Microsoft has confirmed the development of Internet Explorer 9. Internet Explorer is the browser that developers and designers around the globe love to hate. So, what can we expect when it is being rebuilt?

 

 

Along with so many companies that develop web-applications, we at TenForce are suffering daily with ‘the other browser’ (that’s the way engineers like to not name Internet Explorer by name). In the past, Microsoft always had its own particular way of implementing and interpreting web standards. As a consequence, development teams need to spend considerable time to make their application work across the various browsers. This post explains some of the new features rumored to be part of Internet Explorer version 9 which is probably expected in the following 1 to 2 years.

 

 

Everybody hopes to get full CSS support, but I guess it will be a “be happy with what you get” situation. IE9 will offer some css3 selectors and it seems they will start supporting rounded corners. Javascript performance will also be improved but in comparison with other browsers they still have a long way to go.

 

On the other hand Microsoft isn’t willing to let go of all of its demons. They hold rather tight to their strategy to rule out graphics support not invented by Microsoft yet part of the W3C’s HTML5 like SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)(supported in Firefox, Chrome and Opera) and Canvas (supported in Firefox, Opera, WebKit and Safari).  In their defense Microsoft draws the card of complexity - It’s too hard to make a selection of standards and non-Microsoft technologies to use and support. Steven Sinofsky (President of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division) says the plan for IE9 is simple: “Having a good balance between the things we know we have to do and moving the whole notion of browsing forward”.

 

 

The PC platform and ecosystem around Windows deliver amazing hardware innovation. The browser should be a place where the benefits of that hardware innovation shine through for web developers.

 

Microsoft is changing IE to use the DirectX family of Windows APIs to enable many advances for web developers. The starting point is moving all graphics and text rendering from the CPU to the graphics card using Direct2D and DirectWrite. Graphics hardware acceleration means that rich, graphically intensive sites can render faster while using less CPU. (This interview includes screen captures of a few examples.) Now, web developers can take advantage of the hardware ecosystem’s advances in graphics while they continue to author sites with the same interoperable standards patterns they’re used to.

 

 

In addition to better performance, this technology shift also increases font quality and readability with sub-pixel positioning:

 

 

In the image you can see the difference between using GDI (upper font) and Direct2D (lower). Both of them are 96 point Gabriola on a Lenovo X61 ThinkPad at 100% Zoom, but in the GDI font you can detect some jaggies.The Direct2D font doesn't show jaggies.

 

 

Today, there isn’t a release date set.  On the IEblog page you can read “While we’re still early in the product cycle, we wanted to be clear to developers about our approach and the progress so far. We’re applying the feedback from the IE8 product cycle, and we’re committed to delivering on another version of IE.”

 

Let’s hope they don’t stick to the 2 year cycle release time for new browser versions...