
Status IE – IE's feature status and plans - paulirish
http://status.modern.ie/
======
giovannibajo1
I would like to know from the IE team if there's a specific plan to fix the
browser update issue, that is the fact that IE is by far the slower browser
when it comes to user upgrades. It's exciting to see features in IE1x+, but we
all know that those will be a tiny fraction of users for a long time.

I think that gaining consensus in developers' mindset goes through forcing
updates like Chrome and Firefox do; don't care if it's monthly, quarterly or
yearly, but users shouldn't even realize that an update was pushed to their
machine. This model has shown that it works for browsers, and not only that,
it has also proven to be the best model. Is there any actual actionable plan
on this?

Adding new features in IE15 is fine and good, but won't buy a dime in
developer consensus, when we still waste time supporting 5-years-old IE
browsers at any given time.

~~~
anton_gogolev
I'd argue that IE is primarily used in corporate settings, when silently
upgrading software is a big no-no. Everything has to be tested by the IT/IS
department and rolled out in a controlled fashion.

~~~
giovannibajo1
Last time I managed to find a study showing _daily_ browser market share, I
noticed that the drop for old IE versions during the weekend was significant
but below 50%. So over half of those users are not corporate users.

I don't like citing numbers without a source, but I couldn't find one in 5
minutes Googling. If somebody has a link that shows fairly recent _daily_ IE
usage share, we can double check my recall.

I would also like to add that one technical solution for the "IE in
enterprise" problem would be allowing parallel IE version installations. IE
already allows to go into old version emulation mode, but it's not 100%
faithful (I don't know the details).

If it was 100% faithful, sysadmin could simply update IE to the latest version
for normal browsing (or even let it auto-update, since I'm sure no sysadmin
believe that he/she can QA IE better than MS for general Internet usage), and
forcing compatibility (through GPO) for Intranet sites that are broken in
newer version.

But since it's not 100% faithful, the technical solution would be allowing to
install an auto-updating IE in parallel to IE8, and then configure a policy to
automatically switch to IE8 for Intranet sites (Chrome Enterprise does a
similar thing; you can configure a GPO so that the user is automatically
brought to IE when he/she browses to specific websites, e.g.: Intranet).

------
gk1
I wonder if a re-branding is in order. I suspect I'm not the only one who
feels an inner discomfort with IE. I even associate the logo and name with
thoughts like "outdated," "broken," "difficult," and "cumbersome."

I realize they've come a long way, but it's tough to shake off 10+ years of
negative experiences and associations.

------
McGlockenshire
None of the things listed as "not currently planned" are big surprises, though
seeing WebRTC there is very disappointing. I've never seen "Object RTC"
before, is it a competing effort, or a restandardization effort?

~~~
BilalBudhani
"MathML" is listed as "not currently planned".

~~~
SEMW
Honest question: now that mathjax has a high-quality pure-HTML/CSS output
engine, does anyone still care about browser MathML support?

------
pyalot2
Note that this site lists WebGL as "IE11+". That's false. IE11 has a flavor of
webgl that's experimental (prefixed or not) that's reported as version WebGL
0.92 (this is basically an invalid specification conformant string, it's
either 1.0 or something not done).

Huge gaps and bugs remain in Microsofts WebGL implementation which make it
nearly impossible to use except for specific select usecases that Microsoft
optimized for.

It took google and mozilla about 4 years to get a good WebGL implementation
(and they're still not done). It'll take Microsoft years to come to bring
their implementation on par with the rest of the WebGL world.

~~~
adrianba
We shipped an update to the IE11 WebGL implementation to developers today as
part of Windows 8.1 Update. We will roll this out to all IE11 users through
Windows Update starting next week. There will be further updates to our WebGL
implementation in the summer.

If there are specific use cases that you're interested in support for, please
let us know what they are so that we can prioritise the order of our
implementation.

~~~
pyalot2
The most important thing is to run the webgl conformance test (online
[https://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/sdk/tests/webgl-
confo...](https://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/sdk/tests/webgl-conformance-
tests.html) github
[https://github.com/KhronosGroup/WebGL](https://github.com/KhronosGroup/WebGL))
every day on a variety of machines with different configurations (I assume you
have an automated test farm).

Another measure that's also very useful is to run the webgl performance
regression test suite every day to see if performance got worse or better with
the changes.

Unfortunately there isn't a comprehensive GLSL syntax test suite, but GLSL has
been much of a sore point in IE where some syntax that's valid GLSL would work
except in IE (such as uniforms separated by a comma).

I've submitted some tickets to IE (and added more conformance tests to cover
them) for some of the gaps (gl.SAMPLES, gl.STENCIL_BITS, gl.SUBPIXEL_BITS).

A thing that's also a sore point is IEs lack of support for very common
extensions such as OES_texture_float_linear, WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc,
WEBGL_depth_texture, OES_standard_derivatives, OES_vertex_array_object,
ANGLE_instanced_arrays, OES_element_index_uint, WEBGL_lose_context. You can
get an overview of the state of support on
[http://webglstats.com/](http://webglstats.com/)

A note on floating point texture extensions. If you implement one extension
(for instance OES_texture_float) you should really implement the companion
extensions as well for texture_float_linear and color_buffer_float. Only the
triplet of extensions provides comprehensive overview of support.

Personally I'd like to see these run in IE of course:
[http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/15/soft-shadow-
mapping/](http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/15/soft-shadow-mapping/)
[http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/04/high-performance-
js-...](http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/04/high-performance-js-heatmaps/)
[http://codeflow.org/webgl/deferred-irradiance-
volumes/www/](http://codeflow.org/webgl/deferred-irradiance-volumes/www/)
[http://codeflow.org/webgl/trails/www/](http://codeflow.org/webgl/trails/www/)
[http://codeflow.org/webgl/barycentric-
wireframe/www/](http://codeflow.org/webgl/barycentric-wireframe/www/)
[http://codeflow.org/webgl/ssao/](http://codeflow.org/webgl/ssao/)

I think the demos above are fairly good usecases for gaps that you might have,
because they exercise a lot of functionality, they're not bound to some
specific framework (like three.js) but they are WebGL conformant.

------
TheCoreh
Would be nice to know if they plan on implementing special handling for
asm.js. This info is nowhere on this chart.

~~~
JacobRossi
Ah,yes, good suggestion to add to our list on the site. Look for an update
soon from our JS engine (Chakra) team's plan.

~~~
TheCoreh
Thanks for such a fast reply! :) I'm quite happy with Microsoft's recent push
towards openness.

One additional suggestion: Perhaps you could also include a rationale on why a
specific feature is not planned to be implemented: e.g. WebRTC. (Though I can
anticipate this might not be feasible to do for strategic / management
reasons.)

------
AdamTReineke
Chrome's dashboard: [http://www.chromestatus.com](http://www.chromestatus.com)

~~~
devnetfx
Thanks for the link. I always found it hard to know what is happening in new
versions of chrome and which feature became available when. This is exactly
what I needed - Thanks!

Also found chrome dashboard easier to use than IE dashboard but that's
understandable as this is new effort.

And, if anyone from IE team is here, how about some consistency with developer
tools with other browsers as well. The web developer UI in IE 11 is so
different that I struggle to found simple things - maybe I am not good in
recognizing new icons :)

~~~
AdamTReineke
I'm actually on the dev tools team. I'll pass along the feedback to the PMs.

------
geetee
I'm bewildered by the many "under consideration" entries. When all the other
major players support something, and you want to be taken seriously, why
aren't you throwing more engineers at the problem?

~~~
JacobRossi
If feature status were a Facebook relationship status, many might say "it's
complicated." ;-) Most of the time, it's not actually a question of
engineering resources. Stay tuned as we update more and more stuff to "In
Development".

(I work for IE)

~~~
derefr
I'm curious--does this imply internal-politics problems (e.g. getting other
departments to expose, and possibly backport, APIs that Chakra needs to
consume to do the features), or just weird engineering challenges specific to
the Chakra codebase?

~~~
TheCoreh
I could see some conflicts of interest issues too. (e.g. implementing WebRTC
could be against their interests - since Microsoft owns Skype, they might not
want to lower the barrier of entry to a competitor.)

~~~
dstorey
Microsoft are contributing to Object RTC, so I see this as unlikely.

------
jrd79
Can somebody on the IE team comment on when specific SVG features will be
added? I am interested in using a <use> tag with a xlink:href to an element in
a different SVG file. This is part of the SVG spec and works in the latest
versions of Chrome and FireFox, but does not work in IE 11. Any plans to fix
this?

My Stack Overflow question on the topic is at:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22516712/svg-use-tag-
with...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22516712/svg-use-tag-with-
external-reference-in-ie-11)

------
paul7986
No web audio API? Are they building in an alternative?

All other browsers support web audio. Why isn't MS following along?

~~~
dstorey
It’s under consideration.

------
grn
You can also download Virtual Box VMs with different versions of IE
[http://modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads](http://modern.ie/en-
us/virtualization-tools#downloads). Indispensable when developing on Linux!

~~~
tracker1
I wish they'd link the VMWare VMs for other OSes... They're available under
the Linux option iirc, which works fine for windows/mac.

------
grumblestumble
This is somewhat misleading WRT to Flexbox. IE10 "supports" the abandoned
syntax, which is incompatible with the new proposal. It would be very useful
if this was explicitly mentioned in cases where the API for these things is in
flux.

------
yeukhon
I still don't understand why IE still mark Content Security Policy (CSP) under
consideration given all other major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari and
Opera) have at least some version of CSP implemented.

I am actually very surprised they don't yet have HSTS implemented. IE is so
much behind these security standard IMO. I don't know why they would push Web
Crypto into 11+ when they don't even have CSP or HSTS implemented yet.

Given the standard, they should have HSTS, then CSP, then Web Crypto and then
subresource integrity (which will probably take another year or two to
stabilize a final draft for v1).

Is this list even up-to-date?

------
dave1010uk
I see WebP but no mention of WebM video at the moment. Any reason it's not
there?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
If they do add that, they should specify VP8 and/or VP9 and/or Vorbis and/or
Opus rather than just WebM.

The Opus audio codec, which was co-developed by Microsoft subsidiary Skype,
would be useful both for WebRTC, and the alternative Microsoft favours,
ObjectRTC.

VP8 and Opus both get mentioned in passing in the ObjectRTC spec that I found,
but I don't know if they have the same status as in WebRTC (mandatory for
Opus, optional for VP8)

------
sjf
Has the Irish domain registry lifted its rules on .ie domains? It used to be
that you only register them for Irish businesses, even getting yourname.ie was
not straight forward. It's a little disturbing to see this domain.

------
jakub_g
Semi-related for cross-browser ES6 compat:

[http://kangax.github.io/es5-compat-
table/es6/](http://kangax.github.io/es5-compat-table/es6/)

Shows future versions of Firefox and Chrome but not yet IE.

~~~
agapos
Future versions of Fx and Chr are available constantly (on multiple channels
at different stages), what is not the case with IE.

------
throwaway41597
Thanks.

Please add a change log so we can quickly know when features get
added/rejected/shipped/...

Also I found that sorting by status was broken (a block of IE10+ features in
the middle of IE11+ ones).

------
grumblestumble
This is great. I realize that there are probably political hurdles to doing
so, but it would be awesome if these linked to MDN in addition to MSDN / W3C /
WebPlatform.

------
higherpurpose
WebRTC is not even in their plan yet. _Sigh_.

~~~
dstorey
Object RTC is under consideration instead.

~~~
juberti
It's OK. You can implement WebRTC as a JS library on top of ORTC.

------
scotty79
I'm not really interested in IE news unless it's "IE will use webkit rendering
engine from now on."

------
wyuenho
Does that mean we won't be able to see ES6 modules coming to IE anytime soon?

~~~
dstorey
I believe the data from the Chakra (IE’s JS engine) team hasn’t been updated
yet.

------
Flenser
try view-source, it's build using angular, bower and bootstrap.

------
pepelepoo
heheh. This website has a hard dependency on chromestatus.com.

~~~
JacobRossi
Yep, and we're already chatting with the Chrome team on how browsers can
collaborate on this type of data. We encourage people to use our data too.
It's openly licensed.

~~~
molant
You can use CORS to access the data at
[http://status.modern.ie/features](http://status.modern.ie/features) :)

------
shmerl
_> WebRTC - Not currently planned_

Fail.

~~~
jgaylord
But Object RTC is under consideration. I believe (but don't quote me) that
most of the efforts at the W3C are focused on this over WebRTC. Also, you'll
notice that the IE team is taking a slightly more conservative approach to the
new features. Since many features are still in draft mode and can
significantly change, they're implementing features as they mature.

~~~
shmerl
MS tried to sabotage mandating free codecs for standard real time
communications, but W3C managed to put Opus in WebRTC. Not sure what's going
on in parallel efforts in this regard but it's a pretty important issue and MS
is on the wrong side in this one.

------
snird
They are comparing IE to other real modern browsers - it's rather surprising
to see. Like saying "The competitors are far ahead, here what they already do
and we don't and out of that what we plan to do next and what not.".

~~~
dstorey
There are only 13 features listed there not currently supported in IE and
supported by Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Of those, 4 are currently in
development.

