Exclusive Preview: Internet Explorer 9

BANGALORE, INDIA: Statistics indicate that an end user spends significant amount of time on a browser while working on a PC. This comes as no surprise since we are living in an era of information explosion, dominated by the hunger to share and consume data.

This is also a very interesting period as we are witnessing the evolution of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), in the context of massive growth and desire to innovate on the Web. User Experience while on WWW using a browser is a definitive moment for a consumer to express. With this prelude, and waiting to land on the tarmac is Internet Explorer 9.0.

Before we delve into the new features of IE9, it is worthwhile to note that the Platform Preview 4 was released recently
(http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/). This is a classic demonstration of the new web platform capabilities that is inherent with IE9.

Browsing through the capability demos is a reminder of what is in store when the new avatar is released to the Web. Certain capabilities that we often desired to demonstrate on the Web are coming to life. The browser has undergone a level of reengineering to bring out differentiated & unique browsing experience in light of other competitive browsers.

The new browser is faster than its predecessors and even other browsers. Its HTML 5 compliant. Below is a quick snapshot of core IE9 features and capabilities

1. Performance: It has two facets. First being speed of rendering with its new JavaScript engine and interoperable markup experience across browsers being the second.

2. Standards Compliance: HTML 5, CSS3 and SVG1.1 are W3C's standards that are evolving for a while now. IE9 has embraced these standards.

3. Graphics: Leverages GPU capability in rendering hardware accelerated HTML5 graphics. A key boost to performance and hence enriched end user ?experience.

4. Windows 7 Experience: Localized & native browsing experience by customized sites, enabled by taskbar integration/jump lists.

Let us take a close look at each of the above to understand the power of IE9 and the new age browsing experience it can provide to users. 

Improved performance

IE9 gets a facelift with new JavaScript engine called 'Chakra'. The perception of speed is quite strong among the consumers, though we really cannot visualize or quantify speed in our naked eye.The SunSpider results which are published along with the platform preview portray a clear picture of IE9's JavaScript engine performance.

The results indicate that the performance is multiple folds faster than earlier versions of IE and other recent releases of competitive browsers. While this is a fact, the contributing factor is the intelligent compilation of code base. It is quite interesting as this is where the engine leverages the power of hardware.

When a page loads, in order to ensure that there is no lag in processing, the code is first interpreted. In the meantime, the engine compiles the code in the ?background and switches over to compiled code to provide a native processing experience. The 'Fish Tank' Speed Demo as part of Platform Preview is an evidence of the reengineered processing engine.

Another important element that is a key takeaway for developers from a performance point of view is interoperability of markup. Write once and have the site work across different browsers is seeing the light of the day. During the development of IE9, significant amount of test cases were built and the same has been submitted to W3C along with the results (over 2000).

In literal sense this means that other browsers can take the test cases and results available with W3C to check for interoperability. A definite contribution that would make life lot easier for developers who always had little fixes to ensure the markup yielded unified output across browsers. Do take a look at the IE Testing Center results published as part of Platform Preview 4.

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Standards compliance

The buzz words that are making rounds these days are HTML5 and CSS3. Most of the modern day browsers are promising conformance to Web standards. IE9 has phenomenal Acid3 results which are a measure of Web browser platforms conformance with Web standards. Do take a look at the Acid3 results published in Platform Preview 4 to check on the scores. The story continues for CSS3 and SVG 1.1 (Second Edition) as well.

From a CSS3 perspective, the support for selective page styling based on the delivery medium (mobile device, netbook or a standard computer) is worth a mention. This will go a long way in ensuring that an online property is made available for variety of consuming devices. From a standards perspective, it also marks end to the pixel based positioning (rasterized images) compared to vector graphics rendering based on shapes enabled by SVG.

Leveraging the processing power of the PC

PCs have become meatier and promise to get ever better with next generation processors in the making. One can imagine the lack of utilization of such power while an end user spends significant amount of time on a browser. In a regular PC operating environment, the CPU hands off process intensive activities like high graphics games/2D imaging to Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). IE9 unfailingly hands off tasks to GPU to power HTML, Audio/Video & SVG.

In addition to hardware acceleration, JavaScript engine also leverages the hardware power during compilation to provide superior operating experience to an end user. All of these, justify the processing power a PC holds and extends it for application usage.

Windows 7 & IE9

Windows 7 exposes user experience elements like shell integration (jump lists, pinning to taskbar) for every application to capitalize on. Likewise IE9 provides a similar operating experience to end users while they are browsing websites. For a developer, this means an opportunity to customize a website and localize it on Windows 7.

This very element, for an end user, provides a perception of operating in a local environment vs. within a browser while accessing a website. The capability of Hardware Acceleration and leveraging local processing power coupled by this combination of IE9 on Windows 7, presents an all new Web browsing platform offering power browsing experience to end users.

(Sandeep J Alur, Microsoft Corporation India)