Internet Explorer 9 -First Details
With Firefox and Chrome doing very well, Internet Exxplorer is losing ground in the total browser market share.Latest surveys indicate that the open sourced Firefox browser has racked up one fourth of the total browser market share.Add to this the Chrome and the Safari 4.0 browsers and there is reason to believe that Microsoft are feeling the heat in the race for dominance in the browser market shares.As of now, IE are still on top when it comes to percentage of users(largely due to Windows being shipped in with the IE pre installed) but the gap between IE and the others are fast closing down.Also European Union recently expressed Anti Thrust concerns about Windows shipping in with a pre installed browser and hence the Windows 7 is now shipped with a ballot screen allowing users to pick the browser of their choice.The fierce competition and the set back from the EU’s anti thrust campaigns have made Microsoft worry and a reaction was expected.The reaction- the Internet Explorer 9. Microsft announced the Internet Explorer 9 at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.
The IE9 promises a performance boost and better javascript engine. The IE9 will be the first browser to use hardware accelerated rendering for graphics and text. That would mean that Webmaster wont need to modify their code to get performance gains.The Javascript engine has been one of the weak spots in IE but is receiving a major overhaul in IE9. The Acid3 test suites gives IE9 a rating of 32/100. This is impressive when you consider the fact that IE8 was able to get a rating of only 8/100. A jump of 4 times already is a good sign but the fact is that this is very low compared to its competitors. Firefox 3.6 beta already has a rating of 92/100 while the Safari scores 100/100,Opera 85/100 and Chrome scores a perfect 100/100.
Go to Acid3 website to test your browsers performance rating .
All versions of the IE fail the Acid3 test as their scores are very low.Even the already discontinued Netscape Navigator browser scores better than IE at 53/100.However IE9 is much closer to its competitors in the SunSpider test.
The use of hardware accelerated rendering would mean that the IE9 will rely heavily on the PC hardware with the processing moving to the machine’s graphics chip.Other major tweaks include support for HTML5 and rounded edges on textboxes.Though Microsoft has not given an exact date of launch, The IE9 is not expected until 2011. With Firefox coming with 3.6 soon and Safari and Chrome also doing well, i wont be suprised if the IE loses its top position on the market by 2011.
Read the official Microsoft blog on the IE9.
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