They actually came out and said "building a new browser for the ten-year old version of Windows that came with IE6 didn’t make sense to us because of the limitations of its graphics and security architectures." Considering IE 9 dropped support for XP, I don't think they consider it "news" that IE 10 won't support XP.
The only native experience of the Web and HTML5 today is on Windows 7 with IE9.
I'm leery of the word "native" in this context. It strikes me as a marketing phrase with little or no actual meaning. They're trying to sell me on the idea that my HTML5 experience will somehow be better because it uses code provided by Windows itself rather than by some intermediary library. But what is that windows code, if not a library of code?
I think it is a brilliant marketing term. yes they hijack the term "native" but if in fact they can deliver, it will be a clear differentiator in users' mind, like this:
IE10 = native = fast
Chrome = not native = slow
Simple message, and it works IMHO.
I'm watching MIX'11 live and so far the demos are great (like the fishbowl benchmark, completely blowing Chrome's fish out of the water ;D) but they are still just demos.
I suspect their messaging is driven by internal politics as much as it is by external marketing imperatives. "We are a vital, integral part of Windows and should therefore be heavily funded".
I think "native" means they can leave supporting new features everyone else has had for years until a new version of the OS comes out, rather than being bound by this silly "upgradeable" thing.
In discussing why IE9+ will not be available for XP, they write:
Others have dropped support on Windows XP for functionality that we think is fundamental to performance.
This is completely disingenuous. What they are actually referring to (and link to) is Google disabling GPU acceleration and WebGL on XP starting in Chrome 10.0.648.114 due to stability issues. Importantly, Google intends Chrome 11 to re-enable these features on XP for known-good drivers. Here is the relevant ticket:
The thing is, I actually agree with Microsoft's decision to not support XP. XP, like IE6, is a fundamentally flawed platform and the sooner people move off of it, the better. I just wish they'd make the argument honestly.
1. All this talk about 'Native' is basically propaganda. There is no such thing. All modern browsers generate native code when running JavaScript, and most use GPU acceleration to render content (for example, Firefox uses Direct2D, exactly the same as IE9). IE9 and 10 are not more 'native' than other browsers.
2. I am impressed by the work on implementing new standards - kudos to Microsoft. But I did not see anything about WebGL, which is a very important standard that is already implemented in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and (soon, or already) Opera.
WebGL won't happen until it makes its way into the HTML spec. Historically MS hasn't been supportive of Khronos standards. And I don't really know of any customers important to MS that are demanding WebGL.
IE9 renders nice and quickly but in contrast to their claims of speed, I've found their DOM manipulation to significantly underperform in contrast to the other browsers. Firefox 4 and Chrome 10+ are able to create and insert large numbers of new elements at the same time significantly faster than IE9, while IE9 stutters and lags under the same conditions.
It's good that they will keep working on IE, but since they will only release these "previews" for a year, that means new features will always be way earlier in Chrome and Firefox (soon) with their fast release cycles. IE10 will launch with features that Chrome and Firefox will have 10 months before.
I really hope that Microsoft starts to shorten their release cycles. Releasing once every few years made sense in the 1980s and 1990s. Not so much today.
I think they also want any impromptu benchmarks people run to be as fair as possible. To the best of my knowledge, the latest FF and Safari both have all their supported hardware acceleration turned on by default.
I've met some members of the IE tech team (who don't control the marketing). The people I know really want to win without cheating and support as much as possible, but are very wary of releasing anything too early. They're very careful to wait until the standards are pretty precise and stable before releasing an implementation, lest they be accused of trying to "sabotage" something with an unintentionally different (but still within the vague spec) implementation.
It's good that Microsoft is viewing integration into it's OS stack as a way to squeeze out performance but if that also doesn't translate into an accelerated ship schedule then who cares.
FTA: "... CSS3 Multi-column Layout (link), CSS3 Grid Layout (link) and CSS3 Flexible Box Layout (link), CSS3 Gradients (link), and ES5 Strict Mode in action. We also demonstrated additional standards support (like CSS3 Transitions (link) and CSS3 3D Transforms (link)) that will be available in subsequent platform previews of IE10, which we will update every 8-12 weeks."
Oh, hell yes! CSS gradients and animations/transforms? Christmas came early this year. This version can't come soon enough.
You will be able to use them without those prefixes as soon as the W3C agrees on the final implementation of a standard and as soon as the respective browser implements said standard perfectly.
Browser prefixes are actually a great idea that save us from the madness of the old days (like browser hacks) and there is nothing bad about them.
Isn't the reason for the vendor tags that the features aren't part of the official spec? I'd guess the answer would be once they become official or you start generating your CSS. Doesn't even have to be that fancy, just something to run over a css file and duplicate a declaration a few times in all the different formats.
Probably something you should look into, I don't expect there to come a point where vendors stop adding new proprietary properties, at least not this decade.
Going by the rest of the article, I'm assuming by native HTML5 they mean hardware accelerated compositing? Good for them if so, but 'native' is definitely the wrong word to use, and the development channel of Chrome has supported hardware accelerated compositing for quite some time.
It still creates buzz. The biggest problem is getting people to upgrade. IE6/IE7 can't die soon enough. People on XP who are stuck on IE8 might start feeling abandoned and switch to Chrome or Firefox.
FlexBox, transitions, gradients, and 3D transforms... glad to see progress continuing to be made -- and they were demoing it on an ARM processor. Cool.
I've seen people mention that the demo runs on ARM, but I can't see how that works.
As there is no build of Chrome for Windows ARM as far as I know. And the things isn't available from Mozilla either, which I assume would be the Firefox-button in the tray at the bottom.
It's not in the platform preview 1.
Neither are css transitions or 3d transforms, but their messaging indicates they are coming in a subsequent PP release.
I'm not a regular Windows user, but it seems like many even more tech savvy users continually fall for this same cycle of BS from MS. The users frustrated with IE 7 were excited about how much better IE 8 would be. It turned out, IE 8 had many of the same rendering weirdness that IE 7 had. Then came IE 9 to save the day. Only it doesn't do nearly as well supporting HTML 5 features as Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
So now here comes IE 10, and what's the pitch? It's gonna be damn fast. Who gives shit? Chrome and Safari are blazing fast AND you don't have to through all kinds of hacks, and html5.js at them as they work perfectly as is, with nearly ALL of the HTML 5 specifications.
"Our legal terms have changed since your last visit. By agreeing to the legal terms and requirements, you can continue making contributions to MSDN. Your profile is linked to from all contributions that you make, so others can learn more about you. It also shows your recent social activity and your medals/points."
I have to agree to this to read an article? No thanks.
[+] [-] mcastner|15 years ago|reply
Just an example: they claim that Chrome "dropped support on Windows XP for functionality that [IE Team] think is fundamental to performance." Linking to this blog post: http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2011/02/dev-channel...
The reality is that Chrome disabled it temporarily on the dev channel due to crashing, and in fact brought it back for v11: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=72975
Microsoft doesn't even acknowledge the fact that they don't even have a version of IE10, or even 9, for Windows XP!
Is this really what the browser wars are going to come to? Lies and marketing? I thought we were over that.
[+] [-] ryannielsen|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nightshowerer|15 years ago|reply
Whaa?? I'd cut them slack on not supporting XP.
[+] [-] pohl|15 years ago|reply
I'm leery of the word "native" in this context. It strikes me as a marketing phrase with little or no actual meaning. They're trying to sell me on the idea that my HTML5 experience will somehow be better because it uses code provided by Windows itself rather than by some intermediary library. But what is that windows code, if not a library of code?
[+] [-] HardyLeung|15 years ago|reply
IE10 = native = fast
Chrome = not native = slow
Simple message, and it works IMHO.
I'm watching MIX'11 live and so far the demos are great (like the fishbowl benchmark, completely blowing Chrome's fish out of the water ;D) but they are still just demos.
[+] [-] contextfree|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kudos|15 years ago|reply
Did IE9 not have "native" HTML5, or is it just that marketing only came up with the idea now?
[+] [-] natesm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Groxx|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Me1000|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] spoondan|15 years ago|reply
Others have dropped support on Windows XP for functionality that we think is fundamental to performance.
This is completely disingenuous. What they are actually referring to (and link to) is Google disabling GPU acceleration and WebGL on XP starting in Chrome 10.0.648.114 due to stability issues. Importantly, Google intends Chrome 11 to re-enable these features on XP for known-good drivers. Here is the relevant ticket:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=72975
The thing is, I actually agree with Microsoft's decision to not support XP. XP, like IE6, is a fundamentally flawed platform and the sooner people move off of it, the better. I just wish they'd make the argument honestly.
[+] [-] Lennie|15 years ago|reply
They have this nice campaign running about how people should upgrade from IE6 to the lastest version:
http://ie6countdown.com/
What does this mean ? IE8, because there is no IE6 on Vista or 7, so they are talking about Windows XP. And their is no IE9 for Windows XP.
Windows XP extended support is till 2014. Last year (2010) Windows XP was still being sold.
The market share of Windows XP has over 50% worldwide, Microsoft should not ignore those users and just release a IE9 for Windows XP already.
But who am I kidding, IE9 was a rush job, it doesn't even have a proper JIT javascript engine when you run IE9 64-bit.
On Windows 2000 IE6 is actually the lastest version, but I won't comment on that further. ;-)
[+] [-] azakai|15 years ago|reply
2. I am impressed by the work on implementing new standards - kudos to Microsoft. But I did not see anything about WebGL, which is a very important standard that is already implemented in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and (soon, or already) Opera.
[+] [-] mbrubeck|15 years ago|reply
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=nativehtml5
http://arewenativeyet.com/
[+] [-] kenjackson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devtesla|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arnorhs|15 years ago|reply
Also, I didn't see a Javascript benchmark in there.
[+] [-] melling|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arnorhs|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axefrog|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextparadigms|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MartinCron|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prashantv|15 years ago|reply
"Cool, you're using a Chrome 12 nightly build! Don't forget to enable your partial hardware acceleration in the about:flags thingy..."
Seems like they're actually worried about Chrome, since Firefox and Safari don't have any similar messages.
[+] [-] kogir|15 years ago|reply
I've met some members of the IE tech team (who don't control the marketing). The people I know really want to win without cheating and support as much as possible, but are very wary of releasing anything too early. They're very careful to wait until the standards are pretty precise and stable before releasing an implementation, lest they be accused of trying to "sabotage" something with an unintentionally different (but still within the vague spec) implementation.
[+] [-] sid0|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blocke|15 years ago|reply
One year is an eternity.
[+] [-] WiseWeasel|15 years ago|reply
Oh, hell yes! CSS gradients and animations/transforms? Christmas came early this year. This version can't come soon enough.
[+] [-] asadotzler|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kogir|15 years ago|reply
I won't count any of them as supporting stuff until it works without vendor extensions, and I can finally stop saying things in quadruplicate.
[+] [-] ugh|15 years ago|reply
Browser prefixes are actually a great idea that save us from the madness of the old days (like browser hacks) and there is nothing bad about them.
[+] [-] bxr|15 years ago|reply
Probably something you should look into, I don't expect there to come a point where vendors stop adding new proprietary properties, at least not this decade.
[+] [-] woogley|15 years ago|reply
Oh well, I just hope the History API makes it soon so we can stop abusing #anchors in a few years ..
[+] [-] iwjames|15 years ago|reply
https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/desig...
Can even try it out in the current stable channel if you enable it: about:flags
IE10 and WebGL is the big question for me, which will be interesting to see pan out given their obviously conflicting position with OpenGL.
[+] [-] doublec|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhygar|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melling|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenjackson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lennie|15 years ago|reply
As there is no build of Chrome for Windows ARM as far as I know. And the things isn't available from Mozilla either, which I assume would be the Firefox-button in the tray at the bottom.
[+] [-] emehrkay|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulirish|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] defroost|15 years ago|reply
So now here comes IE 10, and what's the pitch? It's gonna be damn fast. Who gives shit? Chrome and Safari are blazing fast AND you don't have to through all kinds of hacks, and html5.js at them as they work perfectly as is, with nearly ALL of the HTML 5 specifications.
[+] [-] jarin|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndyKelley|15 years ago|reply
I have to agree to this to read an article? No thanks.