Internet Explorer 9: Oh, Holy Shit Edition

[RoyGBiv]

From the Not Just "No" but "Hell, No!" Department:

At the PDC today, in addition to demonstrating some of the progress on performance and interoperable standards, we showed how IE and Windows will make the power of PC hardware available to web developers in the browser. Specifically, we demonstrated hardware-accelerated rendering of all graphics and text in web pages, something that other browsers don’t do today. Web site developers will see performance gains and other benefits without having to re-write their sites.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-at-ie9-for-developers.aspx

I just ... ARRGGGHHH!!!!

Our code is a mess. Our whole concept on the backend of things is wrong. Our engines suck. We don't follow standards. And we can't think of a way to do it better but steadfastly refuse to use OpenSource solutions because, well, then we couldn't screw people quite so efficiently, that being the only thing we're really efficient at.

Hey, I know, we'll start pulling juice from the graphics card in an attempt to mask the fact our product is a stinking pile of noxious garbage.

[hobbit709]

1. Just another version of ExploDer I won't use.

I have six computers running here. One with Windows XP, one with XP X64, and one with 7. The other three are running Ubuntu, Mint and Mandriva. The XP machines only have the original version of Exploder that came with the install-since I won't use it, there was no reason to upgrade the version. The Windows 7 has whatever came with it, I think it's 8 but since I don't use it I don't care.

If there's any way to bog something down and screw it up, M$ will find a way to do it.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

2. Maby Micro$oft is gonna do something like Google's Chrome OS

Would be a interesting concept. Boot up into Internet Explorer... back to Win98? Not like Chrome+Linux.













ARRRRRGG!!!! Can't post using Firefox... again. Time to delete my D.U. cookies today. Maby I'll just start the day and just delete them first thing....
:/ rant off

Time to Un-install Firefox and delete .mozilla\firefox folder and re-install. Hope this works.

[charlie]

3. Huh

They're going to do text with hardware acceleration? Text? Seems like overkill. Google's put a hardware-pumped 3D engine into Chrome (with Firefox soon to follow), which to my stodgy, cynical self sounds worryingly like another step toward the TV-fication of the web, but handing off the whole rendering subsystem to the graphics card just smells like one-upmanship and laziness. I guess the beefiness of current GPUs are just too irresistable.

It'll definitely make their browser slicker than gorilla snot. You might need a second card to bring Photoshop/GIMP/CAD and the like back up to speed, though.

[RoyGBiv]

4. I'm voting laziness ...

I was ambivalent about this article as I was reading it. I mean, day late and a dollar ahead again for Microsoft, taking another company's innovation and making it their own.

Then I got to the point where they mentioned developers seeing better performance in their websites without changing their code.

Viewed from the angle of that developer, that might be good news since said developer has had to spend many long, frustrating hours trying to streamline code to make it work efficiently with IE's stubborn refusal to follow any standard. But, it also exposes clearly their underlying philosophy: we don't necessarily make the software better; we just wait until the hardware can deal with our bloat.

[charlie]

5. Yeah, laziness

I agree. It's an end run. With Google, Moz, and Apple in a slugfest over improvements to their rendering and scripting speeds (with supremacy measured in the merest of milliseconds), MS hasn't often managed to be more than a distant also-ran.

So, MS will get to crow for a bit, king of the hill. It'll last exactly as long as it takes for the other browsers to follow suit.

And their blarg about "other benefits" to web developers, hah. The browser's compliance is still as wonky as ever, it'll just be inherently faster... when you can get it to work.