Every web developer knows that Internet Explorer (IE) 6 is a pain. It has a lot of bugs, and a lot of newer code just doesn’t work. The problem is, we can’t stop coding for it – IE6 still has over 10% of the browser market share. Now, it was neglected for five whole years. Then version 7 came along. IE7 fixed a few of IE6′s bugs, but from a developers point of view wasn’t anything special. A couple of years later IE8 was released – which much improved rendering all round.
Now, IE8 is a good rendering browser, it’s not too bad at all. It doesn’t however support any of the ‘new’ features of the web. Experimental things such as HTML5 and CSS3 simply don’t work. Is that such a bad thing? Well, yes. Because every other major browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox) supports a good chunk of them and there’s a lot of things that we as developers want to use, but can’t.
Take my website for example – if you’re here in any version of IE you’ll see a very plain and very square design. Any other browser and you’ll likely see rounded corners, text shadow and box shadow – three small parts of CSS3 that really improve the visual appearance of a simple layout like this one.
Now, suddenly, Microsoft have realised they’re in a browser war once more – fall behind too much and people will walk away. Why is that troubling for Microsoft? Well, if you can convince people to use a new browser how much harder is it to convince them to use a new operating system the next time they buy? With increasing proportions of the smart-phone markets both Apple and Google are making people more aware of their products – and training them in their ability to use them. Google launches its own OS soon, how many PC users will be swayed to a computer with Google OS or for the richer of you, OSX?
Back on topic – IE9, slated for release in 2011. Another IE – great I think, as a developer. Another browser to support, bug fix and nannify.
But
I did something silly the other day. I downloaded the IE9 platform preview (version 3) and stood back in awe. Not only does it perform well in the Acid 3 test (83/100 compared to 20/100 for IE8) which although doesn’t beat Chrome’s and Safari’s 100/100 perfect score – is a vast improvement, but it also does something magical (in the words of Steve Jobs). Take a look at the screen shots below. On the left we have Chrome, on the right we have the IE9 preview.
That’s right. Google Chrome was by far the fastest JavaScript running Browser for PC and on a par with Safari. Not anymore. The new IE9 sports a new feature – background compiling of JavaScript. This fancy feature punches Chrome in the mouth and sprints away fast. A staggering 22 times faster in the fish test and immeasurably (but at least 60 times) faster in the asteroid test leaves you blown away.
This is a feature I’m definitely looking forward to!
One thing I will note though, Chrome still loaded and rendered pages faster than this IE9 preview.
Just a few comments in no particular order:
* IE8 doesn’t only miss out on CSS3 (which is fair enough as it’s mostly draft specification currently let alone when IE8 was released!) but misses a lot of the CSS2.1 selectors as well.
* The other major feature of IE9 is hardware accelerated canvas. That is huge as means canvas is a very suitable replacement for Flash (which it isn’t currently especially when looking at games). If Webkit supports hardware accelerated canvas soon then it’ll be a major turning point.
Shame I can’t use IE9 on my mac
Ah yes, selectors. I try not to use them simply because it borks IE version anything. Well spotted.
I should well imagine that by the time IE9 is out the other browsers will have or be close to having their own hardware accelerated canvases and JS compilers. The future of web development is exciting. And probably very mathematical.
It’ll be like being a real developer!