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 November 20th 2009 5:11AM
@Philip Han
The vertical axis is ms, lower is better.
I find it really annoying that Microsoft abused the fact that they had market share for so long by making absolutely no notable progress with IE 6/7/8. Now that the market is being taken away by firefox etc they are taking steps to counter this.
I hate companies that only innovate when they have to. Seems to be the business model for MS, do just enough until you have to do more.
@Quantic
I am using FF since before version 1.0 in mid 2004, but I have to say your comments are wrong. Reality is that MS was forced to retreat from its case against Netscape and still today we find many companies going to trial specially in EU. MS have made some changes that many don't like because of MS branding, example: IE7 was the first browser without menu with simplistic UI, by the way I hate that UI so I hate the copied Chrome UI with the tabs on top change. I liked FF because it was faster, then came extensions, and now as a developer FF has firebug so for me that's all. Chrome copie IE7 UI and made some possitive changes but still FF is the best browser by farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
To be honest, IE8 wasn't a terrible browser. I used it for quite some time until switching to Opera. What is a terrible browser now is Firefox. Maybe it's because they found a place atop the heap, but I just cannot use it. It crashes, it loses extension support, it uses a metric ton of memory. I hope that IE9 is good, I like competition.
@Nicholas He needs to include a "FUD" tag with it:
http://dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory
http://ejohn.org/blog/firefox-3-memory-use/
Firefox is now well in the "below everyone else" as far as memory usage is concerned.
Using Firefox 2.0 to 3.5 I frequently had problems with Firefox getting higher than 800 MB of memory usage (4.0GB 64bit Win Vista/7.) With the Firefox 3.6 beta 3 though it's now staying in a much more reasonable
So what Microsoft is sayin' is: "now with less suck."
That graph is a bit bias against IE, not to mention it only measures speeds at loading Javascript. Where are the 3D page renders, the startup memory, the memory taken with multiple tabs, etc etc. Granted IE8 is one of the lowest in multiple categories but as far as system performance goes supprisingly IE8 takes up the least memory at launch and the least memory and CPU usage with 5 active tabs open.
But yes in general if you want the fastest experience Chrome 3-4 is the way to go no doubt, just the least secure out of all the web browsers. FF 3.6 is an ABOMINATION, it is at the bottom of the charts for every single test I've read. Hopefully they fix all that before it releases.
@Anticrawl
That graph comes directly from Microsoft. If it's biased, they're being biased against themselves.
You do realize it was Microsoft itself who created and released this graph right? stop apologizing for Microsoft.
I really hope MS rewrites IE instead of hacking the old one more and more.
If they do bring out a sleek and fast browser (doesn't really have to be the fastest) they might well gain a lot of lost ground back with this and Win 7.
With the exception of true 3d application (such games), GPU acceleration is just a marketing bluff that say nothing but "it is accelerate", even it is costly in energy usage and poor stability and gaining a lousy 1-7% in performance. (Adobe CS4 for example).
In any case, videos and 3d are done by extra plugins that rely on their own technology, for example Silverlight is (supposely) GPU accelerate without needing of a browser with gpu acceleraton.
I like eniternet explorer better. ive tryed to jump on the firefox bandwagon a few times and it just didnt pan out.
The GPU-acceleration video demo is pretty impressive, but you gotta wonder...Other browsers are still faster WITHOUT GPU-acceleration, so if one of the fastest browsers (say Chrome) implemented GPU-acceleration, how freaking fast would it be?
Tried Opera, FF, Chrome and I always back to IE. Love it.
@eka you're joking right?
@Victor Stuber of course he's joking. Who in their right mind would use IE?
Just to clarify... it does *not* use DirectX. It uses Direct2D, which has been confused with DirectX. (refer http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd370987%28VS.85%29.aspx)
Direct2D is only supported on Windows 7 and has been backported to Vista, which probably means IE9 will drop support for Windows XP as Direct2D is not available. That is, unless they release a special version of IE9 for Windows XP that uses GDI+.
I'll be honest... I've been a avid user of Firefox since i can remember but ever since i started using windows 7 it seems IE8 out performs Firefox in many aspects. soooo, IE9 for the win! Can't wait!
dear Microsoft...
more of too little.. too late.. sorry charlie :)
NOBODY CARES
IE9 is still the moo-cow of the browser world.
How about labeling the Y axis you lazy arses?
I just hope they're strict html compliant. I'm tired of having to code two css pages.
Its funny, MS seems to be going the exact opposite direction as Google conceptually. Meaning a bigger, more hardware reliant browser, using GPUs to speed up performance. Google on the other hand seems to be going for a more is less approach; less reliant on hardware, ARM processors, the browser is the operating system, less OS overhead, etc.
Agreed. Chromium and WebKit are where the real innovation is happening. Not to say that FF and O are bad, they're superb browsers as well. With so many excellent choices there is no point in utilizing this turd.
What a pantload this IE. Useless.
I'm sticking with Chrome and Safari, the only two browsers based on the superior WebKit foundation.
A ha! So I was right, Chrome rocks :P haha.
I haven't had an IE icon on my desktop for a long time. Just Shiretoko (64bit Firefox) and Chrome thank you very much :)
Great... yet another version of IE to hack my code for :'(
IE is starting to look promising. At least they made it past 6...never thought that would happen lol Competition FTW.
Speaking about browser innovation while not mentioning opera just opened up a void. Published on _the internets_, of all places.
DAng, my mac is 5X faster this year and Windows 7 is 6 times faster....""
No, it's actually the year that JavaScript accelerators and html v5 came out and not your new OS that came out this year at the same time.
This is where Windows 7 and Snow Leopard have used false marketing on their website and in their stores. It's the accelerators and JavaScript enhancements FYI. MS or Apple doesn't accidentally do this. Firefox had this to coincide with the releases of Snow Leo. and Windows 7. Firefox and Flock all the way are the best all around browsers. IE has lost a huge market share to Firefox and now is loosing more to the newer Flock browser based on Firefox.
I'm still waiting for HTML4 support...
I had to spend 3 hrs fixing some code for ie7/8 - want to know how long the fix was for the rest? Less than 10 minutes.
CHROME IS NOW SUPPORTING EXENTIONS!!!! FTW!!.....btw IE8 isnt all that bad tho
browser wars? Cruelty resort again!