Even if you don't have a favored fighter in the
browser wars, you have to admit Microsoft's
Internet Explorer has been looking mighty unfit over the last few years. Younger and fitter contenders like Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome have arguably overtaken the old stalwart, and now Microsoft is making some much-needed noise about fighting back. The software giant has been giving developers and curious journalists a very early peek into its IE 9 progress at PDC, with its stated ambitions including faster
Javascript (see table above),
HTML5 support, and hardware acceleration for web content. By harnessing DirectX and your graphics processor, the new browser will offer improvements in text readability and video performance, as well as taking some of the load off the CPU. Development has only just got under way, mind you, so there's still plenty of time to screw it all up. Or make it awesome.
posted Nov 20th 2009 5:11AM
Opera Rulz!
@Wesley It mos def needs more respect. I move to it when firefox gets crash happy. Opera always seems very stable, so does Safari.
It does. The only browser that gets 100/100 in the Acid 3 test.
Hell even Opera Mobile (not Mini proxy BS) gets 100/100 on a PDA.
@Kurian:
Go check yopur facts - Safari 4 and Chrome 3 as of this posting not only passed the ACID 3 test 100/100 but they did it before Opera 9/10 did.
Opera originally passed the test first earlier in 2008 - however - the ACID Test Group found bugs in the process and after the fix [the correct Test] was released Webkit got there first.
Sorry.
That still means IE sucks.
so if I read the graph correctly, they are planning a new product that use a lot more resource than their competitors, yet still being the slowest among them all?
@odobo (even though Engadget Reply insists in claiming I'm replying to "Alfred")
That's what I read as well; they're going to use (demand?) more processing power to overcome the short-falls in their own inefficient code. Sounds much like what happens with the OS (not running fast enough? then buy a faster processor).
I wonder how much faster one of the other (already faster) web browsers would run if they managed the same trick?!
@Alfred That's IE9 today, it's still in development, so it might be better (or worse) when it releases...
@Sheldon
Not really the truth. MS is shifting from CPU to GPU rendering - NOT using both, but using mainly the GPU of your system. Other than that, the chart only shows a pre-Alpha Version of IE9. MS promises the IE9 will pass the ACID3 test completely and be at least as fast as the competition. If that turns out to be true, MS will finally be back in the ring and we will have 5 good browsers competing against each others - a good example of how competition results in more value.
That graph is horseshit. Seriously, no units of measure on the Y axis. WTF is this supposed to be showing?
@Information Central
i guess milliseconds of processing for some really tough site
@Alfred
exactly, opening a new blank tab in ie8 is way slower than opening chrom + loading a new page. I think they should work on opening a new tab quickly first before adding stuffs to speed up rendering.
That graph doesn't display resources. It's a javascript speed test. The speed of the javascript engine is only part of the web browser performance picture.
Shifting graphics rendering to your GPU will improve performance (an example given at PDC was dragging a map to a new location).
When it comes out:
Step 1: Update IE View extension in Firefox.
Step 2: Wipe hands on pants
I hope this makes IE a hell of a lot easier to design for. I'm sick of having to cross browser check and edit my code specifically for IE.
while I am sick of having to cross browser check and fix my code for Firefox and it's broken DOM, wonky JavaScript, and lack of table COL tag support from the HTML 4 standard.
@Steve Miller
IE7 & 8 are not the real problem... IT'S IE6! That thing needs to die!
"mind you, so there's still plenty of time to screw it all up. Or make it awesome."
considering it's coming from Microsoft I'm going to go with the former.
Yo! Stick a title on the graph or a caption or something! Gah!
Um.. how about "level of web developer frustration?"
no extensions=fail
They've had them for a while
http://www.ieaddons.com
@EGOvoruhk
nice to know...but when i search for an extesion that I need, I haven't found it...
btw, i find that the ff way to do search/installation and dev of the plugins, is much cleaner.
bye
@(Unverified) "No extensions that I need" != "No extensions." Rebuttal FAIL.
Since when did chrome past safari in javascript speed? I'm really shocked IE has the market share it does, I know its pre installed on close to all windows machines, but it sucks so bad. I am curious to how market share will change in Europe when they are given option of what browser to install. With buying a new pc being a good option to get windows 7, I wonder how quick IE's share will drop in Europe.
@taoprophet420 It was always faster than Safari.
@taoprophet420
As far as I can recall, Chrome has always bested Safari. Using it now. Never went back.
@taoprophet420 as some guy said above, ie 6 needs to die. thats the hellmonster. 7=meh 8= good enough.
for some strange reasons, youtube videos seem to stream far slower on chrome than on IE8....
on the same PC....
while playing the same video, on chrome i'll get frequent pauses to buffer the stream, but on ie8, the buffering is ahead of the stream.
@mocax That's not the browser fault, it's the the flash plug-in...
Hooray for HTLM5! Hopefully Microsoft's adoption will help get rid of Flash Video a little faster now. I know Flash itself wont go away, but at least places like YouTube wont be plagued by it
@EGOvoruhk We can only prey, yo. D: We can only prey.
@Orbital prey or pray?
ah so they've finally brought their browser within arms reach of the competition, about time really
Well, I do miss the old days with IE. Now I love FF, but I could go back to IE if they fixed all the things that made me leave it (slow, no extensions, bookmarks/history still in the stone age).
Make me believe again Microsoft. I want to want you!
html5 spec isn't finished is it? MS still needs to decide to build in h264 or theora video codec i believe, ogg audio too. I hope they include them all, then we can see flash die :)
@sam This is Microsoft... it will be WMV and WMA. You don't think they'd actually support open standards, do you?
@sam WMV? Unlikely. It will more than likely be some fashion of Silverlight. I agree that it has about a 99% chance of being proprietary though.
From a developer's perspective, doesn't matter one tiny bit... As long as MS doesn't force old browsers to upgrade we're still going to be stuck with that steaming pile of poo known as IE6 (still used by 20%+ of the population).
@Dudeman
Only way that will be fixed is moving people off of XP and onto WIndows 7. Besides, a large majority of those XP computers are work machines, and they shouldn't be browsing the web freely anyway.
@dagamer43
Windows 8, actually, since many users won't be updating their Windows 7 systems when the new IE comes out... Anyway, the more HTml5 support, the better!!
@Dudeman
I'm currently advising people to upgrade to latest version of FF or IE on my website because supporting IE6 is not worth it. If enough people inform their users on the upgrade then it will happen.
I respect IE, and I don't mind FF at all, but I prefer to use Opera and Chrome...but most of all, Chrome. It's just so much easier to organize stuff.
I remember trying out Opera 9 beta, and it was really good / fast, but the lack of extensions (adblock, scriptblock) is the ultimate deal-breaker.
Who cares if your javascript is 20% faster? If I can't block out 70% of the javascripts that bog down the page, it's still slower!
The power of FF is its community, something no other browsers can even hold a candle to. There are currently around 5000 extensions (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/) And 1.7 Billion downloads!
P.S. Please pass the active-xs the other sucker at the table.
@Tom G.
What are you talking about? You can block ads, scripts and all types of content in Opera. It's been years since I've seen ads with Opera.
INCASE you wonder what that graph is all about it is the SunSpider test Time (ms) smaller is better.
^^
@Mads
Thank you for doing the job the Engadget editor should have done.
Ranking comments on IE8 doesn't seem to work...
I'm gonna be frank, (can I still be garth?)
IE has dissappointed so many times before, I'm not holding out much hope. I'm sure there will be plenty of benchmarks when it's released...so I guess we'll see.
I still do not understand why Microsoft wants to re-invent a wheel.. Why not use Webkit and save loads of development time and money (and loads of bugs that people like me will have to put up with!)