
Microsoft Cross-browser Test Results Summary - vtail
http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/#html5
======
thinkbohemian
For all the misrepresentation of facts and existing browser inconsistencies
i'm just happy that microsoft has apparently started caring about the browser
again.

~~~
Periodic
They may care about the browser, but I fear they care about regaining market
share more than anything else. They had a firm lead for a long time, but more
and more I see sites making support for non-IE browsers a top priority and the
IE market share is shrinking.

If Microsoft uses tests like these to try to divide the browser market by
essentially defining its own spec, I think it will be bad for the internet at
large.

~~~
jasonlotito
To be fair, these tests were submitted, and apparently developed with the W3C.
They aren't MS-only tests. Merely tests that needed to be developed anyways.
At least, that's what I see. Yes, these are tests where MS succeeds. That
doesn't mean they are less worthy. Rather, they are just more cases that the
W3C felt needed to be tested.

------
CitizenKane
While this is obviously tailored to things that microsoft is doing I wouldn't
be surprised if these features end up in the hands of actual users through
other browsers first.

Microsoft's upgrade policy for IE is extremely conservative which gives the
other browser vendors plenty of time to add in the features and release them
to people before Microsoft does.

~~~
TotlolRon
True. But still good if only by pushing others.

------
natmaster
How does it feel to have a company other than Google create tests specifically
designed for the features they implemented?

~~~
acg
Isn't ACID3 independent? If it is why does IE do so badly?

~~~
zaatar
Fact: IE9 Platform Preview #1 released six weeks ago scored 55/100, IE9
Platform Preview #2 released today scores 68/100 on ACID3.

~~~
acg
Thought this
[http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/ie9-standards-...](http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/ie9-standards-
and-why-acid3-isnt-the-priority.ars) was interesting. It paints Miscrosoft as
a company that aims to thoroughly support standards, although what they may be
doing is looking for under-specified parts of the specification and defining
the standard in those areas.

------
megaman821
Obviously Microsoft only presented tests that they have passed and at least
one other major browser has failed. Still this is free QA for the other
browsers so there is not much room to complain.

~~~
natmaster
Not true: Call removeAllRanges() to clear the selection pass pass pass pass
pass

They just submitted tests for the features they were working on. Some of
which, happen to work on all other browsers as well.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Actually, if you look at the original tests they submitted it was 100% for IE
across the board, and if I recall correctly (since they've just replaced the
old page) no other browser passed any subset 100%. Clearly they cherry picked
the tests, it makes no sense that every test they wrote just happened to pass
at that point in time. Either they didn't publish the tests that IE failed, or
they intentionally stopped writing new tests some point before they went
public to give them time to pass everything fully.

Of course after they published these results it was pointed out that a) the
test were wrong and so other browsers were marked as failing, even when they
actually passed, and b) IE was getting things wrong but getting marked correct
because the tests were wrong. (That's not even touching the fact that they
don't even indicate that Firefox and Webkit would pass a whole heap of the
tests just by changing a single string in their code to check a different
prefix)

They've since scrambled to get their column back up to 100% pass rate and
that's why they've updated this page with their new version. Pretty weak all
round.

~~~
natmaster
They didn't cherry pick tests. These weren't written by someone else. They
wrote tests for the features they decided to implement. Why would they work on
tests right now for features they aren't implementing now?

~~~
rbanffy
I am pretty sure they prefer to implement features for tests competing
browsers fail.

~~~
mehta
good joke :)

~~~
rbanffy
Come on. Given the option, between two equally complex features, it's
preferable to implement the one your competitors got wrong because it offers
the more bang for your programmer buck.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
This is why the Google Sputnik test results not only shows what percentage of
tests pass, but also groups browsers together based on which tests they pass
in common (i.e. a crude measure of interoperability).

<http://sputnik.googlelabs.com/compare>

Guess which browser is the outlier in both dimensions?

------
Qz
Just to be clear, these are tests created and submitted by Microsoft
themselves, so it's not so surprising that IE9 passes all of them as it
otherwise might be.

------
raphar
Beautiful, I'm happy for MS to make IE9 comply with all this new stantards.
Now, I leave you. I have to spend the rest of the evening trying to make a
site to work and render correctly in IE6, IE7 & IE8 (at the same time). :(

~~~
kwyjibo
What about the older versions of firefox, opera, etc...

Wouldn't the users that use an outdated version of Internet Explorer also use
an outdated version of an alternative browser, if they had used this browser
in the beginning.

~~~
nkassis
I don't know about others but I find much less old version of Firefox, safari
and chrome than IE 6 users access my sites. It seems (this is only a personal
observation) that users of these alternative browsers are more likely to
update frequently.

~~~
arnorhs
I think you're right. Another big factor is also the automatic updates of
Chrome and Firefox. IE updates have to go through the windows updates and
people tend to ignore those as much as possible.

Another factor about IE6 is that it's only used in organizations and companies
where people can't install their own programs, so they don't bother calling up
IT (sometimes outsourced IT which is expensive) just to install a browser.

------
pavs
Ok they are comparing beta/preview version of IE with stable version or not
even recent versions of browsers?

The current beta/dev version of Chrome is 5 not 4.1. The current FF nightly
build is 3.7a5 not 3.6.3, the current stable Opera version is 10.6.3 not
10.5.2.

As usual, more FUD from microsoft.

~~~
jasonlotito
Where is the FUD?

These are tests submitted by MS. The declare what they are testing, and what
they are comparing against? FUD would be MS saying that IE supports standards
better than the latest competitors browsers. They aren't saying that. They
aren't even implying that. The only way this is FUD is if you selectively
choose to be daft about the entire thing and ignore vast portions of the page.
It would be if I was selective about your post, and assumed you said:

"I ... Am ... FUD"

Edit: I should note, they are even pretty clear about what they are comparing:
"The first table is a summary of the test results with the May 2010 IE
Platform Preview and each of the major shipping browsers running on Windows."

They don't pretend to test the latest beta/alpha/nightly release of the
browsers. Merely the latest shipping.

------
lionshare
why all this hate? maybe they are trying to comply with standards, maybe it
will help, maybe we will not have to work twice to align the f __CSS on IE? At
least this is their formal goal and these are very good news.

~~~
DrSprout
It's not a standard if your tests are designed to match what your browser
currently does.

The real tests of compatibility are those like Acid3 that are designed to fail
all browsers equally. This one is clearly designed to fail all non-IE
browsers.

~~~
jimbokun
I don't think they designed them to fail non-IE browsers, so much as they
designed the tests for things they had already implemented in IE 9.

I think they could have avoided most of the criticisms in this thread if they
had simply added a note saying something like "We made sure that IE 9 passed
these tests before submitting to W3C, which is why IE 9 gets perfect marks
below. Note also that these tests do not cover all of the HTML5
specification." (etc.)

Having IE9 at 100% on every test with no explanation really makes it look like
they're trying to put one over on the reader.

------
csmeder
How many important W3C tests pass on windows XP running IE9?

None... (IE9 wont run on XP)

How many important W3C tests pass on windows XP running Firefox 3.6?

Most...

-

And according to Wikipedia as of April the XP has a OS market share of 52.94%
This value is the median of 7 different data sources.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)

-

What this means is that by Microsoft refusing to make IE9 available for XP,
web developers often can't take advantage of CSS3 or HTML5 and still reach
even 70% of the audience.

[http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/05/chrome-
continu...](http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/05/chrome-continues-
surge-as-ie-drops-below-60-market-share.ars)

-

I would tend to agree with pavs that this is more FUD from Microsoft.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt>

~~~
DrSprout
You're missing the bigger, and much more legitimate omission: Windows Mobile 7
is running with IE7. Which effectively means these things won't work their way
into WinMo for at least a year after the release of IE9.

~~~
alanh
Since Windows Mobile 7 isn't out yet, I'd like to note that the current
version of Windows Mobile's IE is a hybrid of IE6's rendering engine with
IE7's JavaScript engine, a Franken-browser no one is ever truly going to
support.

------
ajg1977
Has IE suddenly become the most standards compliant browser, or is there some
subtlety here that's missing?

~~~
vtail
Well, Microsoft has created their own tests. They argue that tests like Acid3
are testing edge cases and as such are not really useful to test browser
behavior in the real world.

What I don't understand is why they don't use the latest Chrome beta to do
this tests - e.g. Chrome 5.0.375.29 beta passes all tests for Dom Level 2
Style.

~~~
chollida1
> What I don't understand is why they don't use the latest Chrome beta to do
> this tests - e.g. Chrome 5.0.375.29 beta passes all tests for Dom Level 2
> Style.

That's a valid question to ask and I'd tend to give them the benefit of the
doubt on this. As I understand it they chose the most recent released versions
of the other browsers.

If they had of chosen the most recently nightly build or beta versions and a
particular test didn't work on that browser but had previously worked, ie it
was a regression that would be fixed in the next build, then someone would
jump all over them for "cherry picking" their competitors versions to obtain
results that flattered IE the most.

Picking the most recently released versions seems to make the most sense from
this point of view, though I'll allow that you could make the point that
choosing the most recent nightlies of the other browsers would also make
sense.

------
slowpoison
I'll take this seriously when they support the existing standards properly.
Stacks of HTML/CSS/JavaScript books are full of pages saying this/that doesn't
work in IE.

~~~
MichaelGG
There are stacks of books about the IE9 preview just released?

------
rfolstad
Hilarious!

Such irony. We respect how challenging it is to build one page that works the
same in every browser as the technology advances and customer expectations
rise.

Then what's stopping them from including IE6,7 and 8 in their "tests" and
fixing this whole mess they created in the beginning. They act like those
previous products aren't their responsibility... fucking joke

~~~
keltex
Have a little mercy. All MS is saying is that they're working to get things
right.

All browser vendors crow about the functionality of their beta releases.

------
BoppreH
Using Firefox 3.6.3 here, the same they listed.

I tried the "Call select() on a text field" test because it looked like a
simple one I could check myself.

It selects the text field perfectly. When I start typing the current text is
replaced, everything seems to be working fine. "Test result: FAIL"

It's only one test, sure, but this page is smelling even fishier than before.

------
knorby
This works just fine for me on FF:
[http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/html5/selecti...](http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/html5/selection/select.htm)
I am guessing they put in some tricks in the validation here too.

------
xal
hardware acceleration is the big one. This will force the hand of the other
browser makers to follow suite. Webkit is already pretty far along here but
only css animations, not the entire rendering pipe, which seems to be what the
IE team has managed to do.

~~~
briansmith
Also, the two-threaded Javascript interpreter is a very nice performance
feature for IE9.

------
psyklic
Although MS's "Testing Center" is fixed in IE's favor, their IEBlog does
compare IE to the latest competitor releases and "showcases" IE's poor Acid3
performance. [<http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/>]

------
nl
This is really good news.

Microsoft is excellent at producing software that ticks feature boxes. Anyone
who remembers magazine reviews of Excel vs Lotus 123 will remember the
relentless way MS would improve in the comparison tables in every release
until suddenly they were ahead. The same thing happened in the original
browser wars.

The problem is that Microsoft has never been good at choosing which feature
boxes need ticking themselves.

But now they have decided to care about list of features called "HTML5" they
should be able to push things forward well. (I'm hoping anyway. And I'm hoping
"Canvas" makes that feature list)

------
papachito
It says that firefox and webkit browsers fail on border-radius, that's only
because they use -webkit-border-radius and -mozilla-border-radius and
Microsoft only tested border-radius which is the one supported by IE, not very
honnest especially knowing that gecko and webkit had those for years before
IE.

~~~
jasonlotito
But, to be fair, do they support border-radius? I understand what you are
saying, don't get me wrong. But either a standard is supported or it's not.

If you want to get technical: Firefox, Safari, and Chrome have 0 support for
the HTML5 standard, considering HTML5 isn't official yet. But they still work
toward meeting proposed standard.

Competition is good. If IE9 supports border-radius, and that pushes FF and
others to support border-radius without the vendor tag, might that be a good
thing?

~~~
geocar
> ... and that pushes FF and others to support border-radius without the
> vendor tag, might that be a good thing?

Only if border-radius doesn't change it's semantics; say the standard switches
from radii to area. Or perhaps they add some semantics for negative lengths.

If anything like that happens, then we now have _two_ border-radiuses:
Microsoft's and everyone-elses.

I think that with border-radii this isn't likely, but for whatever is still
under debate, we could still be looking at this sort of thing.

~~~
jasonlotito
I know. But then you have people saying that X-browser has HTML5 support, but
HTML5 isn't even finalized. This means all those sites supporting HTML5 aren't
supporting a finalized standard. So you can't use HTML5 now... technically. If
you do, you aren't following the standards. Canvas shouldn't be used, nor
should the video tags, for anyone who cares about standards. Technically.

Getting a little to anal? =)

Okay, before someone jumps on me and thinks I'm being serious, yes, I agree
with you. It's 'dangerous,' but at some point, someone needs to say "Damnit!
Let's make this work!" After all, you don't see anyone saying we should use
vendor tags for HTML5 markup, even though HTML5 isn't complete, and can, and
still does, change.

The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. -
Someone else, some other time.

------
c00p3r
Why they are so shy? We all know that it was Microsoft who was invented the
Internet, created HTML, Javascript and their browser is the most secure, fast
and reliable one.

