Microsoft spilled some details on the upcoming Internet Explorer version 9 at the PDC 2009 (Professional Developers Conference 2009). Microsoft started working on IE 9 from past three weeks, so there is nothing much you can expect at this point of time but the goal is now to improve the rendering engine performance and to speed up the browsing experience for the users. IE9 is not available immediately for people to download and test but at least Microsoft is working on to improve the IE as a standards compliant browser.
According to the IE Blog, the Javascript rendering is faster than the its predecessor Internet Explorer 8, IE8 rendering engine performance is poor compared to the other browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Safari. But the early build of IE9 is faster than IE8 and close to other browsers performance tested with Webkit SunSpider test.
As we know already IE8 doesn’t pass the Acid 3 test, it scores 24/100, the new IE9 build managed to score 32/100 which is not good but it shows an improvement. Since this is a very early build things may improve in the future.
The most interesting feature they are working on in IE9 is the graphics acceleration, IE9 can use the graphics card for the rendering graphics and text using DirectX technology installed on windows systems.
Bringing the power of PC hardware and Windows to web developers in the browser. The PC platform and ecosystem around Windows deliver amazing hardware innovation. The browser should be a place where the benefits of that hardware innovation shine through for web developers.
We’re changing IE to use the DirectX family of Windows APIs to enable many advances for web developers. The starting point is moving all graphics and text rendering from the CPU to the graphics card using Direct2D and DirectWrite. Graphics hardware acceleration means that rich, graphically intensive sites can render faster while using less CPU.
The support for some HTML5 elements in IE9 is still in the discussion stages, HTML5 is still in draft stage. Nevertheless it will support HTML5 elements and CSS3 selectors.
Channel 9 has posted some videos related to IE9, i have embedded them below. These videos are silverlight based, you need silverlight installed to view them.
IE9’s text rendering is simply miagrane inducing awful.
Such a waste to upgrade the browser and not understand people need to read the page without getting sick.