Notice: This is a discussion thread for comments about the SitePoint article, What’s New in IE9.
Have you had a chance to play with IE9 yet? Which features are most interesting or exciting?
I’ve seen the following in the Release Notes regarding VBScript:
“HTCs / VBScript
HTML Components (HTC) and VBScript code when used inside of an IE9 standards mode page are no longer executed in compatibility view. Consequently, DOM APIs used by the HTC or VBScript code now behave according to the IE9 standards mode version of the same APIs.”
Does it mean that VBScript won’t be executed anymore?
The links in this post don’t work, they all link to a file named pixel.gif.
I’m not sure if it’s just me, but many links within this article are broken. Many of the links are making calls to a pixel.gif.
> same here 
yup me too. Seems that the redirects are all narfed.
PM’d Louis so he knows
This article is a regurgitation of Microsoft’s mis-leading advertising. We already know IE9 will be behnd the curve when it comes out some time next year and the performance and support outlined here is far less than described here.
The link to the MSDN in the article doesn’t link to a site. It links to a 1 pixel image.
Nice Article… however all the off-site links are broken and redirect to http://spe.atdmt.com/images/pixel.gif
Can Microsoft do anything right in your eyes? At least MS will sport HTML5 and CSS3 selectors. Give credit where credit is due, at least Microsoft is catching up with the competitors.
I’m not as interested in those features in the article.
I think the IE team has done very well in a short space of time to get as many HTML5/CSS3 features in as they have.
It is still trailing the other browsers but features like SVG and canvas in every major browser is a game changer.
So, the IE javascript benchmark has now moved from several laps behind the pack to on par with everyone else. I wonder if MS is catching up in all the other IE problem areas? It’s great to think that one day IE might be like all the other browsers instead of the dud in the pack.
Catching up? These are features all the other browsers had months to years ago and IE9 won’t be out till some time next year! The other browsers won’t be sitting still. IE9 will be another hasbeen, washed up, backwards, inept nothing by then.
Ok folks, links are fixed now. Thanks for reporting that.
Our next article about IE9 will focus on some key HTML5 and CSS3 developments.
Personally, I think Site Pinning will come to be seen to be more of a game-changer than some might currently think, providing icon-based browser functionality from the Win taskbar.
The problem with site pinning is that it’s such an OS-specific feature. It’s hard to imagine replicating it successfully in a cross-platform browser, so what’s the alternative?
Each OS’s primary browser can replicate that functionality separately, so Firefox on Ubuntu and Safari on Mac will provide a similar experience, but I don’t think anyone would be terribly happy with that solution.
If something like this was rolled into the HTML spec, so that each browser and OS could implement a version of these site links in a way that made sense to the overall experience, that might be interesting.
But for the moment, it’s a feature that only makes sense in the Microsoft Microcosm …
Agree that Site Pinning is OS-specific. I imagine MS sees this as a “point of difference” encouraging people to take up Win 7 in particular.
And yes, it could go either way: each OS develops its own functionality to suit its primary browser, or everyone conforms to an agreed spec.
What I can say is that I’m finding pinning addictive. Having only played with it for a short while on one PC, I find myself missing it when I don’t have it. Whether it becomes cross-OS standardised or not, I hope it becomes a universal browser function.
I take it your not a M$, I’m sorry MS, fan? At least the company is also not standing still and is moving in the right direction. All of you anti-Microsoft fan-boys complain when MS does something wrong, but never credit it when they do something better for the industry.
i am still using IE7, but i do not like it. I prefer Firefox. Is IE9 better?
Fanboys are annoying regardless of who they support.
IE 9’s hardware acceleration sent the other OS manufacturers scrambling to incorporate it. While Microsoft was the last to the canvas game, IE 9 handles it better than any other browser at the moment. Site pinning is a small thing, but its a lot of fun - I have five major internal sites pinned at work.
I expect that by the time IE 9 releases Microsoft will be at least on parity with the other browsers. They are in the game, which is good.
Pushing recklessly ahead after all can cause as many problems as it solves. Firefox and Webkit differ on border radius and it’s annoying. Why? Because when they encoded that control the spec wasn’t finalized.
If you go back and look at most of the broken stuff in IE 6 you’ll find that the spec for it was incomplete or missing at the time the feature was introduced.
The problem with IE, IE 6 in particular, was that Microsoft sat on their hands and didn’t put out a new version for 5 years, an eternity in this business. By doing this they gave the browser a huge amount of inertia and when they chose not to carry it forward into Vista they suddenly had an enormous problem - businesses weren’t buying their OS because the browser - an antiquated browser at that - had been allowed to eclipse the OS in importance.
Microsoft hurt the web by establishing a 90% market share and then sitting still, but they have been punished enormously in lost sales for that mistake which they are unlikely to ever make again.
With IE 9 Microsoft is finally getting serious about being a player again. I mean, IE 7 felt like little more than lipstick on the pig of IE 6 with as little as it did to fix problems. IE 8 was basically getting caught up, but it was still dominated by stupid gimmicks no one will ever use (Web slices? Seriously MS?? ) instead of by its features (getting to full CSS 2.1 compliance is no small task).
IE 9 seems to be a clear turn of the corner and back on the right track. This is a good thing for the web, as windows desktops are going to be around for awhile yet. I think even Microsoft understands that if they can’t get a browser to work well on their own turf - windows - how will they ever build a good browser and convince people to use it in markets they may have already lost like tablets and phones, or markets yet to be conceived.
In any event for the web to move forward, all it’s major players need to be moving. Microsoft is moving - took them long enough - but they are moving. To say they aren’t is pure fanboy stupidity.