
IE11 to support WebGL - hakim
http://microsoft-news.com/webgl-spdy3-new-dev-tools-more-confirmed-for-ie11-in-win-8-1/
======
judah
Credit to Microsoft for reversing their previous stance on WebGL.

Credit to Mozilla for pushing 3d on the web and forcing the issue. Any browser
that doesn't implement WebGL will soon be considered crippled; Microsoft
desperately wants to avoid that title again, so in a way, Mozilla forced their
hand.

Competition at work.

~~~
jimmaswell
"Any browser that doesn't implement WebGL will soon be considered crippled"

Really? I don't think WebGL is that important. What's it really good for
besides laggy browser games? What's with the hype on browser games anyway?
They're always going to perform much slower than native code. I don't see
WebGL becoming such a critical aspect of browsing that the average user would
consider IE "crippled" for not supporting it.

~~~
troymc
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to dream up an amazing and
popular application of WebGL, now that a majority of web browsers will be
supporting it. It might not be a game. Warning: imagination required.

~~~
pbsdp
It's hard to dream big about the browsers getting the modern iteration of
something we've had in some form since 1992.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
How does that not apply to every single thing on the web, whether text, image,
animation, video, or interaction?

------
idupree
What engineering did they do to reduce the security risk? As much as I like
WebGL as a dev, Microsoft's arguments against feeding arbitrary machine code
to buggy graphics cards that have kernel-level memory access privileges...
seemed a bit convincing.

~~~
pvnick
Just want to reply to say I also would like to hear an answer to this
question. Something I've wanted to do for a while is write a fuzzer [1] that
puts together arbitrary garbage shader script code and runs it with weird
webgl operations looking for exploitable crashes. I would expect there to be a
ton of bugs found, but then again the monetary barrier to entry might be high
considering differences between hardware.

It also looks like the good folks at Mozilla have already been doing this to
some degree [2], presumably shrinking the untested threat surface considerably
(man I love those guys).

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing)

[2]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665936](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665936)

~~~
cpeterso
Here's a WebGL fuzzer from Mozilla bug 614678:

[https://bug614678.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=493...](https://bug614678.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=493971)

------
nivla
Love the new changes in IE and the direction it is taking.

>IE11 allow you to turn off the SmartScreen filter right in the download UI.

Now only if chrome would do that I can keep myself from switching away from
it. Its frustrating to know that everytime I download a file or save an image,
the file hash, IP and the download URL is sent to Google. The whole NSA thing
isn't making it better either. [1][2]

[1] [http://superuser.com/questions/387724/how-to-disable-
downloa...](http://superuser.com/questions/387724/how-to-disable-download-
scanning-protection-of-new-chrome-17) [2]
[http://blog.chromium.org/2012/01/all-about-safe-
browsing.htm...](http://blog.chromium.org/2012/01/all-about-safe-
browsing.html)

~~~
JoshTriplett
You can turn off the "Safe Browsing" features in Chromium; your link [2]
explicitly says how to do so.

~~~
nivla
I know but that also turns off the malware links protection. I don't mind the
malware site/link protection since it only sends in a small part of the URL's
hash for matching (similar to how we have in Firefox). Comparatively, the file
scanner requires the whole hash of the file, the clear text of the download
URL and the IP address which I find far more intrusive to privacy. I am hoping
for a future update where they would let us enable/disable them individually.

~~~
mayanksinghal
> only sends in a small part of the URL's hash for matching ...

Isn't it incredibly easy to bypass that check by using a randomly generated
url segment?

[Edit: Formatting + isn't]

~~~
scott_karana
Right, so next time we download something private from a different party,
we'll ask them to change their file structure to suit our privacy needs. :)

~~~
mayanksinghal
I am not questioning that sending entire URLs is undesirable, I am asking if
the hash solution works (at all).

------
DigitalSea
I, for one, welcome our new WebGL overlords. Seriously though, it's good to
see Microsoft reversed their stance on WebGL no doubt their hand was forced by
Mozilla and Webkit (probably Mozilla more so). And SPDY support as well? Looks
like IE11 might actually be a decent contender in the browser race. The future
of web development doesn't look so bad after all.

------
sdoowpilihp
This is potentially great news for anyone using a browser. Let's hope that the
implementation is close to spec, and makes for a relatively seamless
experience across all browsers.

~~~
chez17
> Let's hope that the implementation is close to spec

I got so excited for a moment and then you had to go and post this. Microsoft
seems to have a desire to make things difficult for web developers.

~~~
sudont
Considering they way it went down [1], Microsoft felt (and may still feel)
that the web is an enterprise market. In so, that it was selling developer
tools to web shops because the code goes through Microsoft servers to
Microsoft clients. IE, a vertical integration to simplify HR decisions. [2]

That ideology carries through to the spec—enterprise products often contain
janky features that mean little to developers, but the world to the bosses
buying them.

Thankfully Android and iOS are a driving force showing that the web is more a
consumer broadcast space than one built simply for the spec that best matches
someone's tech opinions.

1\.
[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/12295718818/](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/12295718818/)

2\. Paraphrasing, but I've personally turned down jobs that were in this vein,
specifically writing IE HTML in Visual Studio, because if their browser share
is 80% IE, they might as well use the IDE from the company that makes the
browser.

~~~
bliker
Is it common practice to force particular IDE to developers? Especially for
web developers. I imagine my productivity would decrease quite dramatically
for some time.

~~~
plorkyeran
Only the most insane of companies explicitly require the use of a specific
editor, but it's easy for the choices of technology to implicitly limit
developers to a single IDE. If your project's build system assumes that
everyone is using Visual Studio (or Eclipse, or whatever), then using
something else is going to either require a lot of switching between them or a
lot of extra work on your part.

------
fhd2
Now that's good news.

I feel this whole "but IE won't ever support it!" argument was seriously
holding WebGL back. IE still has very significant market share, and since they
arguably got their act together lately, I doubt it's going to get smaller in
the short term.

Considering that existing C++/OpenGL code bases can be ported to the web
relatively easy with Emscripten, my bet is that we'll see a bunch of games
come to the browser over the next ~3 years.

~~~
mtgx
IE has a lot of market share with IE7, IE8 and possibly IE9. They don't have a
lot of marketshare with IE11 - and possibly never will.

So the argument that "WebGL is not supported by IE so I'll never use it" was
pretty bogus anyway, since the people using those versions of IE were probably
never in your target market anyway.

~~~
fhd2
You're right. Last time I checked, IE8 was still the most popular IE version.
However, since IE9, it's being updated automatically, so I have some hopes
that most IE users will end up using the latest version, just as with Chrome
and Firefox.

The main reason for IE8's popularity is probably that it's the last IE version
available on Windows XP, which is still popular. I really hope Microsoft gives
up on the idea that new browser versions can only come with new OS versions.

But still, even if only 10% of all IE users use IE11, that percentage can only
grow. Previously, IE was a dead end for WebGL. Now there's a perspective, and
that's probably good enough.

------
mzarate06
Love the improved dev tools and WebGL decision, but I also hate how long it's
taken MS to reach this point.

Would also love for IE 11 to be available on Windows 7.

~~~
winslow
Have they said it won't be on Windows 7? I would expect them to release it on
Win7 to try and keep their market share. I hope they do as I am building a
WebGL application for work :)

~~~
mzarate06
They haven't confirmed either way, which is why I'm still hoping it'll land in
Win7:

[http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/06/internet-
explorer-11-ie11-m...](http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/06/internet-
explorer-11-ie11-might-make-it-to-windows-7/)

 _" We aren't sharing anything around which versions of Windows IE11 will be
available on at this time."_

------
lucb1e
Is it just me, or are that others that think "Didn't it support that yet?!" at
every IE release? I don't use Windows so I never use IE anymore, but I'd think
IE9 or 10 would support WebGL by now...

~~~
chc
WebGL was bleeding-edge when IE 9 was released, and there were still very
valid concerns about its security for a while after that. Opera implemented
it, but disabled it due to these concerns. After their nightmarish history
with security, Microsoft are very focused on hardening Windows — so I wouldn't
exactly call it regressive to leave WebGL out of IE 10, which was probably
feature-frozen in early 2012.

~~~
gsnedders
Opera didn't disable it due to security concerns per se — rather more just the
general bugginess of Opera's hardware acceleration. I wouldn't consider crash
bugs in general security issues. Equally, there is software rendered mode, but
it's pointlessly slow to enable.

Note the prior concerns are still just as true today as they were a few years
ago — graphics drivers are still relatively easy to find crash bugs in,
leading browser vendors to try and hack around and avoid hitting those bugs in
all too many cases. :(

~~~
bmm6o
> I wouldn't consider crash bugs in general security issues

You should, until proven otherwise. If it crashes because it's reading an
invalid memory location (for instance), it's a matter of time before someone
figures out how to place executable code there.

I have no problem with MS's original position. WebGL forces your hardware
drivers to run random code downloaded from the internet. I'm frankly surprised
that the other browser vendors ran ahead with it so quickly and that we
haven't heard about any exploits caused by it.

~~~
yuhong
On that matter, it is not difficult for someone who knows how to use WinDbg or
similar to see if a crash is exploitable. For example, in user mode, null
pointer accesses are generally not exploitable. I personally was able to get
an IE6/IE7 bug described in
[http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/pseudocss.html#fltadjacent](http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/pseudocss.html#fltadjacent)
fixed in the May 2013 security update by proving there is an exploitable
crash.

------
mtgx
Will Microsoft support the full OpenGL on Windows, too, now? Or will they just
run WebGL through Google's ANGLE project?

At least Google had the "excuse" to use it because they couldn't put OpenGL on
Windows themselves, so they had to translate DirectX to OpenGL to make WebGL
work.

What's Microsoft's excuse? They should support OpenGL and allow Google and
Mozilla to use the OpenGL API's directly, too. Then we'll all get faster, and
possibly richer WebGL.

~~~
CJefferson
OpenGL on Windows is a driver issue. Some hardware manufacturers make opengl
drivers, of varying quality. I'm not clear what you want Microsoft to do?

~~~
freehunter
Microsoft should control Windows like Apple controls OSX except when I don't
want them to! If something is wrong with Windows, it's Microsoft's fault for
not controlling third party vendors! When Microsoft controls third party
vendors, they're being anti-competitive!

------
cromwellian
If you build it, they will eventually be dragged, kicking and screaming to it.

------
bhauer
Thank goodness that "Text - Empty Text Node" has been removed from the DOM
explorer!

The new developer tools, especially that UI responsiveness report [1] are hot
looking. Looking forward to giving that a spin.

[1] [http://microsoft-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/UI-
Resp...](http://microsoft-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/UI-
Responsiveness-Report.png)

------
roschdal
This is great news for game development of the web. WebGL will become the
standard for 3D browser games.

------
signed0
The other big takeway is that they added support for SPDY3!

------
showwebgl
Awesome news! And the Xbox One is already available in 3D display with WebGL!
[https://sketchfab.com/show/qsRPEw7hTKC4E02XMop9DUpu2wb](https://sketchfab.com/show/qsRPEw7hTKC4E02XMop9DUpu2wb)

------
Zikes
And IE11 will support Windows 7, right?

~~~
adrr
They need to support these newer browsers on older operating systems. If the
OS is still being actively patched, new browsers should be made backwards
compatible to work on it otherwise we'll have exact same problem with IE8 on
XP and IE9 on Vista. And soon to be IE10 on Windows 7.

~~~
camus
Their business model is to sell os , MSFT never did anything for free.

~~~
pjmlp
Like all vendors that depend on direct software sales.

------
orf
I love the look of the new development tools, lightyears ahead of IE10. Lets
see how it matches up to Chrome

------
opinali
Shaming link 1: [http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2011/06/micros...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2011/06/microsoft-no-way-to-support-webgl-and-meet-our-security-
needs/)

Shaming link 2: [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/87696-webgl-is-
fundamen...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/87696-webgl-is-
fundamentally-flawed)

~~~
drivebyacct2
What are we supposed to take away from those links? The latter isn't even
written from the perspective of Microsoft, it's just another generic
{Open/Web}GL rant (if anything, you've granted MS legitimacy here by
acknowledging other legitimate complaints about the spec).

Yes, I was annoyed when they boldly claimed they wouldn't be supporting it at
all. I'm also gracious enough to say "Thanks" when handed a gift. The IE team
is clearly making an effort.

~~~
opinali
My takeaway is simple, just exposing the BS from Microsoft's original stance
wrt OpenGL. One thing is saying "WebGL is right now hard to secure because
current OpenGL drivers are buggy, or IE's sandboxing tech is not good enough,
whatever". A different thing is, "WebGL is fundamentally flawed, will never
work, IE will not and should not support it ever".

Of course the same people are already changing the discourse and claiming that
_now_ WebGL is safe, and IE11's WebGL will have the upper hand in security
because MS controls the whole stack, etc.

This doesn't mean I don't appreciate the change, I'm really happy that IE11 is
apparently going to be an awesome improvement (over IE10 which is already
pretty good, even if dated).

------
quackerhacker
I really hope IE11 will integrate WebRTC.

I have to give credit to IE10 though...a cool feature that I have only seen in
safari (through quicktime), is IE10 allows multi audio track support for html5
mp4...great for multi-language videos, and adapting a single video to play on
multiple devices (like some that don't support 5.1 audio).

~~~
tmzt
It would be extremely useful for getting Skype in Outlook.com.

------
cscx
Seriously who's using IE nowadays?
[http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/06/25/ssl-
intercepted...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/06/25/ssl-intercepted-
today-decrypted-tomorrow.html)

------
aoberoi
now, where do they stand on WebRTC?

~~~
MatthewPhillips
They waited until WebRTC was about to be ratified and then released their own
incompatible spec.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
They do that for everything. Ponderous silence then last minute derailing BS.
Independent of the pros and cons of any particular single technology they
should be called out for what a poor corporate citizen this makes them, and
how it is anti-standards and anti-consumer.

------
bliker
the dev tools look promising. But I do not understand what are they are trying
to achieve by this. I do not see myself, or many people, switching to IE for
development when there are no extensions available. I at least want some REST
client like Postman. Now It appears they are only catching up on Chrome and
Firebug, that will hardly convince anybody.

Do not get me wrong, they are doing good work making IE modern browser, But
they can't do it alone, especially with such long release cycle. Maybe making
dev branch like Canary or Aurora?

~~~
shadowfox
> But I do not understand what are they are trying to achieve by this. I do
> not see myself, or many people, switching to IE for development

Perhaps there are others who have to support IE as a target and would like to
debug/verify front ends in-browser?

------
coldtea
> _IE11 to support WebGL_

Always 2 years at least late to the party, so that using the latest
technologies across all browsers remains constantly (also considering
adoption) 3-4 years in the future.

------
marcosscriven
Now we just need Apple to make it available in Safari, without having to
explicitly turn it on.

Oh, and enable it in iOS Safari too - which I rather suspect they wnt any time
soon unfortunately.

------
lepunk
my long term dream is to see microsoft finally giving up on using their own
rendering engine and move to either mozilla or webkit. both of them are
following the standards pretty neatly so it would make dev's life far easier.

with each major release IE promises being better. which is true for an extent
but they also introduce new bugs so our css / html has different hacks for
each version

------
ger_phpmagazin
Does this imply that those features will be henceforth natively available to
windows 8.1?

------
isarat
He's a fat boy. Walks really slow :) I expected WebDirectX!

------
Aqueous
It's going to "support" WebGL.

------
hartror
This is huge!

------
herge
This is great news1 I'll be able to use WebGL with the majority of my users
who use IE in what, 5-6 years?

------
T_T
better late than never i guess.

------
drivebyacct2
Wow. IE11 looks like it has some really great stuff in it, particularly the
dev tools, even over the WebGL. Props to the IE team!

------
sampk
Typical stubborn child.

