Yes, yes, yes – that’s what you get for releasing Internet Explorer 9 in the middle of the night, Microsoft! A post on OSNews that’s late! I’m sure that’ll teach you. Anywho, as you may have noticed, Microsoft is back in the browser game – Internet Explorer 9 has been released.
Microsoft finally has a browser that can actually play with the big boys. Since we’ve covered IE9 extensively already, I’m not going to rehash all the details, but here’s a breakdown of the most important additions.
First up, Microsoft is the first browser to ship with hardware-accelerated rendering. The GPU is put to work through the use of Direct2D for drawing, and the new text renderer in Vista and 7, DirectWrite, takes care of text. This last thing causes what I believe to be a major issue: text rendering is absolutely horrendous on many websites. DirectWrite produces fonts that are shape-accurate – which is the way Mac OS X does it. This looks fine if the entire operating system uses it, but when only one application uses it, it stands out like an eye-sore. Windows’ ClearType renders text in such a way that they are sharp – shape be damned. Mixing the two is sloppy.
IE9 might as well dispense rainbows and unicorns, but the text rendering is a definite deal breaker for me.
Another major consequence of the hardware acceleration is that Internet Explorer 9 doesn’t run on Windows XP. I consider this to be a plus point – I find Windows XP intolerable and it needs to die – but those of you still clinging on to that piece of junk won’t be able to use IE9.
Another major feature is the new JavaScript engine Chakra, which delivers some impressive performance gains over Internet Explorer 8. IT’s multithreaded; one thread will run the script in realtime, while another thread compiles and optimises it in the background.
Of course, one of the major points of interest was support for modern web standards, an area where Microsoft has been lagging behind for almost a decade now. The details here can be found in the developers’ guide for Internet Explorer 9, which details all the new things on this front.
There’s loads of other nice tidbits as well, like the ability to pin sites to the Windows 7 taskbar where website developers can even create jumplists for their sites (pin Facebook to your Windows 7 taskbar and you’ll see). The interface itself of course follows the trend set by Chrome of focussing on the content instead of the UI, and that’s a good thing.
You can get Internet Explorer 9 for Vista and 7, so if you feel inclined to do so, give it a shot.
It still lacks some advanced CSS3 support, but it shows the Microsoft effort to keep up with web standards. Please, do not stop at 9, MS! There is work to be done yet.
I hope the IE team understands that 9.1 or 10 has to be released before 2012. They have speed and a minimalistic interface which is a good first step. But you are still behind Firefox, Chrome and Opera so keep working.
The IE team hinted at shorter release cycles. And they have WebSockets and IndexedDB in the labs so we might see them in the next version.
I hope they take the Chrome release methodology and start pushing updates and fixes in the background.
I want that to happen so badly. I can’t wait for the day when “people using an outdated version of IE” won’t be a demographic we even need to worry about.
Won’t happen, because it’s anathema to enterprise.
As long as they allow enterprise to package it with that setting turned off, then there is no reason why they can’t do that.
Name one enterprise that does not build an MSI package of any software they push out to the desktops.
Had to reset my IE settings. Very fast. Again no extensions but I kinda use IE as backup browser so no biggy.
But on the whole, it’s pretty much catched up to everyone else. WP7 users are in for a real treat this year.
Apple.com is still slow with IE9. lol
in before the usual html5test trolls.
This is really very good release from M$. Microsoft is definitely in the game again and no one can deny that. Microsoft should keep the same momentum in all the future releases to be in the game.
Don’t most people run Windows under a Virtual Machine anyway?
I couldn’t disagree more, and I know I’m not alone. I’ll take Windows XP over Vista / 7 any day of the week.
I think its great that they’re not releasing it for Windows XP… it means even less people will use it.
Google has Chrome for Windows, OSX, and Chromium for Linux.
Apple has Safari for iOS, OSX, and Windows
Opera has their browser for seemingly everything.
Microsoft…. well…. looks like their latest browser doesn’t even target half of their own OS’s user base as most are still on XP.
Wow….
Oh anti-Microsoft humor.
Haven’t seen that before.
You give him to much credit, Thom. It wasn’t even remotely humorous.
You give him to much credit, Thom. It wasn’t even remotely humorous. [/q]
Wasn’t being humorous, rather curious. Seriously… who cares about IE?
Most people who would care about these features have long left IE for alternatives and have seen the light.
I would guess that most people still using IE do so not because of a conscious decision to use it, but because they don’t know any better.
Missing the point.
The most used browser in the World finally had decent standards support, decent interface and fast JS performance.
Troll somewhere else.
Hardly. IE9 has only just been released how can it suddenly be the most used browser in the world. Additionally, there are still a ton of people on xp who won’t be using IE9. By the time XP is finally mostly dead people will be using IE10.
I don’t think his statement was meant about a specific version of IE, but IE in general.
That’s a fair statement, since most users of previous versions of IE will upgrade to 9 when they are finally willing/able, rather than jumping to another browser, I think. Having such fine-grained control over deployment in large environments is something that often trumps latest-and-greatest.
Thanks.
Not necessarily. Those running Vista or W7 will hopefully upgrade quickly, but there are a *lot* of Windows XP machines out there, which are incapable of running IE9.
Plus, corporate environments are *very* slow to do such things – most of our clients have only started to show interest in IE8 in the past year, and several are still running IE6. I doubt they’ll be running IE9 for another 2-3 years minimum.
Internet Explorer in general is … and most people that are using IE7/8 will upgrade either through upgrading their OS, or IE9 being a recommended Windows update for Vista and 7.
And most of those are either using IE6/7/8 and will either upgrade when there is a desktop refresh at corporate land or when their current machine gets old they will get a laptop with the next version of Windows and use whatever is the default browser … because most people couldn’t give two shits what their browser is.
Edited 2011-03-15 20:26 UTC
Most used?
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Not since 2008 apparently…
Edited 2011-03-16 10:06 UTC
Did you even read the page you linked to? Or did you just glance at the big numbers and give them your own meaning? Please go back to that page youand read the big words underneath the tables.
The site doesn’t even pretend that these are real-world figures.
Yep, I did, and I’m quite familiar with how web statistics work. I also know from personal experience that most of the non-techy people I know now use Firefox, whereas a couple of years ago that wasn’t the case. These are people who wouldn’t be counted by the W3S servers, and seem to have switched from IE because they’re concerned about internet safety more than before.
I’m not saying the statistics on W3S are valid for the non-geek world, but I don’t think they’re as far off as you seem to think, and in my techy, non-techy and professional circles, IE is far from the most common browser.
This one does:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-201002-201102
In Europe, IE is not the most commonly used browser. It hasn’t been since November 2010.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201002-201102
Worldwide, Chrome and Firefox together outstrip IE.
Those stats are for w3schools, which gets the large majority of its traffic from web developers. It does NOT represent the Internet at-large.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-201002-201102
This site purports to represent the Internet at large in Europe.
Firefox 37.56%
IE 36.44%
Chrome 16.28%
IE is not the most used browser in Europe.
The most used browser in the World isn’t IE9 and it wont be for years. :sadface:
If it takes IE10 to meet up with current browsers, and it wont appear on pre-XP, thats some percentage of ~30% of desktop computers, which are but a small % of Web-facing devices.
Pardon me for not being too excited.
Again missing the point, the lowest common denominator will soon be IE8 which is a decent browser in my opinion, IE7 is dropping off quick (especially on the website I look after).
I dunno how many times I have to say this, the vast majority of new laptops and desktops shipping with IE9 installed, the usage will pick up pretty quickly.
http://www.conceivablytech.com/6244/products/immediate-ie9-success-…
Firefox 4 is set to ship on March 22.
http://www.conceivablytech.com/6252/products/mozilla-to-ship-firefo…
There are 400 million Firefox users right now.
New versions of Firefox have a vastly higher adoption rate than IE.
Edited 2011-03-16 10:54 UTC
Windows 7 adoption is high and that is without large organisation such as where I work (10000+ desktops and laptops), I know we are moving big time to Windows 7 in 2012 … and IE9 will be default browser.
Also with IE9 being pretty decent (since I have actually used it), I doubt as many will be moving to Firefox, because most people are happy with good enough (most of the users on the site that I work are using IE8, and everyone in the business has to use IE8 except for our team since we need to test in other browsers), we attract “silver surfers” and they will use whatever works and leave a lot alone.
It is speculation both on my side and the link you have posted. I don’t think “It doesn’t work on XP” isn’t as much of a deal breaker as it is made out. I certainly don’t expect IE9 to become dominate in the next year, however I expect IE8 and IE9 will remain dominate.
Basing it on traditional browser is becoming less relevant to this generation of the browser wars.
Mobile browsing will overtake desktop/laptop in the next few years … tbh I suspect certain forks of Webkit engine to become the dominate browsing platform in the future.
Edited 2011-03-16 12:40 UTC
You really think that most people run windows in a virtual machine? Really? I mean really, really? As in you think that a majority of windows users run it inside a virtual machine on top of a different operating system? Like, you think the first thing Gradmpa Joe ,Suzie Q user, or Mr enterprise MSCE Carl Khaki do when they get a box is wipe the existing Windows Installation, install Ubuntu/Hackintosh/OpenBSD/GNU and then install the Windows on a virtual machine? Its so outlandishly, obviously not true you must have been making a joke. The only alternative is that you actually believe that was the case, which is just too scary to really even consider.
I use IE, because there is no need to add more bloatware to my system by installing other browsers. Ever since tab browsing, there hasn’t been a single feature from Firefox, Chrome or Safari that I really had to have. I also use IE, because I don’t care about not being considered cool for not bashing Microsoft everytime, everywhere.
As for XP, well Vista sucked (still does) but 7 doesn’t. It’s time to upgrade. I can understand a Vista user not wanting to upgrade to Win7, as it is basically paying Microsoft extra for fixing bugs Vista shouldn’t have had in the first place. But staying on a nine year old OS?!?!? Why don’t we go back to Windows 2000 or Windows 98 then?
Edited 2011-03-15 20:56 UTC
Actually, Windows 2000 was great, better than those bloated releases which Microsoft has kept introducing ever since
A lightweight OS that is light on security.
Shipping an OS in the year 2000 without a firewall was indefensible.
Xp wasn’t that much better. It came with a firewall that was off by default. It was only on by default in SP2
Not much better upon release.
SP2 came with a host of security improvements. Win 2000 was ignored.
With the right browser, in practise, it didn’t matter a thing. As long as it wasn’t IE. Maybe it could work if you had IE completely locked down.
Are firewalls really all that important on a consumer-grade OS ?
I’ve never seen the Windows firewall block anything but legit games… You know, this great user experience where it silently shows up in the background while you’re experiencing various bugs in the foreground, and only find out what happened when you give up and close the game.
Edited 2011-03-16 06:06 UTC
Yawn, I still have Vista on an old computer and the only noticeable performance difference compared to Windows 7 is the boot time. All the bugs were fixed by SP1. There are plenty of benchmarks that show this but I guess you didn’t bother to look at any.
http://gizmodo.com/#!5173392/windows-7-vs-vista-which-runs-crysis-f…
No, and what Universe do live in exactly? Windows is the defacto desktop/laptop operating system and will be for some years yet.
On modern hardware, 7 and Vista Service pack 2 is faster and more responsive than Windows XP, uses memory more effectively and doesn’t lock up for 5 minutes because it doesn’t know how to use your dual core processor properly.
Windows 7 uptake has been spectacular in the last year and a bit, XP is going to be retired where it can be in the Corporate world, IE9 will be a significant percentage by 2012.
IE8 and IE9 will still be dominate for a few years to come, until the mobile web usage goes beyond Desktop/Laptop use, I don’t expect this to change.
Try harder at trolling.
So what? They sell operating systems, not browsers. XP is a needless security risk and I’m glad they are providing an incentive to upgrade, however small it may be.
Windows XP is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet.
XP updates of any sort end this year in July if I recall correctly. I predict that by 2013 every XP machine in the world will be cracked and a member of a botnet.
Shortly after that the XP users will either replace their computer because it is too slow from all the CPU, RAM and bandwidth the malware is using or change operating systems.
In 2013 XP will be 12 years old!
That is almost a laugh. Would anybody use any other 12 years old OS? (except as a hobby, of course).
You’re not counting the service packs as anything more than bugfixes then. That’s not how most people seem to think about them.
The fact remains that a majority of windows users run XP. It is kind of odd to not give them access to the latest browser version when both mozilla and google seems to be able to pull it off.
IMO, it is basically still the same operating system. I have seen it “grow” and it doesn’t seem to be fundamentally different than when it was first released.
Some Linux distros have also something similar to “service packs”, especially the Enterprise ones.
I don’t believe anybody uses a Linux distro that long.
That will of course depend on what you are looking at. One could argue that windows 7 isn’t fundamentally different from Vista. Or that the latest Ubuntu/Mac OS X/FreeBsd isn’t fundamentally different from the ones you used 10 years ago.
XP might be many years old, but it didn’t stop changing the day it was first shipped.
SP2 had quite a few updates in it, I would count that as just as large an upgrade as the typical 6 month linux update or an OSX version bump. I agree that SP3 shouldn’t count, though.
the last 3 business I’ve worked for still use XP, and it’s 2011 already, ..not long to go to hit your ‘laughable’ 12yo OS !!
Much as I would expect and encourage friends of mine (‘consumers’) to go and switch already!
MS really should have extended business support, at least limited support and security fixes til ???2015/6 probably
IMVHO
Unless the Maya were right, of course
If I was to be the devil’s advocate I’d say that shows what a solid product MS created in XP.
“Windows XP is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet. XP updates of any sort end this year in July if I recall correctly.”
Your information is faulty. In 2008 Microsoft committed to providing security patches “and other critical updates” for Windows XP until April, 2014.
“..XP users will either replace their computer…or change operating systems.”
Once again your information is faulty. Microsoft has little choice but to support Windows XP for an extended period. Many of its largest business customers world wide have chosen not to upgrade to Windows 7. While Windows 7 has been somewhat better received than Vista, Windows XP continues to be the primary Microsoft desktop OS world wide. Companies universally have balked at Vista’s and now Windows 7’s deployment costs, resource requirements, and lack of ready compatibility with many older but still widely used business applications.
Microsoft has grudgingly accepted the fact that many of its customers world wide have opted to skip Vista and its somewhat improved sibling Windows 7 altogether while continuing to deploy XP. This holdout will no doubt last at least until Windows 8 becomes available and possibly longer.
In addition to actively supporting XP through 2014, Microsoft promotes a program that allows customers to downgrade the Vista and Windows 7 systems that come with newly purchased PC’s to XP. This ‘downgrade’ option to Windows XP is available to all, and large numbers in the business sector still choose it rather than shoulder the costs involved with a wholesale move to Windows 7, which is seen as simply a somewhat improved version of Windows Vista – the single most despised MS/OS in many years.
I wondered where I went wrong. I went back and double-checked my source.
Support for XP service pack 2 ends this July. Service pack 3 is good until 2014, as you say.
Naturally, and in Hyper-V of course.
why the hell didn’t they released it in time for pwn2own 2011 if it’s really that great? It would have been nice to see a title like “IE9 hacked 1 day after release!!!” How much did they worked on it in a few days?
Edited 2011-03-15 19:36 UTC
I use Linux and Mac OS mostly these days, but I do have a Windows XP that has IE 8 on it. Even if IE 9 was available on XP I still wouldn’t use it over Chrome, Opera, or Firefox unless I was just forced to.
As for IE 9 not being available on XP. It just hurts their market share for IE 9. Eventually people will move Windows 7 as they buy new PC’s, but many of them will familiarize themselves with some other browsers.
My parents both use Chrome. Most of my friends use either Chrome or Firefox. My main browser is Opera these days. When I help someone out with their computer I generally switch them over to Chrome if they are still using IE and I haven’t had a single person go back.
And I still remember what happened when Microsoft gained browser dominance. They let IE stagnate, which was already sub par, and allowed websites to be created that only work in their browser. I, for one, have no desire to ever hand back that kind of powers to Microsoft.
Even if IE became the best and most standard compliant browser in the whole wide world I still wouldn’t use it. I commend them for creating better and safer software, but it was only after real competition came around. Take away that competition and they will do exactly the same thing.
No it doesn’t, most people don’t know what a browser is and will use whatever is on their computer, which in a few months time will be IE9 … since the browser is half decent they will not change.
Most large companies only support IE6 on Windows XP since their intranet apps will be tied to it, others will move to IE9 with their desktop refresh (like ours is doing).
Pretty much all computers come with Win 7 installed so expect IE9 uptake to be pretty good.
Windows XP was good back in it’s day but tbh mainstream support is ending in 2014 .. why should they pour money into supporting an OS that is 10 years old?
Anyone that cares about HTML 5 support will already be using Chrome or Firefox, everyone else will use IE8 until they upgrade OS.
Until Firefox came out every other browser was complete shit. Opera was alright, Netscape/Mozilla was terrible. IE6 was the best of breed at the time.
They rested on their laurels because their was no competition, this is as much a fault of their competitors as them. Any company that commands a monopoly does this … isn’t limited to the software industry (see British Telecom).
As for other browser such as Chrome, Safari etc, I am already seeing the IE6 effect in the mobile space (and the lesser effect desktop space) with devs targeting Webkit and letting other browsers suffer in the name of progressive enhancement.
Edited 2011-03-15 20:12 UTC
Maybe I wasn’t clear in the way I said it. I don’t think Microsoft has an obligation to support IE 9 on XP. I’m not deamonizing them for not doing it. I’m simply suggesting that IE 9 growth will be stunted because it’s not supported on XP and will give other browsers even more opportunity to gain market share.
I expect probably all computers with Vista and 7 on them to get IE 9 at some point.
**
That second part you lost me. I said competition is good and you more or less repeated my sentiment and then said my attitude is what caused the IE problem in the first place. Then you went off about how everybody is targeting webkit. As far as I’m aware IE has it’s own render engine, Firefox has it’s own, Chrome has it’s own, Opera has it’s own. Safari and Konquerer use Webkit. So I’m not real sure where you are actually going with that.
The problem I have is that people seem to forget 10 years ago … IE6 was the only decent browser.
I went off about targeting webkit because it is becoming the new IE6, I see a lot of people targeting webkit specific extensions, especially on mobile devices. There is no decent competitor to webkit on smartphones and we will end up with sites just not working/looking odd on other devices because webkit has been targeted.
Edited 2011-03-15 20:50 UTC
Clarification: Konqueror uses KHTML. Opera uses its own renderer, and Firefox and its derivatives use gecko. Chrome, Safari, iOS and Android use webkit.
Amongst that lot, gecko is the most prevalent, not webkit.
With the imminent release of Firefox 4, there will very soon be a version of Firefox for mobiles:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/mobile/
Enjoy.
comment removed.
Edited 2011-03-16 08:31 UTC
I think what most people forget is that Microsoft include IE with Windows for free when everybody else was charging for their software which effectively killed the browser market. In fairness standards didn’t really mean much back then in the original browser war, but once Microsoft dominated the field it meant even less.
My problem with Microsoft is that when they owned the market they just stopped developing IE. By then websites were being designed around IE and not any real kind of web standards so I find it rather hard to say all other browsers sucked when websites were geared toward IE.
Flash forward to Firefox. They rekindled the browser war, but that didn’t jump start redevelopment of IE. It wasn’t till Firefox started gaining ground and taking points away from Microsoft that the 800-pound gorilla started working hard on IE 7 and 8 and now 9.
All that aside I don’t care what browser people chose. Actually I would love to see the browser market split at least five ways with no one browser having a significant market share.
Nitpick … in some markets Firefox is the most used browser.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-201002-201102
Worldwide and in just about every individual market, Firefox has a much larger share than webkit browsers.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201002-201102
Given these facts, why wouldn’t a developer target gecko (Firefox) first, and then enjoy the fact that other browsers such as Chrome and Safari useing webkit, or IE9 for that matter, should also work.
OK, IE9 might still be a little way off, but it won’t be too bad.
After developing your website targetting Firefox, if you then get any complaints from Windows XP users, just tell them to install and run either Firefox, Chrome, Opera or Safari.
It is because Webkit is most prevelent on smart phones.
Mobile websites use something like WURFL/WALL to detect the devices capabilities (think User Agent Sniffing on steroids) or worse they use some sort of basic user agent sniffing (does the user agent contain the word iPhone) … this can be client side or server side.
Ideally you need a combination of at least three technologies, WUFZL or equivalent to detect what the device can do, Server side logic to serve the correct content. Client side detection of its abilities i.e. video tag etc, geolocation via the browser …
However It is easier for Devs to split this to Webkit/Smartphone and “everything else”, this is the feedback I have got from working with various companies that specialise in Mobile dev.
Edited 2011-03-16 09:30 UTC
But how long will that take? XP is still the #1 operating system. What needs to happen is for a major site like youtube to require a modern browser. But no one wants to lose that much traffic so everyone will just keep using Flash for years.
That’s BS, Opera was way better than IE6. The mistake they made was charging for the browser. The name was never that good either.
But nobody ever gives a shit about Opera … I don’t get any traffic from Opera … in fact the only traffic I get from opera is me checking to make sure it works in Opera.
Also I get tired with nerds nitpicking … I was pretty much right … not 110% right … but accurate enough … It is tiresome.
So, it’s missing support for things that are likely to change, which is fine.
The only real thing it’s missing, and it is a deal breaker for me, are extensions.
The mouse gestures app that’s available is way too limited, and there’s no flashblock. Doing it manually is way to cumbersome.
Frankly, looking at IE9’s UI and okay standards support, I don’t think many people knowing about the various options available would use it. However, what’s great news is that all those people who just use the default browser won’t ruin the life of web developers without even knowing about it as much as before.
There’s one thing which annoys me, though : GPU acceleration. I know, Flash is evil and all, but if you don’t like it, all you have to do is to use something like FlashBlock and it’s gone. If you don’t want annoying animations, sounds and intrusive ads, you can just block that crap and focus on the relevant part, the text.
On the other hand, turning web browsers into the new Flash Player allows for an usability rampage and will turn the web into something which requires a fast machine to be browsed and which eats laptops’ and phones’ batteries for dinner without an easy way to disable the crap. Not to mention the new exploits that letting untrusted webpages access intrinsically buggy GPU drivers will bring.
In short, those annoying all-Flash websites could become the norm, only this time in full respect of web standards.
Edited 2011-03-15 20:32 UTC
Only ruined the life of crap web developers. Most who whine about IE6 and 7, usually don’t understand how to do CSS and JS properly. Every good front end dev I know didn’t have a problem.
Also IE7 is worse than 6 IMO, at least with IE6 the bugs are quite predicatable … and one can expect them to be consitent. IE7 has very difficult oddities that aren’t seen as easily.
IE6 made me a decent web dev, it made me appreciate how to be accurate, something which Firefox and other browsers lets you get away with, It also made me appreciate that you have to understand the browser and what it is doing.
Every browser has it quirks e.g. JS performance differs, dependant on how you write it.
Lets not forget that Firefox is no darling either, I have had all sorts of bugs to do with inline-block support, pages just not rendering properly because it doesn’t feel like it, and AJAX deciding not to work until I killed the process and started again.
Chrome doesn’t have a RSS reader and I absolutely hate their inspector tool.
Safari has a nice hanging bug at the moment where it randomly refuses to download JS files dependant on where the sun is in the sky as far as I can tell (which is causing me headaches on soon to be replaced legacy .NET 1.1 CMS).
All browsers have gotchas … IE8 quite scarily is actually one of the more consistent browsers at the moment, and at the moment I tend to be using that more than firefox.
I am actually using Safari on Windows to debug my JS, rather than firefox/firebug because Firefox is just terrible in terms of stability.
Edited 2011-03-15 20:39 UTC
No they whine because it adds an unneeded workload. IE6 is a productivity killer, end of story.
That PNG transparency bug should have been fixed overnight but MS kept the damn thing frozen. I can understand keeping a conservative cycle for corps but any company that dependent on goofy rendering quirks should be forced to spend more on IT.
IE6 is also unstable and there are plenty of examples where it will bomb on clean code, especially if it involves AJAX. It’s a garbage browser and that is a fact that is independent of web developer skill.
It is added workload indeed initially when learning the quirks, but at least the bugs are consistent. IE7 has more bugs, and more JS bugs (John Resig said that IE7 actually introduced JS bugs).
PNG support is a problem, and was my main bug bear, can easily be fixed with alpha image loader. Most layout problems are fixed by applying hasLayout … all of these are documented in detail on Microsoft’s website.
I have more problems with Safari on Macs these days than with IE6 … luckily IE6 support won’t be necessary our next website refresh. Unfortunately I will have to continue supporting macs, and we only have one test machine.
Edited 2011-03-16 08:37 UTC
I don’t care what John Resig or John Doe says.
The typical web development company charges a surcharge for IE6 support, usually around 20%. That says a lot more than one person’s opinion. It’s clearly a burden when there is a standard surcharge involved.
Yes I am quite aware of annoying fixes to annoying problems like the png bug.
I can also list all sorts of IE6 AJAX bugs for which there is no fix. I have come across ASP AJAX bugs where even Microsoft said to drop IE6 or use a different control.
After Safari 5 I’ve had the fewest problems with Webkit browsers. FF on Mac was the problem child but nothing compared to IE6.
He is only one of the best web devs out there and has a javascript library which is pretty much ubiquitous.
It is because most web devs tend to be a bit shit. I cannot tell you how many senior web devs make websites in tables, spend a week binding a DataGird control or make elementary mistakes such as putting DIVS in a paragraph tab.
I only need an IE6 stylesheet for things that the browser is not capable of doing.
Good.
And I can list all the other annoying bugs in other browsers as well if you want … IE7 has 180 well known rendering bugs and they are more of a pain in the arse than IE6.
Lucky you. I have problems with Safari ever day, I have one test machine that I don’t have regular access to, and ain’t great at using a mac.
I have had to tell our helpdesk to tell mac users to download firefox … I have no other solution to the bug.
Edited 2011-03-17 10:24 UTC
No it is because it takes more time to make a website IE6 compatible and web devs don’t like doing it. Working with pure HTML 4.01 is faster, end of story.
I’ve never seen anyone with the opinion that IE7 is worse to deal with than IE6. There are a bazillion blog posts on why IE6 should die. IE7 is definitely annoying compared to 8 but an improvement over 6, especially in the area of javascript.
Tell your boss to buy a mac mini off ebay.
I had an app once that IE6 died on. There was no visible error, but it would just stop downloading any new files. It would sit there and spin like it was trying, but would never succeed even if you pointed it to a new site. Only solution was to restart the browser.
I stuck some alert statements into the javascript to debug, and the issue went away, so it was clearly some kind of race condition in the browser.
IE7 fixed it, and several other weird javascript bugs i had noticed. So i’d strongly say IE7 was much better than IE6, no contest.
Which is why you are having so many problems with IE6. Using a XHTML 1.1 strict doctype will put it into “almost” standards mode.
Well you have now. know what problems IE6 has … for me they aren’t a big deal. IE7 causese me more problems due to its generally more Wholly behaviour.
I tend to use client side libraries such as jQuery (and before that prototype) so JS problems are rarity since others have already done a lot of the hardwork for me. Though I didn’t work in Web dev before these were released … so our experience may differ there.
I am not saying IE6 is a good browser … far from it … but developers really do complain a little bit too much for my liking about it … when every browser has its problems.
We have 2 mac minis.
I work for a charity so the extra cost of another machine has to be justified … there isn’t one at the moment, so no new mac. It was hard enough getting an IE9 test machine environment, let alone another mac.
You’re out of your goddamn mind.
I hate to break it to you but these people either weren’t good or didn’t need to write multi-browser apps.
But yeah, IE7 is no darling either. Ever see the one where resizing a resizable frame will cause the browser to hang re-rendering layout for 30 seconds? The best part was it happens *every other* resize. One day I won’t have to support that either.
I seen all these problems, Like any good dev I learnt how to deal with them, and I learnt from past mistakes.
The websites I used to work on were heavy on their use of AJAX and JS, I got them to work cross platform … with no hacks.
Funnily enough jQuery and Prototype devs seem to manage just fine as well.
Cross-browser *javascript* is a totally different animal with a much more limited set of frustrations. That can all be worked around in code. Trying to fix CSS issues *without* using javascript and keep it cross-browser, including IE6 support, is a nightmare.
I managed it fine, for two years while I was working making templates for Holiday websites.
The main problems you have are,
<fieldset> and <legend>, IE6 puts a margin of 7px when legend is displayed as block. Use IE6 stylesheet and assign a negative margin and position relative.
Hover in IE6 only works probably on anchor elements and it children.
Double margin bug on floated elements … instead use a padding on the parent element if possible.
hasLayout bugs, assign width, height, or overflow property to fix.
I could go on …
I only had an IE6 stylesheet for things the browser couldn’t do e.g. alphaImageLoader.
The thing is I understood what the browser was doing, and I wrote my CSS with that understanding of how IE6 will try to render it.
Most of the information is on MSDN.
lucas, i can’t tell if you’re joking or trolling.
Not doing either.
Oh, so you’re just crazy. Ok.
Look, no one is saying you can’t get pages to work with IE6. It’s very possible, I do it myself for work. But the idea that IE6 is easier to support than IE7 is laughable.
I not saying it was easier … with IE6 it was obvious there was a problem straight away … not so with IE7. There are just as many problems but they are more subtle, and more difficult to diagnose in some instances IMO.
How fast can it download Google Chrome and Firefox?
it was okay, but imho nothing to write home about.
Not very good HTML5 support,
Just downloaded it and pluploader from http://www.plupload.com
does not work in html5 mode with IE 9.
Works on all the other newer browsers.
IE still stinks even at version 9, the UI is nasty also.
buttons are gaudy
doesn’t use space as efficiently as Chrome
gpu rendering is overrated for today’s needs
synthetic javascript performance is overrated for all browsers
HTML5 compatibility is overrated when IE8 will be around for years. Heck we are just now getting rid of IE6.
No we’re not. Unfortunately.
It’s low enough to ignore for websites that target US and European visitors. You can thank China for keeping the global rate high.
[quote]gpu rendering is overrated for today’s needs [/quote]
Chicken and egg. People don’t need GPU rendering because nothing needs it, but nothing needs it because, so far, it hasn’t been available.
Well, the egg has been laid and hatched, so lets hope it turns into a chicken.
Of course, there is a tangible, immediate benefit to GPU rendering. Pages that have a chunk of stuff that doesn’t move when scrolling through a page is much, much smoother than other browsers. Wish I had an example on hand, though. I tend to avoid pages like that, for the previous performance issues.
Well we’re talking games since video is obviously not a problem. I’m not convinced that HTML5 is the future of browser based games. I think a third party C++ 3D browser/native hybrid engine would be a lot more appealing to developers.
I really don’t see a difference and have tried some multimedia heavy websites like nick.com. I’ll try it on a lower spec’d computer later.
Well it was the last windows I every used in maybe 2004. Yes it is junk (pure junk if I may say) but such a comment really shows lack of professionalism considering this is a news site and not your personal blog.
Edited 2011-03-15 22:15 UTC
Thank you for telling us what OUR site is.
Very enlightening.
It such a piece of crap that it has been around for 10 years plus and not moving in some place for another couple of years if ever …
It is crap compared to today’s OSes but it was miles ahead of anything else except for Windows 2000 on its release.
Comparing to Chrome, I see what you are saying about text being less crisp in IE, but honestly, it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the blur-fest in Safari. It seems IE has struck a good balance between sharpness and accuracy.
why would I install it and use it instead of my nice Opera browser that runs on all platforms I use at home, in my laptop or at work?
In other words… “If you want a browser from us that doesn’t totally suck you have to upgrade our OS to a version that doesn’t totally suck.”
Awesome news for those companies with major $$$ investments in vertical apps that either require privilege escalation to run properly, or don’t run properly at all, on Vista / 7, yet also require IE due to activex lock-ins…
Oh boo freaking hoo, they can install FF alongside IE.
Most those companies are just plain cheap and will only replace systems when they are completely unusable.
True. We are still using those old IBM laptops at work that were forged from raw iron and weigh about 50 lbs. You know, the ones that can double as medieval weapons.
I brought a Notebook in with me one time and it ran faster than the laptop…
I’ts sound business sense. If you have thousands of XP workstations that are already doing what they need just fine then there’s no need to upgrade. Upgrade in this case: no business advantage, all huge cost.
But yeah, they’ll just install FF or Chrome or something instead if they need a newer browser.
No, its more like misplaced focus – they seem to have plenty of money to send people to ‘Tony Robins’ like motivational speakers but they scream in horror at the idea of upgrading software. They seem to be always able to find money for a private jet, private helicopter and expensive meals/wine but scream in pain at the idea of upgrading hardware.
Most organisations failed to grasp the role of IT in business and decades later they still fail to grasp the role in which IT can play in their business – it is almost as though there they reluctantly accept having to have a computer but if given half a chance they’ll run back to using type writers and filing cabinets. It really is amazing seeing the numbers of business who never take advantage of what they have because it is ‘all too hard’.
Edited 2011-03-16 13:19 UTC
I wouldn’t say that.
The typical business computer is running a p4 which runs hotter and slower than a modern dual core. They also don’t power down as well.
A lot of those computers still have CRTs which are giant heaters.
Those energy costs add up especially in warmer areas.
Then on top of it there are productivity gains from faster equipment.
MS has been improving it since the beta was released… at that point I could not use it full-time as many sites I visited had all sorts of weird rendering and javascript issues… around December or January something was fixed and it was much more tolerable, and a month or so ago it really became solid for me. There are weird sites I hit every once in awhile where I need to jump back to Chrome or Firefox… but for about 99% of the time IE does well.
Oh, it also suffers the odd, random crash for no apparent reason.
Google release WebM plug-in for Internet Explorer 9!
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Google-release-WebM-plug-in-…
http://tools.google.com/dlpage/webmmf
“They said elephants couldn’t ride flying dolphins. They said that one of the world’s most popular browsers couldn’t play WebM video in HTML5. They were wrong.”
Caveat: “Note that this release is a technology preview.”
Still … interesting. Tit for tat by the look of it.
PS: Actually, it would appear from the “known issues” that this is not a IE9 browser plugin, but rather it is a Windows Media Foundation Component for WebM.
http://www.webmproject.org/ie/#known_issues
Also …
Edited 2011-03-16 03:01 UTC
if it wasn’t for Firefox, IE would still be stucked with the same quality as IE6.
Firefox forced Microsoft to compete again.
I use Firefox, Google Chronium. Only when a web page can not be displayed correctly, I then use IE.
I dont use IE (since ver 5) other than using it to download other broswers. Gl MS for all your effort.
Honest question (absolutely not trolling).
I tried to upgrade from IE8 to IE9 but I had a BSOD.
Did it happen to any of you?
There have been lots of complaints about the various windows updates required failing, but i haven’t heard of a BSOD before.
Thanks. I also found that pretty odd.
They need to tweak the UI a bit. Having the favourites on the right may be defensible (although I dislike it), but having the “open favourite” arrow still on the right (having it point to off-screen) is not. Also, the square tabs look ugly. Font support is finally up to par with the other browsers. And let’s not forget SVG, finally. All-in-all I’m quite satisfied with it.
It took ’em 16 years to produce something that’s close to usable, I hope that it actually won’t crash when you open a new tab, just like 8 does on my default W7 install …
are you joking?
Apparently you forget that IE 4 and IE5 were the best browsers in the market for their day.
even IE 6 was the best against its peers until Firefox came around.
Whatever your opinion is about the new IE, FF4 or the browser market in general, it cannot be denied that the market as a whole and in particular IE has come a loooong way.
I remember the days when FF had to battle IE6 for max 5% market share. It had to battle a browser that was incredibly unstable, a security nightmare and which was a royal pain in the ass to develop for. But, FF was still having a tough time because 95% of the WWW was tailored for IE.
These days, the browser market looks a lot healthier, with more evenly divided shares, which means actual competition, which in turn means a much higher rate of innovation. Microsoft could no longer play the “f–k the standards, we ARE the standard”-card, which means it had to become competitive by actually innovating. Arguably IE7 was struggling to catch up, but, at least in terms of standards IE8 had become somewhat acceptable. Hopefully (and probably) IE9 will continue this line, keeping Mozilla and Google et al. sharp.
Personally, in 2004 I never would have thought that Firefox would become the number two browser world wide by only a slim margin and market leader in Europe and that other great browsers such as Chrome/Chromium and Safari would also take a significant market share. On the other hand, maybe I should have expected it, because once you gain a certain critical mass you can no longer be ignored. But at that time the situation still looked rather gloomy.
I think that in the end everybody wins. Maybe MS wins a bit less than the others, because obviously it lost its monopoly, but at least now they are able to deliver a much richer browser experience that they wouldn’t have been able to deliver if IE6 and its successor had been able to maintain its market share at the >=95% level. I am willing to bet that IE anno 2011 would not have been half as good as it is now, if Mozilla and later Google and Apple hadn’t pushed the market forward.
Edited 2011-03-16 10:53 UTC
Don’t forget KHTML. When MS dropped IE support on the Mac, Apple quickly found KHTML to be a worthy base upon which they could build Safari. That was an instant 5% overnight out of IE’s share. Plus, that paved the way for WebKit-friendly websites such as Google Chrome.
Actually it was the other way around. MS had a 5 year agreement for IE to be the default Mac browser. When that agreement was due to expire, Apple was spinning up Safari to replace IE. MS walked away from IE after that. I don’t personally know, but I’d suspect that MS would have continued with IE for Mac if Apple continued to ship it as default browser.
I remember talking with one MS employee who told me (of the decision to scrap IE for Mac) that “Safari is good enough…” I always found that funny, since the browser wars would have gone very differently if a vendor stopped because another vendor had a product that was “good enough.”
I know it seems that way today, but my recollection was almost the exact opposite. IE was serviced by Windows Update; Mozilla Suite had no update mechanism and FireFox didn’t get one till 1.5. Mozilla also didn’t have security updates without feature updates (eg. a security bug in 1.5 was fixed in 1.6, etc.) So IE was always better patchable/more secure; Mozilla relied on its small market share. Stability has improved a lot in the non-MS browsers, but in the Mozilla Suite days IE certainly seemed more stable to me. And although IE was always quirky, it had a better renderer that supported a lot more standards/features than its peers at the time, which is one reason web developers targeted it.
Although the criticisms you mention are valid today, it’s important to judge IE6 by its peers at the time.
I cannot stop laughing!!!!
On Microsoft India site they have compared IE9 with Chrome 6 and have tried to prove that IE9 is better than Chrome 6!!!
For those who don’t know – The current Chrome version is 10! Is far far better than Chrome 6 version.
Here is a link: http://www.microsoft.com/india/windows/ie/IE9.aspx?os=Win7&browser=…
I think the front page copy just hasn’t been updated. If you actually click on the tables, it takes you to a more detailed view comparing against Chrome 9 beta and FireFox 4 beta 11. Still out of date and pretty embarrassing; you’d think they’d be less negligent given that this is an important release for them–nevermind that most of these types of charts tend to be rubbish.
Yah I know when you click it goes inside and shows deeper comparison. However at first place they should have not compared chrome version 6 against IE9… gives kind of bad impression, it gives me message that IE9 is better than chrome 6 and chrome 6 was where IE9 is today! and when i digg more I will endup finding Chrome 10 must be now way too better!
“Another major consequence of the hardware acceleration is that Internet Explorer 9 doesn’t run on Windows XP. I consider this to be a plus point – I find Windows XP intolerable and it needs to die – but those of you still clinging on to that piece of junk won’t be able to use IE9.”
That’s actually quite funny! Windows XP, AKA “that piece of junk,” is the Windows version most used world wide, the singularly most successful version of Windows ever produced. Once Vista was introduced as XP’s supposed ‘successor’ the demand for Windows XP, that piece of junk, went through the roof. People dumped the “latest and greatest” Microsoft Vista OS faster than water through a sieve ‘retrograding’ to XP. Then came W7, Microsoft’s next effort to staunch the flow back to XP, and the numbers don’t lie – it too has largely failed the task.
Windows XP, that piece of junk, continues as the most sought after and most used desktop OS Microsoft has produced. Making IE9 non-compatible with XP might have seemed Microsoft’s best option as far as nudging people to move to W7, however the problem Microsoft faces with that tactic is that there are better Web Browser options available to XP users, offerings that do everything IE9 promises and even more. So a reason to move from XP to W7 based on IE9 being intentionally designed so it doesn’t work with XP is simply non-existent.
I haven’t seen any glitches or experienced any problems with the hardware acceleration… anybody has a good site as example where this happens???
And yes it is huge leap compared do ie8, I personally use firefox, but microsoft is back on the game and I think a lot of people won’t bother to dl a new browser anymore.
I cant believe… css gradients are implemented in one or another way in almost all browsers…
What is MS waiting for implementing this little wonderful?
Hate making images for creating gradients!
MS: Please make our lives better and leave aside arrogance!
Gave it a go but found the “70% Off Burgers In Newcastle Coupon” add served-up by OSnews strangely unappealing. IE9 lasted all of two minutes before returning to a burgerless firefox
http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=270
font antialiasing can’t be disabled
no noscript
no adblock+
and i was hoping to finaly get away from failfox :/
Lack of ad-blocking is a deal breaker for me.
> I find Windows XP intolerable and it needs to die – but those of you still clinging on to that piece of junk won’t be able to use IE9.
Piece of crap? My home desktop computer use XP (which is quite old) and it works fine, my wife’s laptop has Vista and it’s slow as a snail even though her computer is much more recent than mine!
put windows 7 on the laptop and it will work fine.
BTW… Vista being slow is all in the mind. I ran Vista until Win 7 was released and performance was perfectly fine.
First off I use Linux mostly, but I also use Win7 and to be honest Windows 7 is the reason I did start using Microsoft again. Like Windows 7, IE9 is an excellent release and is honestly the best MS has put out to date. Yes it has issues and IMO the best OS is Unix, then Linux and then Microsoft. I dispise Mac even though they based OSX off of NetBSD, they perverted it IMO. But hey, that’s my “opinion” based on my own needs.
In any case, use the best tool to fit your needs, give MS a bit of credit for FINALLY getting off their collective ass’s and at least making an attempt at supporting standards. With their history though I’m curious on “if” they keep it up, but give credit where credit is due.
cheers
The company I work for recently added some new computers which have a Vista sticker on them, but removed it and installed XP. They did this around the end of January or early February. It seems most large companies are in no hurry to upgrade to W7 anytime soon. We do have IE8 installed.
Disagree, most enterprize blew off the Vista but are very much in the process of migrating to Win7. But with most all enterprize environments it doesn’t happen overnight, but the plans are in the works. Just like the transition to move over to a Win 2008 environment. What your seeing is nothing more than imaging the “current” corporate standard but reality is they are moving. XP and 2000 – 2003 with XP workstations are EOL