During last week’s MIX10 conference; Dean Hachamovitch was the leadoff speaker
for Tuesday’s keynote, representing the Internet Explorer team. He wasted no
time in letting everyone know he was there to talk about Internet Explorer 9
(IE9), HTML 5, standards and performance. It is clear Microsoft cannot and will
not completely abandon the use of some proprietary technologies in their
browser’s rendering but they are improving their ACID3 score. He also made it
clear that the IE team understands the importance of moving users off of IE6 and
onto IE8 (and eventually IE9).
Hachamovitch announced the immediate availability of the Internet Explorer
Platform Preview for IE9. It is not a full browser but the IE9 engine hosted
inside a shell with limited functionality. There is no back button. In fact,
there is no toolbar at all. The menu system contains these options:
- Open
- Save as File
- Home
- Refresh
- Print Preview
- Close
- Debug
- Developer Tools
- Force IE5 Document Mode
- Force IE7 Document Mode
- Force IE8 Document Mode
- Force IE9 Document Mode
- Reset Document Mode to page default
- Report Issue
- Report an Issue
- Run IE9 Diagnostics
- Help
- Using the Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview
- Privacy Statement
- About
Client-side web debugging tools are also included in the preview. The debugger
includes network monitoring, script, CSS and HTML debugging.
One of the first updates to the platform preview will include support for HTML 5
video. Microsoft’s demo machines were loaded with this version and showed off
the performance of their video rendering. On a $400 netbook, IE9 rendered two
videos using less CPU and with fewer frame drops than Chrome. Next they showed
off a video carousel application. It was a carousel in HTML 5 spinning four
videos with colored borders and an IE9 background on the page. On Chrome, the
CPUs were working hard. On IE9, the CPUs were around 50% utilized. Also, the IE9
version rendered the videos semi-transparent.
Scott Guthrie was on stage next to talk about Microsoft’s new and upcoming web
platform and developer tools, ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Visual Studio
improvements for web developers include:
- Full Multi-Monitor Support
- Better IntelliSense
- Reduced Keystrokes and Better Navigation
- Richer Code Visualization, Profiling and Debugging
Scott Hanselman came out to demonstrate some of the new development features
coming in Visual Studio 2010. He dragged a code editor window out of the Visual
Studio IDE and maximized onto a second monitor to illustrate the multi-monitor
support. IntelliSense now supports two new types of autocompletion. First, it
will search for results containing the text entered instead of those just
beginning with the search text. In addition, if a developer knows the first
letter of each word in the desired type/member name, they can type those letters
in CAPS to find it. Box selection is possible by holding down the ALT key.