[Preview] Microsoft Internet Explorer 9

We were invited to the Microsoft office for a preview of Internet Explorer 9 [IE9] which is just few days away from its public beta release. Leading the demonstration was Moorthy Uppaluri (GM, Developer Partner Evangelism)who walked us through some of the most significant changes and additions in the new version. The key areas of improvement that were discussed are increased browser’s speed and conformity to HTML 5 web standards.

Speed

Two areas were a browser’s performance is really put to a test is while handling graphics and interpreting JavaScript. To improve Internet Explorer’s performance during these intensive tasks, IE9 has been coded to take advantage of multi-core CPUs and GPUs. Addressing performance issues with large or complex JavaScript, Microsoft has developed a new script engine that not only interprets the scripts, but also compiles them. To prove their point, Microsoft had the IE9 demo running alongside an FPS (frames per second) counter. During this demonstration IE9 was pitted against Chrome and Internet Explorer handled the demos quite admirably with, at times, two to three times higher frame rate than Google’s venture. We should point out that the demo was running on a barebones version of IE9 which does not have even the most basic browser functions. A fully functional browser running with extensions may have a tougher time keeping the performance up. It would especially be interesting to see how well the final version is able to manage memory during peak performance.

HTML5

Microsoft is going all out with its implementation of HTML5 with Internet Explorer 9. And the good news is that this time around Microsoft is adhering to web standards more strictly than usual, scoring 95 on the Acid Test. This is not too shabby considering the browser’s history of playing fast and loose with W3C standards.  With this it would appear that all major browsers all going to play ball and it’s finally going to be one big happy family, at least from the developers point of view. For most part, this seems to be true; however there is this one, albeit significant issue about implementation of native video support over HTML5. While Google has decided to dabble with open-source video standards; for Microsoft it is going to be business as usual. IE9 will only be able to play embedded videos if the required video codec is installed on the machine. 

Even though Moorthy Uppaluri opted not to discuss security improvements in IE9, he did at least acknowledge that security flaws are one of the major reasons for turning people away from their browser. Microsoft has decided to let the upcoming IE9 beta do all the talking about improved security. In the meanwhile, you can download and try out the IE9 Test Drive.