

IE9 Release Candidate now available - zaatar
http://windows.microsoft.com/ie9

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zaatar
If you're seeing any crazy issues with the IE9 RC, please continue to submit
feedback through the right channels [1]. However, I will be monitoring this
thread too. Also, I wanted to express my thanks to the news.yc community - I
saw some great commentary when Beta shipped, and some neat bug reports too,
thanks for helping shape up IE9! :-)

[1] <http://connect.microsoft.com/>

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kenjackson
Has the DCE bug that became the center of the SunSpider issue been fixed in
the RC?

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zaatar
Actually, no, I don't work with JScript stuff and can't comment, sorry. I'll
flag your query to the right folks, and they will look into it. Thanks!

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kenjackson
Thanks. I look forward to the response.

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fletchowns
Unfortunately I despise IE too much at this point to ever bother trying to use
it again as my main browser. You made us all suffer too much over the years,
sorry guys.

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rudiger
I don't think this is the right attitude to have. You should judge IE9 by its
own merit, not by past misgivings. You can't (and shouldn't) be compelled to
try IE9, but the reason you aren't using it should be that another browser
works just fine for you, not because you wholeheartedly reject Microsoft for
past suffering.

Also, it's my belief that the suffering we faced with IE is less an issue with
the browsers themselves, and more of an issue with the update schedule. IE6
was very good at the time of it's release; it's a shame that it took so long
for IE7 and IE8. But now, with Chrome (and now Firefox) releasing several
major versions a year, we should see more and better developments in the
browser space.

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fletchowns
If for some reason Firefox, Chrome, and Opera didn't work out for me, only
then would I try switching back to IE. It is the order in which I would try
the different browsers that the history of IE is considered. I don't see
myself considering a switch anytime soon since I love Firefox.

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ZoFreX
You should at least try it, even if you have no intention of switching. IE9 is
_blazingly_ fast on my netbook, even more so than my browser of choice,
Chrome. While I have no intention of switching right now, it's a win for
everyone that IE is a serious competitor - once IE9 has mainstream adoption
it'll push Chrome, Opera and Firefox to be even faster to stay ahead.

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jkkramer
Fingers crossed that they do it right this time. Right now I informally group
browsers to test into four groups: IE6, IE7, IE8, and all the rest (where it's
rare to find inconsistencies or WTFs). It would be great if IE9 went into the
"all the rest" category.

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allbutlost
I've been running the beta for a couple of months now, testing sites I've been
building on it as I go along. I can tentatively say that yes, it falls into
the "all the rest" category for most common css/js issues that have plagued
all its predecessors to varying degrees.

It has still felt too slow, bloated and plagued with dialogues ("I can run
faster, disable add-ons", "This page wants to use flash" etc) to serve as my
main browser (currently FF for work and chrome for play), but the sooner IE
users move to IE9 the better for front-end devs the world over. Thumbs up from
me to MS for IE9.

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zaatar
IE9 RC has a _ton_ of bugfixes and improvements over Beta. Compatibility rates
are higher. If you liked Beta, you're gonna love the RC! And we did take in
feedback and refactored a bunch of our dialogs & notification system for RC
too ...

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ck2
I hope someone hacks it to work on XP by the end of the year (even without
acceleration) so I can figure out what additional workarounds have to be done
to all my stylesheets.

Hmm, maybe browsershots will eventually list it.

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guywithabike
XP came out almost 10 years ago _. Now is probably a good time to upgrade.

_ October, 2001

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ck2
So is the base version of javascript used in most browsers today, why is age a
reason to upgrade as long as it's maintained?

There is no direct upgrade path to Windows 7 from XP, and I am not rebuilding
my environment and re-installing all my apps, I have a better use for my days.

XP is fast and "stable", well documented, everything runs on it. I've yet to
see a good reason to "upgrade" to something else that won't even fit on a CD.

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bkhl
"XP is fast and "stable", well documented, everything runs on it. I've yet to
see a good reason to "upgrade" to something else that won't even fit on a CD."

This just sounds like you still haven't used Windows 7. Well, if you don't
try, you wouldn't know how good it is. Windows 7 is indeed fast and stable.
Stability can mean different for different aspects, but Windows 7 gets updated
constantly whereas XP is still open to a lot of vulnerabilities.

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trustfundbaby
> There is no direct upgrade path to Windows 7 from XP, and I am not
> rebuilding my environment and re-installing all my apps, I have a better use
> for my days

You missed that.

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bkhl
I think I didn't miss anything. That line just tells me that he is too lazy to
re-install his apps.

Upgrade path from XP to 7? Even if there is one, his hardware won't last long
with Windows 7, because I'm sure he hasn't upgraded his hardwares for last
decade (too lazy to even re-install apps, what more can you ask?)

I remember I had to reinstall all my apps on Mac OSX and saw no one complain.
I don't understand why all these XP users complaining about not being having a
way to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP.

Just say it, you just don't want to pay for Windows 7. But after all, you get
what you paid for.

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trustfundbaby
You just made a lot of assumptions there without anything to back them up.

I, for example am running a windows install of windows xp from 2003 repair
installed through 4 different computers and finely optimized to my liking, on
a Macbook Pro with a 3Ghz processor, 8GB of ram (of course it only uses 3GB)
and an ssd Drive ... I have a copy of windows 7 Ultimate that I got at SxSW
(Microsoft gave them out at their party) ...

I'm a busy person ... I have 60hr workweeks and thats not counting weekends
... losing a week of productivity (because thats pretty much what it would be)
upgrading to windows 7 while I back up my data, install windows 7, install all
my apps and try to restore the data isn't something I'm going to do anytime
soon.

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busticated
Heads-up for those with a penchant for ignoring the small print... IE9 RC will
replace IE8... iow, there's no obvious way to install them side-by-side. As if
anyone would really want to do that /sarcasm.

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trustfundbaby
Can someone from microsoft tell me why they can't allow us just install
IE6/7/8/9 side by side so we can test in them?

And no ... running a VM is not an acceptable option.

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zaatar
From an Engineering + Compatibility point of view, we just can't take the hit.
There are _way_ too many third party apps that host Trident, and having
multiple copies puts those apps out of wack. It's simply impossible to have
multiple copies of mshtml.dll on your box and have all of the IEs ___and_
__all of the third party apps out there behave nicely. Even if we broke a
measly 0.1% of our users, we're still talking a _really huge_ number ... we
don't have some solutions rolled out because it breaks a bunch of users, and
that is not acceptable.

Disclaimer: Even though I work for Microsoft/IE, this isn't an "official"
response. It's just my own opinion :)

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trustfundbaby
I actually appreciate that response ... why can't they be more upfront about
stuff like this especially with developers?

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golgo13
Alas, a restart was required. Hopefully watch.slingbox.com will work correctly
now. In the past, I had to restart the browser when navigating to watch my
slingbox.

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golgo13
After installing, slingbox.com worked without a hitch! Good work guys and
gals! (I know, replying to myself)

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Tsiolkovsky
Does it already have integrated support for WebM and Ogg Theora video?

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kenjackson
Internet Explorer 9 RC supports playback of H.264-encoded video using the
HTML5 video tag and now WebM video as well when a VP8 coded is installed on
Windows.

Appears no Theora support.

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swix
Does it now support css transitions/transforms?

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kenjackson
CSS2D Transforms Internet Explorer 9 RC adds support for the CSS3 2D
Transforms module, which enables elements that are rendered by CSS to be
transformed in two dimensional space.

