Comments on: IE 9: Hardware rendering, new JS engine, CSS, standards, and more

By: mmastro

mmastro — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:31:20 +0000

If they want corporate America to upgrade to IE9 they need to have IE6 compatibility mode like IE8 has for IE7. I work for a top 500 company, 40K+ employees, where XP and IE6 is still the standard. Part of the problem is that we have too many intranet web applications in production that were developed back in the IE6 hay days. Upgrading to IE8+ would break most of these web apps. Most of the original developers of these web apps have moved on or have been let go. So this is the pickle that most of corporate America has to deal with.

I hope Microsoft is listening… IE9 better have IE6 compatibility mode or corporate America will be happy to stay on XP and IE6. How about an IE9 Corporate edition with this capability?

By: WillPeavy

WillPeavy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:06:01 +0000

MS is never going to “adopt Webkit.” They want to have a web browser, that they fully control, to serve as a platform for Office Online and ASP.NET.

By: jaysmith

jaysmith — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:29:28 +0000

IE 9, another failure. Mr. Montgomery, i’ve called your end from the beginning.

By: DamirSecki

DamirSecki — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:20:47 +0000

@Breton:

that’s why I suggested they adopt webkit as IE9 rendering engine and include legacy compliant modes for older browsers (IE8, IE7, IE6). Like they do have now in IE8 for IE7 and it is the best solution… so that users would surf the web using new rendering engine and older apps would still work and user could choose to render that specific page in ie6 compliant mode (trident)

This would solve all the problems of the web… I just don’ see why M$ doesn’t want to!

maybe they want new engine for online office? could be… but they should stil include leghacy compliant modes down to ie6 and FORCE users to upgare!

By: Breton

Breton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:55:46 +0000

@Amtiskaw I think MS is responsible for some of the stupid parts of HTML5, such as the drag and drop API. what stupid parts are you talking about?

By: Amtiskaw

Amtiskaw — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:32:31 +0000

Microsoft deserved all the criticism they got for mothballing IE after IE6. It was a transparent attempt to protect Windows’ monopoly at the expense of technical progress. But the kind of childish, uninformed abuse that is heaped on them in comment threads like this is idiotic. It reads like a particularly embarrassing Slashdot thread, full of Linux nerds moaning about “Micro$haft Internut Exploder!!!1″

Personally I think IE9 looks great, and I’m willing to bet it will have support for Canvas, SVG, CSS 3 and a lot more besides. At the same time, I’m hoping Microsoft have the courage to innovate, and to disregard some of the more stupid parts of HTML 5. So long as they follow Apple’s example of prefixing things with -ms- and publishing a vague description in a W3C formatted document, presumably everybody will be OK with whatever features they add. Although somehow I doubt it. I suspect some of you would complain even if IE 9 gave you a winning lottery ticket every time you launched it.

By: jaimz

jaimz — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:25:05 +0000

Yeah what they really should do is force users to upgrade atleast.

for christ sake IE6 is the biggest load of crap. it doesn’t have png support so developers have to hack their way into making pngs work. what a load of bull.

Unfortunatly for us, Microsoft promises to support a browser until the OS that it orginally came installed on is no longer supported. IE6 came with XP, and I don’t see XP going away too soon

By: Breton

Breton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:08:32 +0000

“I don’t get why MS wont just adopt webkit rendering engine in their browser it is most complete right now… so they could focus on ui of the browser and implementation of new functionality
why banging the head into the wall?”
.
because of all the funny proprietary features (like activex) that only IE has, and other browsers don’t. And the vast array of intranet applications irresponsibly written and tested only in IE6. And the vast array of intranet apps that are STILL BEING WRITTEN TODAY, right this second, to only work in IE6.
.
MS refuses to “break the web” by removing those features. Whenever you see someone from MS say “Break the web” read “break the intranets of our corporate partners”.

By: Breton

Breton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:01:47 +0000

Yes, Apple adds nonstandard features, and Microsoft adds nonstandard features to their browsers. Aside from what previous posters have pointed out though, there is also a difference of quality and intent when it comes to HOW these two companies add new browser features.

When Apple adds a new feature, they add it to an OPEN SOURCE repository, and they immediately make efforts to make it standardized. When they add a new feature it tends to be relatively well designed, (though that seems to be a matter of debate), and it works really well, and as others pointed out, quickly gets picked up by other browsers.

When microsoft adds a new feature, they add it to their closed source browser, poorly document it, design it so that it unreasonably depends on some core windows API or some other windows specific feature. Their funny browser features are often quite buggy, some crashing the browser, and opening up serious security holes they then refuse to close or fix, because corporate partners depend on them (read: activex). They otherwise put every obstacle in the way of other browsers adopting it as a defacto standard, including, but not limited to, very poor communications. The result and intention of all this is obvious: Vendor lock-in.

So yes, you could say that when Apple adds a new feature it is good, and when Internet Explorer does it, it is bad. But it’s not a double standard, it’s a statement of fact.

By: blinkingmarquee

blinkingmarquee — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:11:23 +0000

They could have had superfast javascript years ago, they let Silverlight run with (.NET CLR managed JScript in SL 1.1 alpha, or even DLR’d JScript in SL 2.0) it instead of asking the team – “hey, make this compatible with jscript.dll and we can stick it in the browser!”

The mentioning of this being done to support the Office web stuff – YES! It’s not to make google chrome or firefox users happy.

Offloading to the graphics card – that’s something to look forward to. Are any of the other (being WebKit, Opera, Mozilla) browsers doing this?

By: akdetrick

akdetrick — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:25:25 +0000

someone please make it stop…

By: SchizoDuckie

SchizoDuckie — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:44:10 +0000

Yay! Another reason to do checks, patches, and hacks on every site and app I ever made to see if everything still works \o/

I can’t wait ’till this will come out

By: DamirSecki

DamirSecki — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:46:56 +0000

@Aimos: Martijn explained it perfectly

I don’t get why MS wont just adopt webkit rendering engine in their browser it is most complete right now… so they could focus on ui of the browser and implementation of new functionality

why banging the head into the wall?

By: souders

souders — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:35:25 +0000

I’m glad to see progress! I mostly wish I could get my hands on an alpha.

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:58:39 +0000

“And about double standards: your example would make sense if Apple implemented their own standards WITHOUT implementing the industry standards. Currently they’re just adding sugar on top. That is not really what MS is doing, now is it?”

I’d complaining about Apple adding their own standards, except FF, Opera, and Chrome (of course, being based on Webkit) quickly pick them up as de facto standards. If IE would quickly pick them up as de facto standards as well, I wouldn’t complain about Microsoft. I think when IE8 came out without canvas that was the last straw for me. One of the IE guys saw me complaining and asked what cool stuff was being done with canvas. Why don’t they KNOW?

Microsoft has enough money to BOTH being adding standards, the de facto stuff as it comes in, AND their own innovations.

By: WillPeavy

WillPeavy — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:05:26 +0000

Nice. I’m looking forward to seeing the IE9 JS engine in action. Hopefully the release of 9 will give IT people more motivation to stop using 6 in their organizations.

By: MartijnHoutman

MartijnHoutman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:30:19 +0000

@Aimos: Obviously, the compliant mode is for legacy systems that rely on the IE6/7/8 engines to work. And the forcing is necessary so that us developers can finally make use of new technologies.
And about double standards: your example would make sense if Apple implemented their own standards WITHOUT implementing the industry standards. Currently they’re just adding sugar on top. That is not really what MS is doing, now is it?

By: Aimos

Aimos — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:03:01 +0000

@Damir: “… ie8, ie7 and ie6 compliant mode AND force all users to upgrade” why the f*ck the compliant modes then?

Every MS news get MS bashing for sure. In the early days MS release it own additions to the HTML/CSS etc. standard and was evil evil evil. Today Apple adds features it needs for the iphone and it the good good good and so inovative.

Double standards for everyone.

Competition is good! So they shall release IE9, IE10 and so forth.

I am using FF, but I’m not an bashing idiot.

By: ajaxus

ajaxus — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:46:11 +0000

I knew that there wasn’t a point installing IE8!

By: Joeri

Joeri — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:14:24 +0000

It’s well known that inside microsoft the office team rules the roost, and it seems that the primary driver here is Office Web. They’re dramatically upgrading the performance and rendering quality so Office Web gets a first-class experience on IE9. I’m assuming that for charting they’ll want canvas or SVG at the very least (the Office Web guys have no particular affinity for silverlight, they want everything to work without it). This is good news for us web app developers, because what’s good for office web is good for all of the ajax community.