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Why Designers and Developers Should Care About Internet Explorer 9
Today, Microsoft is releasing the first public beta of of its next-generation web browser, Internet Explorer 9.With the release of IE 9, Microsoft is aiming at a total reboot of its venerable (and often derided) web browser. We’re talking renewed emphasis on performance and an investment in web standards.
Still, for many web developers and designers, IE is viewed as a necessary evil. You support it and test around it because of its large userbase (a userbase that has been in steady decline over the last six years), but it isn’t taken very seriously.
With IE 9, Microsoft is hoping to change that. Here are some of the big reasons that designers and developers should care about the latest version of Internet Explorer.
Today, Microsoft is releasing the first public beta of of its next-generation web browser, Internet Explorer 9.With the release of IE 9, Microsoft is aiming at a total reboot of its venerable (and often derided) web browser. We’re talking renewed emphasis on performance and an investment in web standards.
Still, for many web developers and designers, IE is viewed as a necessary evil. You support it and test around it because of its large userbase (a userbase that has been in steady decline over the last six years), but it isn’t taken very seriously.
With IE 9, Microsoft is hoping to change that. Here are some of the big reasons that designers and developers should care about the latest version of Internet Explorer.
1. Standards, Standards, Standards
In the early days of the web, Microsoft was actually a pretty involved party when it came down to drafting and implementing web standards. Microsoft is a member of the W3C, but over the last decade or so, standards and IE have rarely worked well together.
This is frustrating because it means that designers and developers have to designate little work-arounds to make a web page work with IE. With Internet Explorer 9, it looks like fewer and fewer work-arounds will be necessary.
IE 9 boasts support for lots of the features that are in the HTML5 spec, including:
2. Performance Gains
The new IE 9 is faster and more efficient. In the modern browser wars, JavaScript is becoming the new battleground for speed supremacy. Right now, Google is really taking charge with its V8 JavaScript engine, but Microsoft isn’t backing down with its new engine, dubbed Chakra.
Chakra is similar to V8 in that it can run JavaScript directly from the processor, rather than through some sort of layer. That means that animations and scripts can run faster and with less overhead.
Chakra has also been optimized for modern hardware, so if you’re running IE 9 on a multi-core Windows 7 machine, you can really see a big difference in performance, especially when several highly intensive web apps are open at one time.
As we’ve discussed before, Microsoft is also taking charge on making sure IE 9 has support for GPU acceleration. By using the graphics card rather than the CPU to offload things like animations, you can get higher frame rates, more detail and use less processor resources.
Microsoft showed off some of this GPU acceleration support back in June and the results were impressive.
3. More Modern, Easier to Use
Designers and developers often build and test around what browsers and versions their users use. Firefox and increasingly Google Chrome are starting to become the de facto browsers that even less tech savvy users reach for.
Chrome in particular is really gaining popularity because it has a clean interface, focuses on speed and knows how to get out of your way.
Microsoft has taken a lot of cues from Chrome’s playbook, and the UI in IE 9 makes the browser decidedly less prominent. The focus is instead on the website.
Because of these enhancements, as well as the better performance and better support for modern standards, we expect that more and more Windows users will give IE 9 a chance and consider using it as their default browser.
That means that even Mac designers and developers (like myself) need to be prepared to open up a virtual machine and run their sites through IE 9.
Your Thoughts
IE 9 is a huge step for Microsoft and we think that the current beta shows a lot of potential. For the first time in a while, Microsoft might actually help push innovation forward instead of holding it back in the browsing space.
Designers and developers, let us know your thoughts on IE 9 in the comments. Do you think this is a chance for IE to become relevant to the developer community again?
In the early days of the web, Microsoft was actually a pretty involved party when it came down to drafting and implementing web standards. Microsoft is a member of the W3C, but over the last decade or so, standards and IE have rarely worked well together.
This is frustrating because it means that designers and developers have to designate little work-arounds to make a web page work with IE. With Internet Explorer 9, it looks like fewer and fewer work-arounds will be necessary.
IE 9 boasts support for lots of the features that are in the HTML5 spec, including:
- HTML5 audio and video elements
- The new WOFF web font format
- SVG
- HTML5’s Canvas bitmap
- ECMAScript 5
2. Performance Gains
The new IE 9 is faster and more efficient. In the modern browser wars, JavaScript is becoming the new battleground for speed supremacy. Right now, Google is really taking charge with its V8 JavaScript engine, but Microsoft isn’t backing down with its new engine, dubbed Chakra.
Chakra is similar to V8 in that it can run JavaScript directly from the processor, rather than through some sort of layer. That means that animations and scripts can run faster and with less overhead.
Chakra has also been optimized for modern hardware, so if you’re running IE 9 on a multi-core Windows 7 machine, you can really see a big difference in performance, especially when several highly intensive web apps are open at one time.
As we’ve discussed before, Microsoft is also taking charge on making sure IE 9 has support for GPU acceleration. By using the graphics card rather than the CPU to offload things like animations, you can get higher frame rates, more detail and use less processor resources.
Microsoft showed off some of this GPU acceleration support back in June and the results were impressive.
3. More Modern, Easier to Use
Designers and developers often build and test around what browsers and versions their users use. Firefox and increasingly Google Chrome are starting to become the de facto browsers that even less tech savvy users reach for.
Chrome in particular is really gaining popularity because it has a clean interface, focuses on speed and knows how to get out of your way.
Microsoft has taken a lot of cues from Chrome’s playbook, and the UI in IE 9 makes the browser decidedly less prominent. The focus is instead on the website.
Because of these enhancements, as well as the better performance and better support for modern standards, we expect that more and more Windows users will give IE 9 a chance and consider using it as their default browser.
That means that even Mac designers and developers (like myself) need to be prepared to open up a virtual machine and run their sites through IE 9.
Your Thoughts
IE 9 is a huge step for Microsoft and we think that the current beta shows a lot of potential. For the first time in a while, Microsoft might actually help push innovation forward instead of holding it back in the browsing space.
Designers and developers, let us know your thoughts on IE 9 in the comments. Do you think this is a chance for IE to become relevant to the developer community again?
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