The thing that shocked me the most was reading that Direct2D which can be used in place of GDI+. IMO, Microsoft should have made available a hardware-accelerated 2D library a LONG time ago ... before this, you had to use Direct3D to attain hardware acceleration, which was always far too much of a hassle just to render some 2D graphics.
An Early Look At IE9 for Developers
61–70 of 96 posts
Re: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers
#62Maybe I'm just an optimist but I'm really glad to see that MS is even looking at the Acid3 and SunSpider tests as important metrics.
If only we weren't going to have to live with IE6 until 2020. Then we might be able to use more of the new stuff.
(Apologies for bitterness, I spent a lot of today back porting a Very Large Web App to IE6.)
Re: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers
#63Honest question: what does Microsoft stand to gain by doing all this work instead of just using WebKit?
Is it still conspiracy theory to suggest that they are the ones with the most to lose from a universally reliable JS and HTML implementation, so they should want to do enough to keep IE competitive, but not enough to make it fully compatible with everyone else?
Microsoft walks a fine line between having a browser that's broken enough so that web apps written and tested for it break on other browsers and a browser functional enough not to drive users to move to better products.
Re: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Control and influence. Backwards compatibility. And they probably still believe they can do it better.
I'm not sure that they can't. Give Microsoft a compelling business reason to build a great browser that also supports IE 8,7, and 6 rendering modes, and I bet they'll do it.
I think the different rendering modes in IE8 is a serious defect. For example, when testing locally IE8 defaults to IE7 mode instead of IE8 standards mode. You physically have to go into the developer toolbar to switch it. My friend(who's a .Net developer) ran into this exact problem last week and couldn't understand why his site was failing in IE8, looked good in IE7, and worked well in FF & Safari. I've run into this problem more than enough times.
If people need to use a particular older browser for a very narrow application, then they should keep an installation of that browser around for that specific purpose.
Its the same idea with modular programming methods. I build my js in modules. My comment system is separate from my login system. In the last couple of days I have been updating the Facebook Connect logic in my login system and I haven't had to worry about updating logic in my comment code.
Re: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, saying bad things about Microsoft is frowned upon. OOXML & bribes, anyone? SCO? Patent threats? Netscape? Holding back the web for 10 years? Countless other acts of evil bullshit? I guess this is the same kind of denial that makes HN throw a hissy-fit at trying to bring up the very real problem that is Islam (in Europe). See no evil, hear no evil.. What a wonderful community of very intelligent people we have he…
Saying "lololol M$ i hope they die" is frowned upon. Post something with content, support your whining, talk about it. Microsoft have opened their internal development to the world over the past few years - this blog entry is an example - from all kinds of development teams, we have enormous amounts of insight into many of Microsoft's major products and access to give feedback to people who care. Don't just focus on…
Post something with content, support your whining, talk about it.
Content? I did mention a few examples, didn't I? Well then, would you care to tell me why they're all invalid? I've done this kind of thing before, and every time someone disparages MS here, he's treading on thin ice. There will always be MS-apologists around.
Microsoft have opened their internal development to the world over the past few years
They sure have made a show of being more "open" to please/distract programmers, that's all.
You can't just drop "Islam is a very real problem" into the middle of a rant about a software company and expect people to think you're not a nutter.
I realize this is something that people don't want to hear, and can't process without adjusting their conceptions of things, but that doesn't make it any less true.
Want some content? Here's a video of angry muslims in London: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoMeUcC_M20. One of the signs they're proudly displaying says "Europe, you will pay. Your annihilation is on its way!!!".
Does that sound a tad threatening to you? That protest is probably related to events in 2004, when they actually killed a Dutch film director, Theo Van Gogh, for releasing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tvH_uowO-0 .. Yes, they killed a man for making a short movie.
The average muslim you meet will most likely tell you that Islam is a "religion of peace", but what they don't mention is that if you say otherwise, they'll kill you. If it's such a mellow religion, why is there a protest full of its followers waving signs saying that they'll destroy Europe then?
Western people believe the line about a religion of peace because they want to, because we should all just get along and coexist in peace and harmony. That's just the humane way of life that we as Westerners are wired to like and want, but that's not what muslims have in mind.
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Update:
Quick! Someone call PG and get him to delete this thread so no one else will see what I'm saying here!
Re: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're trying to support more standards -- by definition, they're just reinventing the work others have already done. So it's grunt work, only useful for their future influence and power. They could ship IE9 with WebKit in addition to custom rendering modes for IE<=8, and consumers wouldn't even need to know. It'd save MS a lot of work, that's for sure.
I say let them worry about the cost/benefit ratio. If they can afford it, another engine with completely separate codebase is a good thing for the market. Just think how hard it would push webkit/mozilla/chrome if they did manage to beat them on speed. It would push them to get even better. Compeition is always good as long as 2 or more projects stay alive.
...another engine with completely separate codebase is a good thing for the market.
You've just made an enemy out of every web-dev on HN :)
Re: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, saying bad things about Microsoft is frowned upon. OOXML & bribes, anyone? SCO? Patent threats? Netscape? Holding back the web for 10 years? Countless other acts of evil bullshit? I guess this is the same kind of denial that makes HN throw a hissy-fit at trying to bring up the very real problem that is Islam (in Europe). See no evil, hear no evil.. What a wonderful community of very intelligent people we have he…
Aww.. You're so predictable! Do I get more denial-groupthink downvotes with this one?
I believe the more cliché 'group think' reaction would have been to up-vote your Microsoft bashing.
Re: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aww.. You're so predictable! Do I get more denial-groupthink downvotes with this one?
I believe the more cliché 'group think' reaction would have been to up-vote your Microsoft bashing.
I believe I mentioned denial. Take a look at that video of angry muslims, by the way :)
I wonder if this will get me banned. I'm not trying to get banned, but it might happen. It'll be interesting to find out.
Re: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I love how they say IE is no longer an "outlier." They need to use trickery in the graph so that it's hard to tell that it's still 3x slower than Chrome or Safari.
I'm looking for the trickery, and I haven't spotted it yet. Can you elaborate?
I think he's speaking of y-axis' scale. Using such a large scale and including older versions of IE makes IE 9 look downright fast.
If you plotted just the rightmost cluster (IE 9, FF 3.6, WebKit nightly) on its own graph with a scale that went from 0 to, say, 1500 instead of 16000, it would be very clear that IE 9 is still slow compared to it's peers -- nearly 3x slower than WebKit as noted by the earlier comment.
It's quite an improvement, but here's hoping they keep optimizing.
Re: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the more cliché 'group think' reaction would have been to up-vote your Microsoft bashing.
I believe I mentioned denial. Take a look at that video of angry muslims, by the way :) I wonder if this will get me banned. I'm not trying to get banned, but it might happen. It'll be interesting to find out.
Just say "hitler" already so we can know the conversation is over and prune this ridiculous tangent of a thread from the top of the page...