
Internet Explorer 9: Platform Preview - sid0
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive
======
Auzy
Certainly looks as though Microsoft are finally willing to try to take on the
competition (they are actually flaunting the progress of ACID3, and posting
benchmarks).

In fact, its interesting that their new engine is so fast. Its going to get
very interesting, especially since personally, I couldn't give a damn about
supporting unfinalised standards the ACID3 tests (in fact, one of the ACID3
tests can't be passed 100% of the time anyway).

Speed is important, and since a lot of applications use the IE engine, maybe
this will speed up some other applications as well.

Btw, I can confirm their sunspider benchmark.. Their preview does run faster
than Firefox on my system (although, unsure if my addons are having an impact
on that, or external causes). As its just a preview, it should only be taken
with a grain of salt anyway..

~~~
ecaron
I don't think anyone has ever questioned Microsoft's ability to take on the
competition - or even beat the competition as they did in the Netscape wars.
Rather, I think we're permanently jaded against the IE browser not because of
its technical merits or flaws, but because they let it go stagnant.

Knowing that people using Windows 2000 are stuck with IE6 - despite the fact
that their machine still suits their needs - is why we need to continue to
push people away from IE. Even if IE9 is amazing.

Firefox 3.6 STILL works on Windows 2000 ([http://www.mozilla.com/en-
US/firefox/system-requirements.htm...](http://www.mozilla.com/en-
US/firefox/system-requirements.html)). Until Microsoft releases a browser we
know isn't going to put us in the "I can't upgrade past IE6" situations that
we hear about, I'll proudly support everything that isn't Internet Explorer.

(Note: Has anyone ever tried to submit a bug report to Microsoft? It is
impossible! I even put together <http://crashie8.com/> as a proof of concept,
and I still can't get anyone to acknowledge the problem!)

~~~
pavs
I think we should all take a moment to thank Google for making Chrome and get
all browser developers to get out of their collective ass and do something to
fix their broken browsers. The amount of improvement and works going on the
top 4 browsers since Chrome was released is really amazing. IE 7-8 were half-
assed job to counter Firefox's popularity.

Even Firefox is getting their act together and their next release is very much
inspired by chrome.

~~~
jriddycuz
Agreed. But I find it amazing that a browser that has roughly a 5% user share
has had so much impact. I surmise that it's really the weight of the company
behind Chrome that has scared its competitors more than the adoption of the
browser itself.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The marketshare in the general public (the 5%) is almost inconsequential. The
general public doesn't build websites for a living. The marketshare amongst
tech professionals is more significant, and there Chrome's numbers are much
higher. More so, Chrome's marketshare, even among the general public, is
growing quickly, only a fool would ignore the significance of that.

Also, marketshare is not necessarily the primary motivator for every
developer. A lot of the Firefox developers are motivated to put the best
browser possible out there, regardless of marketshare, the fact that there is
a leaner, meaner, faster browser even exists (even if the marketshare was less
than 1%) might be enough motivation for them to innovate.

------
iaskwhy
From the FAQ:

Does Platform Preview replace my current Internet Explorer?

No, it does not, though it does share some settings with your existing
Internet Explorer intsallation. One of the best features of Platform Preview
is that it installs side-by-side with earlier versions of Internet Explorer
and any other browser(s) on your computer.

~~~
thechangelog
While I'm glad to see this, it flies in the face of their previous position
that side-by-side IE was impossible.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Maybe their previous position was entirely accurate for older versions of IE.

~~~
TeHCrAzY
<http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE>

It is possible, but a bit of a hack.

~~~
est
better version

IE 1,2,3,4,5,5.5,6,7,8+Dev Toolbar

<http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm>

~~~
aaronbrethorst
this is slick. thanks for the link; i have never seen this before!

------
oneplusone
Finally, somebody implemented border-radius without throwing a prefix in front
of it. I get tired of all the -moz and -wekit prefixes.

~~~
armandososa
Does this mean that webkit and mozilla are going to drop the prefix? What's
the point of the prefixes to begin with?

~~~
smackfu
Because you get yelled at for doing a blink tag, but it's fine to do a moz-
blink tag.

The problem is when browser #2 wants to implement blink. They shouldn't use
your prefix, so they now have webkit-blink. And the HTML writer now needs to
sniff the browser.

Progress?

~~~
gjm11
These are CSS properties, not HTML elements. There is no need to sniff; you
just provide multiple properties.

p.wibble { -moz-blink: slowly; -webkit-blink: 10%; -ie9-blink:
"Microsoft.XML.Autocompositor(alpha=99,blinkrate=14692,emulate-old-ie-
versions=false,true,true,false)#ie9" }

or whatever. (In practice everyone who provides these properties does so in a
very similar manner, so it's easier than the above pseudosnippet suggests.)

------
InclinedPlane
Aside from all the meta-discussion about MS and IE in the abstract, my opinion
on this platform preview:

I'm extremely unimpressed. Judging by the absence of a location bar and
settings menu this appears to be more of a demo than a pre-release application
preview. This is very disappointing when measured against MS's other previews,
betas, etc. (Windows betas and RCs, Visual Studio CTPs, even previous IE
betas) and outright pathetic compared to, say, Chrome's dev-channel releases
(which are release quality by the standards of this industry).

Speed was unimpressive on my system compared to Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
Acid3 performance was also unimpressive as I had to force IE9 document mode
via the debug menu in order to achieve even a score of 39. One of the
important aspects of the acid tests is that the browser be in the default
configuration when visiting the test page. Just because there's some magical
"improve standards compliance" button on IE doesn't mean that the browsing
experience for everyday users will increase, somehow every other browser
manages this problem just fine, yet IE always struggles with it. Perhaps
they'll fix it by release, if we're lucky.

The supported features are refreshing but nothing that multiple other browsers
haven't supported for a while.

Once again IE is trying to play catch-up and once again they are doing so
slower than the other browsers are pulling ahead. It's good to see IE
improving its feature-set, standards compliance, and performance, but at this
point IE9 is racing the clock against irrelevancy. By the time IE9 is released
its implementation of several years old technology may seem quaint.

------
twism
Anyone know what the word is on WebSockets?

~~~
ovi256
Websockets are something I long dreamed about : bidirectional HTTP, no more
stupid AJAX polling tricks.

~~~
btipling
Yeah now you just have to deal with this stupidity:

Send the following bytes:

    
    
               0D 0A
    

did that work? ok send the following bytes:

    
    
               57 65 62 53 6F 63 6B 65  74 2D 50 72 6F 74 6F 63
               6F 6C 3A 20
    

etc: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hixie-
thewebsocketprotocol...](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hixie-
thewebsocketprotocol-54)

~~~
dutchflyboy
No, you don't need to. Try putting this in a hex editor. You'll see a http
handshake. The first part you need to send is "GET " which is the same as
sending the following bytes: "47 45 54 20". It's just made a bit "simpler" so
people don't get the encoding wrong (non-ascii characters, etc...).

------
latch
I hate to be conspiracy-theory-guy, but deep down, I feel that the rate at
which IE becomes compliant is tied to Silverlight's market penetration. The
move to open standards on the web will only truly come when MS feels like it
has sufficient control over a different proprietary technology.

~~~
dutchflyboy
Uhm, off-topic much? I mean, Silverlight isn't linked to IE9 in any way.
Silverlight is a plugin, like flash. It will work in Firefox too, but isn't
installed by default. I don't see the link between IE9 (which gives web
developpers the possibility to make interactive websites WITHOUT plugins) and
Silverlight (a plugin).

------
dirtbox
All this highlights is their complacency up until now. Competition should
never have been the thing that stirred them into making a browser that wasn't
dire, it should have been a matter of course.

Imagine if they had to fight for operating system dominance.

------
nreece
IE 9 will not support XP. Now take that to the IE 6 user-base. Ref:
[http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=5572&tag=col1;post-5...](http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=5572&tag=col1;post-5572)

------
justinph
No mention of WOFF? So we're stuck with EOT?

------
briansmith
Here's the developer guide: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/ff468705.aspx>

------
narendranag
Here's what would make my day: an announcement by MS that they will force-
upgrade all users to IE9 from IE6,7 and 8. Goodbye clunky images + css +
javascript hacks, hello lovely design.

------
smokinn
It'll be nice to see independent verification of their SunSpider benchmarks
but if they hold up that's very good news.

------
tdmackey
hmm, in viewing HN from the IE9 platform preview it centers all the text which
is promising ;)

------
grandalf
This is a step in the right direction but it obsoletes any windows/IE computer
earlier than Vista SP2.

Considering the amount of resources used by Vista, I think all speed
improvements of this browser would only be realized if you're already
dedicating lots of processing power to OS overhead.

~~~
sid0
While the hardware acceleration will only be available on modern Windows,
there's a good chance IE9 will come out for Windows XP too. (The lack of
hardware acceleration on non-modern Windows is something that Firefox will
face too once it flips on the D2D switch by default.)

> I think all speed improvements of this browser would only be realized if
> you're already dedicating lots of processing power to OS overhead.

That's really not how operating systems work. CPU and RAM are rather
orthogonal.

~~~
grandalf
_That's really not how operating systems work. CPU and RAM are rather
orthogonal._

1) click on start menu 2) wait 3 seconds for it to respond and open 3) click
on icon for browser 4) wait 15 seconds for it to respond 5) wait 5 seconds for
it to render the default home page 6) type in desired url and wait 3 seconds
for it to download and render.

It doesn't matter if the new IE browser is faster than firefox, since any
computer that is powerful enough to run Vista in the first place will probably
not take a noticeable amount of time to render a page in Firefox.

The above is an example of the vista user experience on a slower computer.
That same computer could (running linux) load google chrome and open the
desired page in 1 second each.

~~~
sid0
> It doesn't matter if the new IE browser is faster than firefox, since any
> computer that is powerful enough to run Vista in the first place will
> probably not take a noticeable amount of time to render a page in Firefox.

Probably not, but hardware acceleration makes a ton of difference in
responsiveness (it pushes a lot of things below that 100ms barrier where you
feel that things happen instantaneously). Try out a Firefox 3.7a3pre nightly
on a Windows Vista SP2 or 7 computer, enable Direct2D, and see for yourself.

------
MikeCapone
How about making a Mac version?

I probably wouldn't use it, but the more browser choice, the better (healthy
competition pushing everybody to do better).

Apple has Safari for windows, it would make sense for Microsoft to do
something similar...

~~~
MrRage
Why would it make sense? Would any Mac user use IE? How many Windows users use
Safari? Not many I'd wager.

~~~
MikeCapone
The whole point is that browsers should stand on their own and not be part of
the OS, no?

If IE becomes really good, it should be judged on its own merit and maybe some
people on the Mac platform would want to use it.

I dislike Microsoft as much as the next guy, but I know that when there's
healthy competition on a platform, everybody wins. I'd love to see the IE guys
try to make a better browser than others, and not just on windows.

------
jf
Nice work zaatar and team!

------
sid0
It's certainly fast, but the lack of <canvas> is disappointing.

~~~
n8agrin
But it should support SVG. I'm not convinced canvas is the greatest in-browser
rendering option for many of the things web devs want to do anyhow like click
handlers and simple animations. There is a reason why many browser-based vis
libraries are switching over to SVG (and VML in older IEs).

~~~
mcantelon
There's always been separate use-cases for pixel and vector-based graphics.

------
lut4rp
lol Microsoft.

------
moe
_Interested in checking out the new Web platform capabilities of Internet
Explorer 9?_

Honest question?

No. Not at all. All _I_ am interested in is: Can you _please_ ship it with
chrome frame pre-installed.

~~~
n8agrin
Browser competition is a good thing. If Microsoft released the fastest
standards compliant browser and became the industry leader (from a standars
perspective) tomorrow I would be happy. I don't care what OS you run on your
computer or which browser you choose. All I care about is my bits are
displayed as intended and I find that IE makes that task significantly harder
to accomplish. If my life could be made easier by a new MS browser, and
other's browsing experiences improved, I'm all for it.

~~~
powrtoch
Sure. But there's a much simpler and more foolproof way to get your bits
displayed properly to everyone who buys a new windows machine (which of course
are just about the only non-developers who will get ie9):

Scrap IE, start shipping windows with Opera, Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. Let
the crappy existing versions die off slowly and focus on improving the
mediocre operating system rather than reinventing the wheel with a
consistently inferior and uncooperative browser.

~~~
sid0
> (which of course are just about the only non-developers who will get ie9):

Why so?

~~~
powrtoch
Historical evidence. Firstly, IE users are less likely to care enough to
upgrade a browser, for the same reason they didn't care enough to look for a
better one. Namely, it doesn't really matter to them and they're unaware of
why it should. Secondly, Microsoft is a lot less pushy about software updates
than other browser vendors.

IE7 came out 4 years ago (and then IE8 two years later), but despite what an
enormous improvement it was to IE6, we're only now seeing IE6 finally start to
fade away. IE6 usage didn't drop below half of all IE usage until around June
2009. By comparison, Firefox 3 had more than double the usage of FF2 within 3
months of its debut. Chrome shows even better (in fact, absurdly fast)
adoption rates.

All this source StatCounter: [http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-
monthly-200807...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-
monthly-200807-201003)

Add in corporations hesitant to update IE in the workplace, and you've got the
IE stick-around-forever problem.

~~~
sid0
But that still doesn't provide evidence that people buying a new computer are
the only non-developers who will get IE9. You need to demonstrate that
upgrades from IE6 to 7/8 are non-existent.

In fact, I'd say the fact that IE7 has dropped below IE8 is evidence that
people on IE _do_ upgrade, and that the people on IE6 are only on it because
they need it.

~~~
powrtoch
I'm counting on common sense interpretations here. Obviously it's not the case
that there are NO EXAMPLES of 7->8 upgrades. I'm suggesting that it's very
much an exception rather than a rule. I don't have the energy to dig up the
stats demonstrating a correlation between purchases of new computers and
browser version market share. It's probably there, maybe it isn't. Whether
that's the cause is immaterial though because the point remains: new IE
versions tend to be adopted very slowly.

And I would point out the enthusiastic reception of Win7 (comes with IE8)
compared to the chilly reception of Vista (came with IE7) as evidence that
browser adoption is correlated with sales of new computers (or more
specifically, new OS's. Keep in mind a lot of Vista machines were sold with
downgrade packs).

And yes, Chrome auto-updates. That's part of my point about Microsoft being
less pushy with their updates than other vendors.

~~~
sid0
> I'm suggesting that it's very much an exception rather than a rule.

I think the opposite is true. I don't have hard data to back up my thoughts,
but the fact that IE8 is above IE7 seems suggestive.

> I don't have the energy to dig up the stats demonstrating a correlation
> between purchases of new computers and browser version market share. It's
> probably there, maybe it isn't.

So you're retracting your statement, then? I'm asking because you seemed to
lack any sort of doubt when you made it, going to the length of using _of
course_.

> Whether that's the cause is immaterial though because the point remains: new
> IE versions tend to be adopted very slowly.

I agree (relative to other browsers at least), but this is certainly _not_
what you stated in your original post.

