
Inside Internet Explorer 9: Redmond gets back in the game - alexandros
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/09/inside-internet-explorer-9-redmond-gets-back-in-the-game.ars
======
niyazpk
While I am happy too that the new version of IE is coming soon and it supports
the latest standards, let us not forget that we all were saying the exact same
thing when IE7 and IE8 came out:

 _This new release will help developers very much by supporting the latest
standards._

The problems is not with supporting a subset of the latest standards. The
problem is that the latest standards change over time and IE stays the same
for 2-4 years.

In the long run, as a web developer I feel that IE7 or IE8 did not help me
much in reducing the work I have to do to fix the compatibility issues. Now
instead of just IE6, I have to fix issues with IE7 and IE8. (I have had issues
where I could fix the problem using some extreme hacks in IE7 while there was
no way to fix the issue in IE8. Later I was forced to use the EmulateIE7 meta-
tag for the website, which was BTW developed this year. For the curious, the
problem was similar to this: <http://stackoverflow.com/q/1156985/184> )

Until unless some version of IE ships with an auto-update mechanism, I will
just refrain myself from going gaga over the new CSS/HTML standards support of
IE. The most important thing they have to fix is their release cycle (+ auto-
update) and they seem to ignore this part for a long time. Now every time a
new version of IE comes out, I don't know whether to smile or to cry.

~~~
percept
They could shorten their release cycle but it wouldn't change the behavior of
their largest customers.

Consider a large organization that finally installed IE7. [Welcome to 2006!]

I'm sure we'll have to deal with this for years to come (unfortunately), and
neglecting corporate customers leaves a lot of money on the table.

~~~
tptacek
A thousand times this. I have clients who are site-wide IE6 to this day.
Ironically, Firefox worsened this problem, because all those clients _also_
allow you to run Firefox (because IE6 barely works), but have apps that
require IE, so (a) there's little incentive to upgrade (just use Firefox!) and
(b) it's still likely that your first visit from a user there will be from
IE6.

IE7 is also _much_ easier to work with than IE6, having had the semirecent
pleasure of getting a jQuery-ish Rails app working on both.

~~~
grayrest
When chrome frame gets officially greenlighted, I'm immediately dropping all
IE 6-8 support and campaigning as hard as I can at work for them to do the
same.

------
robchez
Visually, IE9 is one of the most gorgeous browsers I have ever seen. It had
the wow feeling I had after installing Chrome for the first time.

The amount of new features in this release is amazing. I am blown away at how
much has changed.

I think the whole speed issue has become a moot point now. Shaving of
milliseconds off of already fast browsers doesn't impress me anymore.

To everyone who complains about standards compliance, IE6 etc. etc. remember
that when IE6 came out, it was the greatest browser ever. It was revolutionary
for the time and it doesn't deserve the hate it receives. MS Shouldn't have
let it stagnate, but look at HTML4, it only recently is being updated.

Say what you want about ActiveX, but it was MS attempt at updating the
browser, because the standards bodies weren't.

I love chrome, but right now there is no reason for me not to switch to IE9. I
use minimal addons (StumbleUpon/Lastpass), I could care less about tiny speed
improvements. People who have switched away from IE, may find it hard to go
back, but people who haven't, will really have no reason to switch after this
release hits final.

Great work Microsoft and IE team.

------
troutwine
Better standards support in IE is a boon for everyone; JS shivs and CSS resets
only go so far in alleviating development pain. Still, I don't know that I
would go so far as to say "back in the game" but, rather, "no longer so
shockingly backward;" if only because IE is still chained to Windows. While it
_is_ 90% of the desktop market, mobile platforms are making great strides into
ubiquity and, at least anecdotally, folks tend to prefer homogeneity of their
program set across devices.

~~~
lygaret
"...folks tend to prefer homogeneity of their program set across devices."

You must know different folks than I do. Most of the people I know that aren't
developers wonder why the icon for "internet" has a big E on it. I can
guarantee you that the grand majority of people don't realize that the web
browser on their mobile device isn't the same as the web browser on their
desktop. And if they do, they're unlikely to be using IE right now anyway.

~~~
troutwine
Yes, it's very likely that I know different folks. That's why I hedged my
comment by noting that it was purely anecdotal: I tend to associate with
computer scientists, mathematicians and medievalists. The first and last
groups tend to be most interested in homogeneity, in my experience.

Besides, if we're to say that IE is "back in the game" then surely we should
count only those who make a conscious decision to use IE; otherwise we're
using vastly different terms.

------
ericz
IE has the opportunity to come out with a truly standards compliant product.
If they can give it the speed/wow factor the Chrome release had, then they'll
be back in the game.

Regardless, if they create a product that is rid of all of the burdens of
previous version, ie. ActiveX and BHOs, then they're giving many consumers
little reason to switch to a competitor if they're computer is shipped with
IE9

~~~
ergo98
All they really need to get back in the game is to come within a lap of the
lead browsers -- they don't need users to migrate back from Firefox and
Chrome, they just need the "default" browser to be good enough that change
isn't necessary.

~~~
zepolen
Personally I can't see why they don't stick an IE badge on webkit and be done
with it.

~~~
percept
. . . or a Windows badge on Linux.

~~~
zepolen
For the most part webapps will work under any OS with a browser, you can't
really say the same thing about Windows/Linux software.

~~~
rbanffy
Windows NT was designed to have "multiple personalities". It has a Win32
personality most Windows programs see, a POSIX personality (that I think
doesn't exist anymore) and an OS/2 personality (that I never saw). Each one
could run binaries designed for the respective environment. Few Windows
programs ever touch the NT kernel.

OSX is also modeled like this. There is a Mach kernel and a BSD-like
personality on top of it.

Wine allows Win32 software to run on top of Unix without ever realizing they
are running on top of a "fake" Win32 stack.

I think GNUStep could be used to build something similar that could allow OSX
software to run on non-OSX hosts.

~~~
outofband
the posix personality still exists - it's called SUA; the Subsystem for UNIX
Applications. the guys at interop systems have made a really nice ports-esque
system for it so it's easy to get up and running with the usual pile of apps.

~~~
jf
Do you have more details on this? I looked around for a while and ended up
installing cygwin...

------
flatulent1
It seems like the tech sites that end up with mega-publisher owners are a bit
soft in articles that cover products from major potential advertisers.

Conde Nast owns Wired, arstechnica, webmonkey, and reddit

Tabs to the side of the address bar? Using the URL space for search? What are
they smoking?

We'll see how standards support actually turns out...

~~~
maguay
URL space for search? That's one feature that Chrome had first, and most
people seem that I've seen to like it. Of course, for me, Chrome's best
feature is that it picks up sites you search on and automatically adds them to
the search engine list ... that's convenient.

~~~
subsection1h
> URL space for search? That's one feature that Chrome had first

Firefox has had this feature since in 2004 [1]. It's called Smart Keywords
[2]. It can be enhanced with an extension called SmartSearch [3].

[1]
[http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65668?...](http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65668?currentPage=all)

[2] <http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart+keywords>

[3] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/188/>

------
lovskogen
Agreed, but this is kinda f'ed up:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/09/13/interoperable-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/09/13/interoperable-
html-parsing-in-ie9.aspx)

------
xentronium
Now it needs a decent js engine (js/html5 canvas is sort of slow right now)
and more space for tabs (lemme put them into the titlebar or below the address
bar forchrissake).

------
hvs
Now it just needs a semi-decent debugger.

~~~
NumberFiveAlive
The dev tools in IE8 are pretty darn good. I still use Firebug as my primary,
but when I'm chasing an IE specific bug, the dev tools are pretty solid. I
even prefer them to Chrome's.

~~~
jjcm
Webkit's debugger, not Chrome's. I've actually switched over to Webkit's
debugger as my primary one though. It ironed out a lot of the nuances that
irked me over the last year (inspection of styles didn't appear as code [it
now does], you couldn't use command/ctrl + shift + c to inspect an element
[you can now], you couldn't delete dom elements [you can now], as well as a
myriad of others that were resolved). So far I've found it to be more stable
than firebug and laid out/organized better. That's just me though, and to each
their own - but if you haven't tried it in the last year give it another shot.

~~~
NumberFiveAlive
Thanks, I will check it out as it has been about a year. I think about 80% of
my preference was simply familiarity.

------
pilif
Eager to look into the future that will bring the demise of countless of hours
of patching up sites so they also work in IE (the code you write works
perfectly in all browsers - just IE always needs that additional hassle), I
downloaded the beta, went to a Site I was working on (it is valid HTML5) and
_poof_

<http://www.gnegg.ch/muchbetter.png>

error -2147467259

right. Maybe it tells me at least where that happened.

Line 1 character 1. Yeah. Thanks.

I have a feeling that even with all the good intentions, this browser will be
as buggy as all the other IE versions before this one. This time though, as it
won't run under XP, it's just one more version we have to write workarounds
for.

Thanks.

------
sankara
Someone has drawn a lot of inspiration from Chrome. But seriously, I love the
minimalistic interface of chrome and IE9 being surprisingly similar to it is a
very good reason for me switch back.

------
sireat
If IE9 can handle multiple tabs better, I am all for it.

IE8 chokes on 20-30 tabs (mostly HN...) while I've have not had the same
problem in Firefox, Chrome or Opera, IE just feels sluggish.

I should clarify, that I can crash or slow down to crawl Firefox (I am looking
at you Reddit), but then it is obvious something has gone wrong.

The way IE slows down is less obvious, that is you can still use it but it is
slow.

IE8 is trying to degrade gracefully and failing.

------
acabal
This will only be more of a pain in the ass for me. 50% of my IE users are
still on IE7. I dropped support for IE6 last year because I personally
couldn't handle the ridiculousness of debugging it, even though I still get
hits from it. But now I'll have to test my site in IE7, IE8, _and_ IE9,
because it'll take _years_ before IE9 replaces all previous versions
completely. (And by then, IE10 and IE11 will have come out). Fuck you,
Microsoft.

------
dstein
I'm still trying to decide how I want to install it. Being able to test all
versions of IE on a single machine is getting impossible.

I have a Windows 7 virtual machine for testing IE8, a Vista vm for IE7, and an
Windows XP for testing IE6. And I only have one license of each system, and I
don't really want to drop my ability to test IE7 or IE8.

Fuck you Microsoft!!

~~~
code_duck
Do you know that Microsoft supplies VHD images for free that you can use to
test any version of IE? YOu don't need a license or anything, just Windows and
their free Virtual PC software. They're intended to work only with Windows and
Virtual PC (of course!) but apparently it's possible to get them to work with
other VM software on other OSs.

[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=...](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en)

~~~
Yaggo
> YOu don't need a license or anything, just Windows and their free Virtual PC
> software.

Last time I checked, running "just Windows" requires "a license or something".

~~~
code_duck
It's true. I meant to say a license specifically for these additional
versions.

------
iuguy
I still don't see a reason to switch to it. I use firefox for day to day
browsing and chrome for specific work-related things.

I guess the question I need to ask is "Why?". Unless IE has some serious
performance differences I can't see a reason to use it.

------
DjDarkman
It's useless unless they stop supporting older IE versions...

~~~
InclinedPlane
Can we please stop bashing MS for the continued usage of IE6? For it's time
IE6 was a fine browser (honest), and what exactly is so bad about supporting
software long after it is obsolete?

If you're tired of supporting IE6 on your site, then stop. Foisting off the
cost of transitioning everyone off IE6 onto a big company like MS is
comforting but ultimately unrealistic and selfish.

~~~
code_duck
What's bad about supporting software long after it is obsolete is that it
encourages people who know very little to think it is perfectly legitimate to
continue using it long after it is obsolete.

It's their lousy software, it IS their responsibility to transition people off
of it.

~~~
kennedywm
It's just not smart to replace a system that only works well in IE 6 because
it might mess up your employees' ability to waste their time on some guy's
random startup.

There are perfectly legitimate reasons why a corporation would continue to use
IE6, despite its countless flaws.

~~~
code_duck
Security is the killer flaw, though. They're going to have to change once MS
stops patching it - and who knows what 0 day (or -300 day) flaws lurk in IE6.

~~~
kennedywm
I hope you never have to understand the perverse inner workings of the
corporate IT manager's mind. :'(

~~~
Shorel
So the 'perfectly legitimate reasons' are all because of 'perverse inner
workings' of some manager's mind?

------
InclinedPlane
The real unknown is whether or not IE's release cadence (currently at about a
1.5-2 year cycle) is sustainable when every other browser is on a much shorter
cycle (in some cases 1/4 that). IE9 may be the bee's knees, but if Google puts
out another set of half a dozen releases as substantive as those prior between
IE9 and 10 how does IE keep up and stay relevant?

------
VladRussian
the only time i've started the IE in the recent years is to download
Mozilla/Firefox on new machines/reinstalls. One time tried to download Chrome
instead of FF - the IE hanged on the Google's Chrome download button.

------
rbanffy
Does it run on Linux? OSX?

Thought so.

------
api
That interface looks like ass.

~~~
nkohari
It looks better than previous versions, but it's just a shitty knock-off of
Chrome. It's hard to argue that Chrome defined the minimalist look for
browsers.

