Well, it's been an interesting day for my perception of Internet Explorer.

To quote an awesome tweet:

Nettuts has a quick summary, and the platform preview is available from the IE site.

Most of you won't care but this is great news for web developers.

Yes, and no. We will have older versions of the browser in the wild for a long while to come. I only hope that it will run on XP. I don’t want to buy a whole new version of Windows just to run a browser.

Unlucky dude.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20000561-56.html

I want IE6 to self-destruct before Monday.

It might hurt some people, but that's how you know it's doing you good.

IE9 not on XP, sounds about right.

XP is now in maintenance, which means security fixes only, no new features. IE9 would be a new feature.

I am dragging my company to Windows 7, whenever we replace a computer and the rest are being upgraded to IE8 when I get my hands on them, so we only have a couple of machines left on IE6 or IE4/5 (we still have a couple of Win 95 machines downstairs!)... I'm doing my bit.

Some interesting Demos for HTML 5 and CSS3 on the Microsoft website, work well in Firefox and Safari...

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Default.html

Edit: You can certainly see a difference, IE8 makes 4fps on my machine on the Flying Images demo, Firefox over 60fps.

Some of the tests are disabled with IE 8, you need IE 9 to look at them all...

Downloaded the preview of IE9. It uses around 7% CPU (all cores pretty much idling, Firefox drives one core at around 95% to achieve the same FPS rating, but is less smooth and more jagged. IE9s use of the DirectX engine to offload graphic rendering to the GPU does show impressive results - even on my low-end graphics card.

Edit 2: The same with the other speed tests, Firefox manages to be as fast, IE 8 crawls, but both drive 1 core to over 75% on each test, whilst IE9 barely raises the processor above 2%. With the exception of pulsating bubbles, there Firefox crawls, but IE9 is smooth, renders quickly and uses 3 cores each at around 30%.

Edit 3: The falling balls demo really show the differences between IE9 and Firefox, IE9 smoothly drops the balls and they fall off the bottom of the screen. In Firefox, they are jerky and fall to the bottom of the box, then disappear!

Firstly we still have to see it actually implementing the standards correctly otherwise it doesn't matter a damn and will be yet another nightmare.

Secondly until all the older versions wither away we are still buggered. The fact that it will only work on Win 7 & Vista means that the vast majority or business PC's won't get it.

Okay, the demos are designed to show off the IE9 rendering engine, but it does a better job with the HTML5 than Firefox does... If they continue in this vein, they will have a very good contender in the browser market place.


Yep.

But as PCs are slowly replaced, it will get better. If it is rolled out as part of the next SP for Vista and Windows 7, that will make a big impact. But as long as businesses cling to XP and IE6 like a blanky, we will have problems.

Cool. Lets hope that is what we get.


Agreed but in the mean time we will still have to support thm. My guess is at least 2 if not 3 years.

I’d say longer, especially if corporates don’t want to move on to Windows 7. They are clinging on to IE6 far beyond it’s welcome, and this just indicates that they won’t be in a rush to anything newer.

I'm not convinced its a Win 7 issue. IMHO the problem is that loads of companies have large Intranet based complex application that were written to work on IE6 which is very non standard. These apps won't work on anything else. They don't want to / Can't spend the money rewriting the apps to allow them to move onto newer browsers. Its a BLOODY MESS.

That will be the major problem for many users for a long time.

A question:

Who seriously believes that when IE6 is dead the problem will end? I'd put money on the fact that in 6 years time we'll all be bitching and moaning about the continued use of IE7/8!

LOL probably but in reality the majority of the standards problems will die with IE 6. IE7 & 8 aren't perfect but they are a hell of allot better.