
Announcing Internet Explorer Developer Channel - robin_reala
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/06/16/announcing-internet-explorer-developer-channel.aspx
======
AaronFriel
The really amazing thing here is that they've disentangled IE from the base
Windows. The key comment:

    
    
      This release of the IE Developer Channel uses a combination of code changes
      and App-V Client to virtualize and run alongside IE11.
    

This is pretty huge, because it means that the support requirements for IE can
be drastically reduced. That means faster releases without harming backwards
compatibility. One IE for the server and OS platform, one IE the application
platform (modern apps), and another for the user. Or even instanced per-user
IE, or who knows what they could do. It's a big deal that they've gotten IE to
the point that it can run in an App-V container, and the result will be a
faster development cycle and earlier access to new features in the client,
without imposing a huge support matrix on application developers.

This could pan out into versioned webview controls and all sorts of things. I
hope Microsoft is willing to take this as far as it can go.

~~~
0x0
Hopefully it won't end up in a situation where a lot of apps bundle seriously
outdated versions and any given system has a dozen old dlls strewn all over.
Didn't that kinda happen with bundled flash players - even Adobe shipped
exploitable players for years in other products?

~~~
AaronFriel
Hopefully they do what Firefox tried (and failed) to do: ship a stable,
enterprise version and an advanced version. No locking to arbitrary versions,
but able to say, support "IE11 and IE Latest" in your product. Hopefully they
allow developers to opt into a 30-60 day preview window such that they can
remain a bit ahead of their customers.

~~~
robin_reala
and failed? Mozilla’s ESR releases are definitely a thing.

~~~
LaikaF
I'm using one right now.

Pretty sure they back port security/bug fixes as I have to keep updating it.

~~~
JohnTHaller
The Firefox ESR branch is on the same release schedule as the Firefox 'Stable'
branch. So, you get a scheduled release every 6 weeks. But ESR just gets the
security fixes whereas Stable also gets the new features. When there's an out-
of-band security update on Stable (a .1 release), ESR gets that, too. ESR is
pegged to specific releases of Stable and operates in parallel for a few
releases so there are two different ESRs... the older one and the newer one...
so organizations can transition from one browser engine to the next over a
couple month timespan and ensure corporate apps work on both.

Oddly, some non-organization people want ESR because they think it's updated
less often. It's not.

------
radmuzom
This is exciting news. I switched from Firefox to IE11 at home, and find that
IE is as good as any other browser for regular web users today - this after
using Firefox for almost 10 years.

I am also forced to use IE8 at work, as we are still using Windows XP - a non-
software company is really really slow to upgrade their software - we were on
IE6 till 2012.

As an aside, can someone let me know why IE11 still scores so low in
[http://html5test.com](http://html5test.com) . Does this website test features
which IE11 and future versions have refused to implement at all?

~~~
gdrulia
In today world using any version of IE as a main browser is a bad idea. Why?
Because browsers evolve very quickly and IE doesn't. It might look at first
that IE is running quite nicely and even fast. But soon you start to notice
all of the glitches. Especially if you're web developer. As long as there is
no auto update, IE is always a threat for web developers as IE6 can happen
again..

~~~
drzaiusapelord
IE10 introduced auto-update. Once 11 came out, computers silently updated to
it. No big windows update prompt asking them if they're sure they want it.

IE9 to IE10 was aggressively launched as well. I believe users got a basic
prompt and IE turned on auto-updating by default. According to some of my
users, IE10 just appeared, so my guess is that MS may have the prompt time-out
to 'yes' instead of infinitely holding the computer.

Here in corporitstan, I had to put in extra blocks to keep 10 and 11 away, due
to our CRM being suck on IE9 for the time being. Trust me, MS is trying real
hard to get everyone to the newest version of IE.

~~~
gdrulia
You see I do understand that they try and I do applaud that. yet on my windows
8 machine I still haven't received IE11, even though I just recently did got a
notice that IE has been updated, it is still IE10. To make matters worse even
if I visit their website to download IE11 manually [1] they're telling me that
I already have IE11.

So that experience alone tells me that not everything is done right yet. And
even if everything would work, they have to keep doing things right for some
time to regain trust.

[1] [http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/internet-
explorer/ie-11-w...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/internet-
explorer/ie-11-worldwide-languages)

~~~
slace
IE11 didn't ship for Windows 8.0 it only shipped for Windows 7 and Windows
8.1.

Windows 8.1 is a free upgrade on Windows 8.0, more like a service pack release
(when you look at the changes). Why not port it to Windows 8.0, it didn't make
sense, 8.0 should fade out as people install the free upgrade that comes via
Windows Updates (or the store, I forget which) and is a mandatory update.
Opting out of mandatory updates means you opt out of associated upgrades.

This isn't a new or unique policy in Windows, look at iOS, you won't get WebGL
on Mobile Safari without iOS 8, OSX doesn't back-port Safari and Andriod has a
lot of versions with terrible browsers.

------
mmastrac
This is an interesting announcement. I wonder how far away the IE team is from
open-sourcing the browser on top of all this.

There's been a sea change under at Microsoft over the last few years: support
for web standards (WebGL!) and less of the "old Microsoft" anti-OSS messaging.
I could easily see them taking this next plunge. There's still a lot of work
they need to do to win me back to the platform, but I like what I've seen over
the last few years.

Now if only we could get a proper unix subsystem on Windows....

~~~
xenadu02
Sad thing is they had a product like this, Services for Unix but it was a
server product that never got much love or attention. IIRC, it extended the
POSIX personality to give you a true Unix environment running on the NT
kernel.

A lot of people don't know that Cutler's team designed NT to support different
personalities/subsystems and it originally shipped with a POSIX one, an OS/2
(text mode) one, and the Win32 subsystem.

If you put in the effort, there's no reason you couldn't use the NT kernel as
the basis for a Unix OS without any Windows API whatsoever. It's a single root
filesystem/object system with devices mounted in directories, etc. It goes
even further, things like synchronization primitives are also mounted there.

~~~
mmastrac
If there was a new unix-y personality on top of NT, I'd be so happy. Win32 is
saddled with such crazy baggage like MAX_PATH being 260 characters, even
though the underlying OS supports 64kB paths. Arrrrgh.

------
philjackson
Feels like they're flogging a dead horse to me a little. IE is constantly
playing catchup to the other browsers, and MS gave us the web development
darkages thanks to version 6/7/8\. I kind of wish they would just kill it off
and offer the completion up to the users.

------
andruby
I truly hope these are the first steps towards an evergreen Internet Explorer.

When that day comes, webdevelopers world wide will have one hell of a party.

~~~
protonfish
It will still be unacceptable for development purposes because of the poor
quality of their utilities. Does this affect non-dev users? I would argue yes,
because web apps will have the fewest bugs and run the best in the browser
they are developed in. All work done to make the app "cross-browser" will be
blamed as compatibility issues with other browsers. This is why IE, no matter
what version, will always be seen to have compatibility issues (unfairly in my
opinion - IE is a fine browser and all browsers have some differences) until
it has development tools on par with Firebug or Chrome.

~~~
ricardobeat
Have you looked at IE's developer tools recently? They are way ahead of FF,
and in some aspects even Chrome. I'd use IE11 for debugging if it would run on
OSX :)

~~~
fetbaffe
I like the memory profiling, way better then the others.

------
olegbl
That dev tools screenshot looks pretty awesome. Seems to have even more detail
than Chrome's timeline view. Gotta try it sometime.

------
TallGuyShort
Anyone else getting "application server errors"? No other details (for
security reasons), but reloading keeps showing various error pages.

------
cshung
This is my first release in the JavaScript team. Here I optimized the JSON
parser to work 30% faster for escaped strings. @cshung

------
higherpurpose
Does this developer channel include WebRTC support?

~~~
jabr
It looks like the WebRTC Object API might happen for IE13, but no support for
the full API is planned.

It looks like IE12 should have the Audio API and getUserMedia, though. That
lets you do some interesting things with audio, at least.

------
ausjke
In my design these days I specifically write down: test the HTML/JS/etc code
in FF and Chrome only and forget about IE fully.

I mean really, why do I need care about IE at all these days?

~~~
jacquesm
Everybody that targets business users.

Funny thing: I have the opposite problem right now, I'm using a site that is
targeted strictly towards business users and _I don 't have IE anywhere here_
so it's been nothing but trouble for me over the last couple of days.

~~~
dstorey
You can get free VMs at [https://modern.ie/en-gb/virtualization-
tools](https://modern.ie/en-gb/virtualization-tools) . And also a free 3 month
BrowserStack trail from the same site.

~~~
jacquesm
Thank you very much. Unfortunately the job is of such a nature that I won't be
able to use this but the pointer is much appreciated.

------
benaston
Does this mean that Internet Explorer can, in fact, be run completely
independently of the core operating system?

~~~
masklinn
Doesn't seem that simple:

> This release of the IE Developer Channel uses a combination of code changes
> and App-V Client to virtualize and run alongside IE11. This virtualization
> creates a small performance hit, so we don’t recommend you use this version
> to measure your site’s performance.

~~~
benaston
Of course, they would highlight the complexities of the process wouldn't they?
(cough - antitrust - cough)

------
wfjackson
On a sidenote, why use JPEGs for screenshots? It makes text look awful, use
PNG already.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-
filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communit...](http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-
filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-
weblogfiles/00-00-00-38-71-metablogapi/0576.aiedc_2D00_image2_5F00_551x320.jpeg)

I see this problem in almost all MSDN blogs, must be part of a convoluted CMS
workflow or something.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
File size I imagine. Typically, a PNG will be 4 or 5x the size of a low/mid
quality jpg. 31kb vs 150kb when you're delivering a bazillion pages makes a
difference if you don't have the bandwidth.

Granted, that seems quaint nowadays, but maybe MS doesn't give two shits about
making sure the blogs have the bandwidth and resources they need for nicer
looking graphics.

~~~
frankydp
Or they could use WebP and get the best of both worlds.

O
wait...[http://status.modern.ie/?term=webp](http://status.modern.ie/?term=webp)

~~~
pornel
or an ISO/ITU-T standard: JPEG-XR, which _they do support already_?

[http://ie.microsoft.com/TEStdrive/Graphics/ImageSupport/Defa...](http://ie.microsoft.com/TEStdrive/Graphics/ImageSupport/Default.html)

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BrianPetro
Too little too late.

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th0ma5
Finally, the entire source code!

~~~
th0ma5
Sorry MS astroturfers, I thought this was a thing for developers!

