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

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."

Comments

all i really want from IE

[Anonymous Coward]

is to be standards compliant so i don't have to write my html/css/js to work on everything else, then modify it to also work with IE. years after the nightmares of IE6 and 7, i still have to troubleshoot IE more than any other browser.

Re:all i really want from IE

[Dracos]

LOL, not even close. No version of IE has ever had 100% support for any web standard, not even HTML 1.0

Re:all i really want from IE

[Richard_at_work]

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...

Re:all i really want from IE

[Dracos]

MS can brag about whatever, whenever they want, but IE's standards support has always been abysmal. I believe the hype you're talking about accompanied IE9, and everyone laughed at it.

Re:all i really want from IE

[marsu_k]

I guess the Internet ate my -tag - I laughed as well at the time, and still as a web developer IE gives me the most headaches. I just found it amusing at the time that they were so proud that they're able to support a subset of a standard that had been around for quite some time. Oh well, at least with IE6 finally out of the picture (or rather, I don't have to support it), my job is a little bit easier.

Re:all i really want from IE

[tepples]

It's even more expensive to test on Safari because that would require a $599 OS X license (which happens to come with an included computer).

Re:all i really want from IE

[armanox]

So do what I do and buy your Apple products second hand? My 2006 MBP ($200 when I bought it) is still my main laptop, and I have a white MacBook at home for testing purposes (since Apple killed off 32bit support on newer OS X) that was also 200.

Re:all i really want from IE

[ArcadeMan]

Click on "Download detailed requirements and instructions", scroll to page 4.

Login Information (for Windows Vista, 7, 8 VMs):
IEUser, Passw0rd!

As for expiring, the instructions recommend to make a snapshot once you're up and running, to be able to reset the expiration period when needed.

I can't wait....

[Kenja]

to not use it.

SPDY HTTP/2 is perhaps not something to brag about

[QilessQi]

Not right now, at least, considering the very recent public discussions.

the most important feature

[nimbius]

will it still be able to download Firefox and Chromium?

You must be kidding

[Austrian Anarchy]

How about they get the version that came with Win. 8 working right before moving on to bigger, better things? IE has been my last choice in a browser for well over a decade because almost anything else works better.

IE's release model is failing

[dingen]

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.

Re:IE's release model is failing

[vux984]

Google in the meantime has shipped *25 versions* of Chrome.

And IE has been patched at least that often as well but doesn't bother incrementing the major version number every time.

Re:IE's release model is failing

[dingen]

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.

Why is asm.js not listed!?

[goruka]

I know it's not a "standard" (yet?) but asm.js is one of the best things that happened to web browsers. It already works well in Firefox, Chrome and Safari, yet performance in IE is much worse than in the other platforms. Given all platforms support WebGL at this point, we are pretty much only waiting for IE to adopt proper support for asm.js.

Re:SPDY HTTP/2 is perhaps not something to brag ab

[ArcadeMan]

To summarize the summary, people are a problem.

Re:SPDY HTTP/2 is perhaps not something to brag ab

[jones_supa]

Thanks.

em vs. i vs. blockquote

[tepples]

The <em> element is for "emphatic stress". The <i> element is for other types of unemphasized "offset text" (or "text in an alternate voice" as this explanation puts it), such as foreign language loan phrases, technical terms being defined, taxonomic names including a genus (roadrunner, Geococcyx californianus; coyote, Canis latrans), and the like. A long time ago (pre-D2), Slashdot's stylesheet added excessive side margins for the <blockquote> element. To work around this, some users got in the habit of putting quoted lines in an alternate voice (<i>) rather than using a block quotation. I seem to remember having switched my own posting style from <i> quoting to <blockquote> quoting soon after D2's introduction.

WebGL is already part of IE

[tepples]

IE 11 already supports some of WebGL.

Feels like

[l0ungeb0y]

2011 all over again! If we're lucky we'll get this new version of IE before 2016.
MS: Where did you want to go a couple years ago?