versions of IE were back when both existed? Even if they did release a Mac version (which I think it's safe to say they won't bother doing) I'm not sure I would trust that each work the same and would still want to test both of them individually.

Re:Mac Version?

[TrancePhreak]

There are free VM images of Windows with various versions of IE in them. They are time locked so that they cannot be used perpetually, but they are perfect for testing site compatibility.

Re:Mac Version?

[VGPowerlord]

Given that IE9 doesn't work on XP because it uses hardware acceleration APIs that don't exist in anything below Vista SP2, I doubt they'll release a VM image of Windows with IE9.

Re:Mac Version?

[Bengie]

IE9 was built around new Vista/Win7 DirectX APIs. They would have to have two completely different versions of IE9 because you can't build code the same way in XP that you can in Vista/7 when using the new features.

It's a different API that needs different information.

Re:Mac Version?

[yuhong]

On that matter, I wonder why didn't they adopt MS's own Tasman engine that was used in Mac IE 5 instead of spending years hacking Trident.

Re:Mac Version?

[InvalidsYnc]

If Microsoft were to put out a version of IE9 for any other OS, I would bet that it would be much more similar between all of the platforms that it ran on than previous verions had been because Microsoft ACTUALLY appears to be concerned with being [more] compliant [than they had been previously] with the various standards (at least from what I've heard), vs their earlier attempts at browser lock-in via non-compliance. Not saying that Microsoft would do that (release for other OS's), but perhaps. If they actually put out a solid, fast, standards compliant browser for other platforms, they might actually give the other browsers a run for their money (once people get over the fact that it's Microsoft) My 2

Re:Mac Version?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Mac Office 2011 and Windows Office 2010 are very much functionally equivalent (maybe Outlook for Mac it's still lacking features, but who uses Outlook for Mac?). They are visually similar, albeit each use different HIG, but you can actually open documents, wordsheets and presentations and have them look exactly the same. Hell, the whole Sharepoint / Office Online it's simpler in the Mac version.

Now if only they came with MS Project and Visio on the Mac...

Re:Mac Version?

[BitZtream]

You'll still have to test on XP if you want to know how it will look on XP.

Even with the same rendering engine, subtle differences between native OS font rendering will change the page layout for instance. They simply can not share all the exact same code and still be considered a modern browser. XP for instance has no compositing manager for its graphics subsystem.

Is WebGL supported ?

[advance-software]

... as is the case in Gecko & Webkit ?

Re:Is WebGL supported ?

[Anonymous Coward]

... as is the case in Gecko & Webkit ?

Why do so many people complain when Microsoft didn't follow standards, and then demand that they don't follow standards? WebGL is not a web standard, it is highly premature to implement it in non-beta browsers, and might lead to much breakage.

Re:Is WebGL supported ?

[advance-software]

> and might lead to much breakage.

Why would WebGL break anything else ?

Re:Is WebGL supported ?

[Anonymous Coward]

> and might lead to much breakage.

Why would WebGL break anything else ?

Not "anything else", but implementations using an unfinished and evolving standard. It is a bad idea to implement unfinished (eg. not) standard proposals in non-beta web browsers. And it is kind of ironic pushing for Microsoft to go this non-standard way.

Like how the evolving websockets spec have been breaking early browser implementations and sites using them.

Re:holy shit!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Seriously, no one here even slightly gives a shit. Actually no one anywhere.

Yeah, nobody's affected when a new version of IE is released.

I suppose I should get a copy...

[Anonymous Coward]

...so I can show it to my Grandchildren in a few years from now and say "I bet you didn't know that Microsoft once made browsers".

Because without WebGL, XP support, and that supports Ogg and a bunch of other stuff - I can't imagine anyone actually using the damned thing unless their pointy-haired boss is forcing them to.

Microsoft have given up trying...they didn't even provide a representative to the WebGL discussions...perhaps they think they'll be able to come up with a rival "WebDirect3D" implementation that everyone will rush to use...on their WinPhone 7's.

Does not warrant a /. post

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who care about IE9 already know the RC is being released. The rest of us would wish some less slow-news-day-ish news, thanks.

untrustworthy

[Anonymous Coward]

Again they are failing in the trust dept. I suppose that when you stick a USB drive in, IE9 will happily run code and load html files from that drive ... MS has consistently failed ("It's a feature, not a bug") to address real security issues. We can expect that IE9 will not be any more secure than previous versions. Many U.S. government websites STILL require IE to view their content, most likely because of uneducated (dare I equate this sort of uneducated moronic behavior with republican religiosity?) (and here I'm being generous) "blind" adherence to Micro$oft shop policy ... "Everything should be part of the monoculture." Even if it is 4 generations back from the state of the art. It's no wonder that Chrome is eroding their market share, and Firefox is the standard (though most stupid admins won't admit to that). I once asked an IT dept. tech. about the POP server. He said, "we don't have one." I said, "yes, you do, you just don't know it." He asked me what OS I used, and I said, "Linux." He said, "What?" Anybody who uses IE or MS for anything is just asking for trouble. You might as well be saving all your documents to "the cloud" (whatever the hell that is) instead of doing real backups. When all your files go away, or show up on somebody else's website (privacy? you don't have any), remind yourself that you were warned. Do your own f'ing backups, use your own f'ing servers, and stay the HELL away from IE*.

Re:'partial content' requests

[TaoPhoenix]

Is this still there on Beta 11?
Last I briefly looked at the FF Development Notes they're making progress on getting rid of 'blocker' bugs, which I figured yours would be.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/2011-02-08

 

Will it address my biggest IE 8 complaint?

[93 Escort Wagon]

And by that I mean - when users install IE 9, will it do the smart thing and default to "compatibility mode = off", or will it default to "let's intentionally make sure web pages that use even a small subset of current web standards won't work even though this browser is capable of rendering them mostly correctly", like IE 8 does?

Re:Will it address my biggest IE 8 complaint?

[Calavar]

I'm not sure what you are talking about. I'm using IE8 right now and it is rendering Slashdot in standards compliant mode. It seems to render most sites in standards compliant mode, and I've never fiddled with the settings. IE8 probably defaults to compatibility mode only when the page doesn't have a standards compliant doctype, kind of like quirks mode in other browsers.

Re:Will it address my biggest IE 8 complaint?

[cbhacking]

It's up to the web developer to create a standards-compliant page. If the put a DOCTYPE at the top of the page, IE (8 or 9) will use the newest rendering engine. If they omit the DOCTYPE it'll use quirks mode because it assumes the page is a total hack written by somebody who wouldn't know a web standard if it hit him on the ass.

Re:Will it address my biggest IE 8 complaint?

[man_of_mr_e]

Umm.. that's exactly what IE8 does, except in certain situations where it can only assume it's quirky html.

Re:Analystics

[TaoPhoenix]

Worse than just Ghostery, my beta Firefox seems to permanently be waiting for ssl.google-analytics.com here on Slashdot.

Isn't it time for IE 10?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love IE. Have been using IE 9 and like it a lot. but it's been out for a long time now (sarcasm) . I am ready for IE 10.

Re:Isn't it time for IE 10?

[naoursla]

I think you are looking for Chrome.

upgrading explorer

[omar_armas]

Upgrading Microsoft Internet Explorer is a pain. IE6, 7 and 8 are completely different products.
Why I could never upgrading a complete operating system convert my IE6 to IE7 or 8? You had to install them independently.
That only speaks of a poor strategy and product, a complete shame.

Oh, and at work we have providers who developed extranets using Microsoft technologies that worked in IE 7, but then came IE8 and they are incompatible. Microsoft is incompatible with themselves.

I only lament that because of my work I have to support the Explorer navigator, the worst experience.

Omar

let us look at motives

[Max_W]

I do not see why should Microsoft make a convenient and fast browser? So that people can use online Office applications and stop buying the desktop MS Office?

It just does not make sense. Their best bet would be to use the monopoly of the pre-installed browser to make the Web unusable.

The web 2.0 as we know it was created by the Firefox. I can understand why Firefox team wants to move the Internet forward.

I apologize for being frank in expressing my doubts and probably groundless suspicions.

Re:let us look at motives

[IronHalik]

I do not see why should Microsoft make a convenient and fast browser?

MS made IE9 so fast as a prank on all slashdotters - right now its pretty much the only browser can render slashdot threads smoothly. So cruel.

Re:let us look at motives

[CynicTheHedgehog]

The web 2.0 as we know it was created by the Firefox

The web as we know it today resulted from:

1. A need to apply complex formatting, logic, animation, and user interaction
2. An absence of a formal standard for the above
3. Many vendors' ideas and attempts to fill this immediate need through proprietary extensions to the markup
4. The glacial pace of standards bodies to document and ratify standards
5. Many vendors' iterative attempts to back away from their proprietary extensions in favor of the now finalized standards

Firefox benefits from the fact that it came on the scene (in a meaningful way) between 4 and 5, so it had the advantage of implementing standards from the outset. Netscape and IE already had an installed base and had to work iteratively to move toward the standards while ensuring backward compatibility and offering a migration path. (Opera was around, but no one designed pages purely for Opera, so they didn't have the problem with an installed base.) Since Netscape's ideas (e.g. <layer>) differed so radically from the eventually formalized standard, they had more work to do, and because they lacked the market share and financial power of IE, they fell behind and failed.

Where Microsoft failed with IE4-IE6 is that they continued to provide their own extensibility features and neglected the standards. In essence they failed to restrict themselves to the standards, and where there was conflict they chose to ignore the (emerging) standards. But because of their market share their momentum carried them through.

Firefox got where it is by being faster, being available on more platforms, and its extensibility through plugins (adblock, popup blocking, and privacy features). Yes, its rigorous implementation and adherence to standards helped, but not as much as the other things.

And now the growing market share for Firefox and Chrome is putting pressure on Microsoft to play ball, lest they lose ground on other fronts (.NET/Silverlight). Microsoft isn't the biggest player in the game anymore (Firefox + Chrome + Opera are) and Microsoft is losing badly in the handheld/ultra-portable market. (Microsoft does have a significant share of the desktop, but note that it is split between IE6, IE7, and IE8, which all behave differently.)

So now Microsoft is playing catch-up, and to their credit they seem to following the standards as much as possible, especially the emerging HTML5 standards. They have a commitment to their developers and customers to produce a browser that will continue to support the .NET/IIS stack features (and NTLM) and they are moving in the right direction.

Re:let us look at motives

[Aphrika]

Sorry, you're wrong.

Web 2.0 was pretty much explicitly defined by Microsoft, albeit by accident. AJAX itself a technical underpinning of 2.0 was initiated by the XMLHttpRequestObject that shipped with IE5. This was then adapted by other browsers.

Have a look at the history section here.

As for why Microsoft should release a new version of IE? Well, what else would they do, give up?

Re:let us look at motives

[weicco]

IIRC the whole HTML was designed by Microsoft and Netscape while battling over market share. They added proprietary features which later became standard, or at least de facto standard. Capitalism at its best :)

Control

[Anonymous Coward]

By having a browser they make themselves legitimate in having a say in web standards.

This is especially important because Microsoft is starting to build everything on top of their browser rendering engine. The next version of Office will use the IE rendering engine for it's layout. (The rendering in IE was originally scheduled for Office 2010, but they found it wouldn't be ready in time) Visual Studio 2010 already runs on top of the rendering engine. Windows Media Player has used the IE rendering engine for a long time already. Basically gives them a common language for building UI applications that can scale when you re-size your program window.

While there probably isn't room for the old IE only lock-in features, having the browser and also using the same engine for desktop apps gives them a showcases to help make their point in why something should be added to the standard.

Re:Control

[Aydsman]

By having a browser they make themselves legitimate in having a say in web standards.

Very true and of course they want that. Many of their products are sold to developers and businesses who need to produce content for web standards.

This is especially important because Microsoft is starting to build everything on top of their browser rendering engine. The next version of Office will use the IE rendering engine for it's layout. (The rendering in IE was originally scheduled for Office 2010, but they found it wouldn't be ready in time) Visual Studio 2010 already runs on top of the rendering engine.

This is absolutely incorrect. Visual Studio 2010's UI is written using .Net and WPF which is nothing to do with IE's rendering engine.

I absolutely agree it is in Microsoft's best interest to be a part of the web standards discussion and IE is one of the ways they do that, it doesn't have anything to do with the UI for their major applications.

Re:Control

[man_of_mr_e]

I'm not sure where you are getting your information, but I suspect you are grossly misinterpreting something.

IE9 and the next office, and VS 2010 will all be based on WPF's rending engine, which will use 3D rendering capabilities if available. IE's rendering engine changes so rapidly (not counting IE6) that this would be ridiculous. We've had 3 versions of IE in 4 years. Basing an app on that, which typically has a 2-3 year rev cycle would be stupid.

Re:Analystics

[Dracos]

Allow me to share with you one of the ~130k lines in my /etc/hosts:

0.0.0.0 ssl.google-analytics.com

Problem solved. Repeat for other hostnames you don't want tracking you.

No excuse for IE6 on the public web anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you're on XP, get Firefox/Chrome/Opera/Safari for public browsing and stick IE6 applications in an Intranet ghetto out of the way. You have had four years since IE7 to come out, if you haven't done that by now, you are not just incompetent, but you have a malicious and feckless disregard for the web. Do you want to explain to your customers and shareholders that you intentionally use IE6 and cripple the web's infrastructure?

Anyone I catch using IE6 will be considered a traitor, and will be redirected to the Westboro Baptist Church's website since the IE6 user agent is the equivalent of a "God Hates Webmasters" sign.

When can I use says...

[Flammon]

IE 9 is still crap. I can't run it on my Linux, OS X or even XP box!

MS claims that it's standards compliant. Well, it might be better than IE 8 but it's no where near the competition. Checkout the summary of at the bottom of this page: http://caniuse.com/

"Compatibility tables for support of HTML5, CSS3, SVG and more in desktop and mobile browsers"

IE 9.0: 62%
Firefox 4.0: 87%
Safari 5.0: 79%
Chrome 10.0: 92%
Opera 11.1: 77%

Re:When can I use says...

[VGPowerlord]

It's interesting how those numbers change when you remove "Working Draft" and "Other" from the criteria:

IE 9.0: 75%
Firefox 4.0: 93%
Safari 5.0: 89%
Chrome 10.0: 96%
Opera 11.1: 99%

IE's still in last place, but it does considerably better when you stop including specifications that aren't yet finished.

Re:When can I use says...

[cbhacking]

That page is full of BS. They test a lot of things they shouldn't, including redundent and even deprecated drafts of standards, and penalize you for not "supporting" them.

Go to the source, with W3C. According to them, and their compatibility tests, IE9 is doing fine - it's actually ahead of most of the competition on each part of CSS3, for example.

It's also worth noting that IE9's pre-release versions are very careful about supporting non-standard stuff with "standardized" names. For example, IE9 actually does support WebSockets just fine, but because the standard isn't finished, they use a "draft" extension on the name (websocket-draft). This causes sites like caniuse to claim IE9 can't do web sockets, which isn't accurate - other browsers are just implementing a "standard" that isn't.

Ironically enough, this is the kind of behavior that people got so pissed off (quite rightfully) at IE6 for. Just because it isn't MS, does that mean it's now OK to make uup your own standards when they arent' actually standardized yet?

Re:When can I use says...

[Flammon]

Where on W3C can I find the compatibility tests that show the various browser support levels?

Re:When can I use says...

[yuhong]

It's also worth noting that IE9's pre-release versions are very careful about supporting non-standard stuff with "standardized" names. For example, IE9 actually does support WebSockets just fine, but because the standard isn't finished, they use a "draft" extension on the name (websocket-draft).

Yea, remember when IE3 and IE4 rushed to implement CSS1 and CSS2 respectively even though both was released before the corresponding level became a recommendation.

Re:When can I use says...

[Anonymous Coward]

That page is full of BS. They test a lot of things they shouldn't, including redundent and even deprecated drafts of standards, and penalize you for not "supporting" them.

Any deprecated drafts are turned off by default, and aren't included in the summary calculation unless you specifically check the "unofficial / note" box first.

Go to the source, with W3C. According to them, and their compatibility tests, IE9 is doing fine - it's actually ahead of most of the competition on each part of CSS3, for example.

The one test that shows IE9 ahead of the competition is a terribly incomplete test that was written by a Microsoft employee.

It's also worth noting that IE9's pre-release versions are very careful about supporting non-standard stuff with "standardized" names. For example, IE9 actually does support WebSockets just fine, but because the standard isn't finished, they use a "draft" extension on the name (websocket-draft). This causes sites like caniuse to claim IE9 can't do web sockets, which isn't accurate - other browsers are just implementing a "standard" that isn't.

This is incorrect, IE9 only supports WebSockets with Silverlight installed.

Re:When can I use says...

[man_of_mr_e]

I'm sure that these test results are based on the beta version, not the RC, and the beta version is about 10 months old, compared to all the recent releases you mention in comparison.

It's also worth mentioning that HTML5 and CSS3 aren't ratified standards yet.

You can tweak Google Chrome, here's how... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"it is also more configurable than Chrome (which doesn't let you configure a fucking thing)" - by metrix007 (200091) on Thursday February 10, @01:37PM (#35164620)

Untrue: You can do a lot of "tweaking" to Google Chrome via its commandline argc/argv type re-parameterizations

I.E..-> It's how I control the size, and location (I put my browser caches onto a TRUE SSD (not using FLASH ram & its slower write cycles, but rather 4gb of DDR2 RAM (Gigabyte IRAM)).

E.G.-> C:\Users\APKUser\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe -disk-cache-dir="Z:\SysTmp" --disk-cache-size=40000000 --user-data-dir="Z:\SysTmp"

APK

P.S.=> For a list of GOOGLE Chrome commandlines, see this, for your reference:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Google+Chrome+Command+Line%22&hl=en&prmd=ivns&ei=WFZUTeLFOJPUgQfU1ui3CQ&start=10&sa=N

apk

Faster than Chrome and Opera? Damn..

[dotwhynot]

Not long ago Opera and Chrome seemed unbeatable on Javascript speed (Sunspider). Quite impressive speed on IE9, coming out and beating them all, even for the people not caring about hardware accellerated graphics.

No matter what your browser of choice is right now, IE9 is adding to the competition in a good way - even following standards more strictly than some others (eg. not implementing non-standards/unfinished standards).

SVG? Border Radius?

[uigrad_2000]

Full list IE9RC features

All that I care about is SVG.

It was promised in IE 7, then pulled at the last moment. They said it would be in IE 8.

IE 8 came out, and it wasn't included. They said it would be in IE 9

Finally, it looks like most SVG features will finally be available. Half of that document is about SVG. It's a shame that SMIL isn't included, but considering it's MS, and especially considering it's something free from MS, you have to have low expectations.

Re:SVG? Border Radius?

[cbhacking]

Slashdot itself uses border-radius. It has worked just fine for months now. Admittedly it was somewhat annoying that /. used to feed old-school CSS that didn't include the rounded corners when it detected IE, but you could trick it into sending the right code and now everything works. Since the recent "facelift" IE9 gets the right CSS by default, and yes it includes CSS3 things.

Wooooooosh...

[sakdoctor]

The point is, not everyone will upgrade to firefox 4 over night, even when it does get released.
You'll have this lingering tail of late adopters, with misbehaving browsers.

XP doesn't have Direct2D

[judeancodersfront]

IE9 will probably not be enough of an incentive but if other software companies follow it will help.

IE 9?

[Asaf.Zamir]

must...avoid...cynical...remarks....against....IE... (if you're seeing dots between the words your browser is not rendering the CSS properly)

ACID Compliance?

[istartedi]

How does it do on the ACID 3 Test which Chrome passes 100/100 and IE8 gets 20/100 (although maybe I could make it pass by droping my IE security pants, which I'm reluctant to do).

Re:ACID Compliance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious why anyone would use that test? How much of the HTML5 spec does ACID3 cover, and if it covers a fraction how was that fraction chosen?

Finally can leave IE 6.5

[Billly Gates]

ActiveX is a plague but it looks like businesses are not going to leave their shitty activeX software anytime soon. One of our clients is a hospital and they use signature pads that is activeX based. This can not be simply moved to sharepoint as some software has to be run on the desktop unlike many ERP programs which could be upgraded to sharepoint technology instead.

IE is the glue that keeps WindowsXP still alive.

Windows 7 will finally be a possibility.

Re:SVG? Border Radius?

[BitZtream]

It's a shame that SMIL isn't included

No doubt. But, we're moving in the right direction.

If we can get all browsers with a common layer of basic SVG support, then we can at least start taking advantage of those features and avoiding flash for those bits, maybe then all browsers will get better SVG support cause lets face it, webkit and gecko are pretty shitty at anything moderately complex, but do fine for simple stuff.

We get IE9 with basic SVG, take advantage of it and avoid flash and silverlight as much as possible maybe we can move the big beasts that these organizations are in the right direction.

Might as well face it though, getting people to actually finish the code they started is WAY harder than it is to get someone to start working on some new buzzword based feature so its going to be a long slow road.

Rendering issues

[BitZtream]

Furthermore, many site rendering issues have been fixed, although we can't say that it's working perfectly.

I hope you're not using slashdot as a test page for the rendering issues.

I can assure you, slashdot has rendering issues in every browser since this latest redesign went into place, notepad included.

IE9 is excellent on speed (Chrome config too)...

[Anonymous Coward]

"People are going to bash Microsoft because they are Microsoft, but they have really done a good job here." - by metrix007 (200091) on Thursday February 10, @01:37PM (#35164620)

Yes, they have... IE9's very noticeably faster than its predecessors, for one thing. I like that about it, right off the bat.

---

"Given that it is also more configurable than Chrome (which doesn't let you configure a fucking thing) I do recommend it." - by metrix007 (200091) on Thursday February 10, @01:37PM (#35164620)

Again? Incorrect/Untrue: I earlier wrote you here in reply to that, in regards to that statement about GOOGLE Chrome -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1989958&cid=35164620

You CAN "tweak/configure/re-configure" Chrome from its defaults & on TONS of its settings... but, you do so, via commandline re-parameterizations, instead of via a GUI interface.

I.E..-> It's how I control the size, and location of GOOGLE Chrome webbrowser data (I put all of my browser caches &/or userdata onto a TRUE SSD (not using FLASH ram & its slower write cycles, but rather 4gb of DDR2 RAM (Gigabyte IRAM))).

E.G.-> C:\Users\APKUser\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe -disk-cache-dir="Z:\SysTmp" --disk-cache-size=40000000 --user-data-dir="Z:\SysTmp"

(That's the commandline I use in Chrome to pull that off... & there is FAR MORE you can "tweak" in Chrome too, via this method... see below!)

APK

P.S.=> For a list of GOOGLE Chrome commandlines, see this, for your reference:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Google+Chrome+Command+Line%22&hl=en&prmd=ivns&ei=WFZUTeLFOJPUgQfU1ui3CQ&start=10&sa=N ... apk

On the "exciting news scale" this scores a:

[Anonymous Coward]

yaaawn

IE 9 RC needs work!

[Anonymous Coward]

IE 9 RC is a total POS. Can't believe with all the bugs still to be worked out that this hunk of junk would qualify as a "RC" Please rework this clunky buggy browser before final release, it needs A LOT of work still!