Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Next IE Version Will Feature Web Audio, Media Capture, ES6 Promises, and HTTP/2

Posted by timothy on from the loyal-opposition dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft [Wednesday] announced it is developing at least four new features for the next release of Internet Explorer (IE): Web Audio API, Media Capture and Streams, ES6 Promises, and HTTP/2. The company says this is not an exhaustive list of what to expect in the next version, but merely what it is currently confident that it will be able to deliver. For those who don't know, HTTP/2 is a faster protocol for transporting Web content. It is based on Google's SPDY open networking protocol and is currently being standardized by the IETF. Web Audio is a JavaScript API for processing and synthesizing audio in Web applications while Media Capture provides access to the user's local audio and video input/output devices. Promises is meant to help developers write cleaner asynchronous code."

4 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. IE's release model is failing by dingen · · Score: 4, Informative

    With the stupidly slow release cycles of IE, Microsoft will always play catch up with the "real" browsers.

    Google Chrome had Web Audio API implemented in version 10. That was release in 2011. Google in the meantime has shipped *25 versions* of Chrome. Same goes for Firefox, which had Web Audio implemented for even longer than Chrome, but used a different API. They've been on the same API since Firefox 25, which was released in October of last year. Since then, Mozilla has shipped another 4 versions of Firefox.

    Microsoft in the meantime was only able to announce they were going to have Web Audio in their next major release. That's because since October last year (when IE11 came out), they have released a staggering *zero* versions of IE. While the rest of the world was moving forward, they were just shipping security updates. They just can't keep up like this. Every time they release a major version they're sorta on the same page again as the competition, but it's a matter of a few months and they're so way behind again it's impossible to ever compete in a serious way.

    Microsoft still hasn't learned their lesson from IE6 as IE is still holding the web back. Get your act together, Microsoft. Stop slowing everyone down.

    --
    Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
    1. Re:IE's release model is failing by dingen · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's not a hype, we need things like Web Audio API to enable the web to be a real application platform. Audio-intensive apps are simply not possible without something like what Web Audio API provides.

      Firefox introduced the Audio Data API in 2010. Chrome has supported Web Audio API since 2011. Apple introduced Web Audio API support in 2012 on both Mac OS X as well as iOS. Mozilla deprecated Audio Data and supported Web Audio API since 2013. October 2013 was the point that for example a web game could support audio in Chrome, Firefox and on the iPhone/iPad. But where is Microsoft in all this? Nowhere to be found. It took them another 7 months to just announce they were going to have support for this in their _next_ version.

      If that isn't a prime example of IE holding back the web I don't know what is.

      --
      Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
  2. Re:all i really want from IE by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Informative

    Microsoft would help themselves if they released free VM images of the latest Windows that's limited to running their browsers.

    They do.

    http://modern.ie/en-gb/virtual...

  3. WebGL is already part of IE by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    IE 11 already supports some of WebGL.