Internet Explorer 10 Development News
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As most web developers are aware there has been a recent trend of major browsers, such as Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox, to release a new version of their browsers very frequently. For web developers this is usually a major headache because with every release there’s a chance that their code won’t be interpreted the same as it was in the previous version. With that being said, developers and geeks around the globe should prepare for Internet Explorer 10, which is already three weeks into development following IE9’s release last month.
So what’s new for IE10, and why is a new version of IE necessary after IE9’s release?
The answer: Not much for users, at this point the new version 10 preview, as with the Platform Previews for version 9, includes none of the browser’s “chrome,” or interface features, just an underlying Web rendering engine. That means no bookmarks, history, or even a Back button. And very few websites currently take advantage of the new HTML5 capabilities supported in IE10 Platform Preview: CSS3 Multi-column Layout, CSS3 Grid Layout and CSS3 Flexible Box Layout, CSS3 Gradients, and ES5 Strict Mode.
Some of you geeks may be curios about the speeds of IE10. On Microsoft’s new Fishbowl benchmark, you can now choose a lot more settings than you could in previous FishIE test. You can now add a video background and effects like shine and shadow on the bowl as well as HTML5 audio of the filter sound. And you can now test up to 2,000 fish. With everything turned on and 50 fish loaded, IE10 PP1 clocked in at 40 frames per second, versus 12fps for Chrome 10. Surprisingly, Firefox 4, which also uses hardware acceleration, came out a tad faster than IE10 PP1, at 42fps. IE9 took much longer to load the test, and then swung up and down between 38 and 56fps.
Possibly the best demonstration of hardware acceleration is the new Paintball demo, which splats colorful paint blobs across text on the screen. On this test, IE10 displayed the paint shots in rapid fire, taking 30.36 seconds to deliver 171.97 paintballs per minute. On the same test and PC, Chrome 10 was noticeably slower to shoot, took 67.94 seconds to shoot 76.83 paintballs, and didn’t display some pages correctly. Firefox 4 did display the pages correctly, but not the test itself or the result numbers.
With the launch of IE10 Platform Preview 1 came five new HTML5 proof of concept demos: Strict Mode, Tweet Columns, Griddle, CSS3 Flexbox Flexin’, and the Grid System. The first is really just a developer tool for testing whether code complies with the ECMAScript 5 standard exactly. ECMAScript is a fancy name for JavaScript. The test actually doesn’t prove anything about IE10′s standards support, but just lets publishers see whether their code complies.
The Tweet Columns demo is a lot more interesting for the end user. It shows support for CSS3 multicolumn support using a grid of Twitter feeds. You can set the number of columns, their widths, and heights, using radio buttons. IE9 failed to display more than one column, but IE10, Firefox 4, and Chrome 10, could, though I managed to trip up the last when choosing a different column height with five columns—only three showed up. The demo also can show an auto-tweet feed, all the browsers could accomplish.
Probably the most real-world test, and the most revealing of differences in standard support is Griddle, created by the makers of the Dribbble site, an asset sharing site for designers. The demo uses CSS3 Grid Layout and CSS3 Flexible Box Layout. Both Firefox and Chrome failed to load this test site, showing that no one has 100 percent HTML5 compatibility yet.
With the release of IE9 less than a month behind us, this onward push to IE10 most of us geeks by surprise. It’s nowhere near the watershed that last year’s unveiling of IE9 was. That release brought a vastly out-of date browser within range of completion, with improved JavaScript speed and HTML5 support. IE10 Platform Preview doesn’t bring huge performance boosts over IE9, and whether it will change the interface significantly is anyone’s guess at this point, though I’d say that’s not likely. It’s nevertheless encouraging to see that Microsoft isn’t letting up on making the browser better. In any case, the company needs to keep on top of developing its browser, given the surge of Chrome adoption and the continuing progress of Firefox.





