I just hope they have a complete fresh rethink of IE.

Source : Windows 7 News & Tips (Windows 7 News & Tips)

Recently Microsoft applied for a patent for Internet Explorer 9, which will feature tabbed browsing upgrades. This is the latest in the moves that Microsoft is making to try to regain it’s performance superiority to the other browsers. As I have reported here before, Microsoft’s competitors have made significant inroads, in no large part due to Microsoft’s insistence on looking at the browser from their own unique perspective. This may be ok from the Operating System point of view because the have such limited competition there…(oh yea, What about Mac OS and Linux? Sure combined they have what … 10% of the market?), at the PC OS level MS is the only sheriff in town, but that is not the case with the browser…there are a lot of sheriffs, each claiming to bring their own law and their own order.


The Internet Explorer Browser
Performance

Performance is the first consideration that Microsoft has to address. How fast does a browser load, refresh it’s page, go to a new page, present new links, and overall handle graphics and text, are part of the performance features that ordinary users look at. These may not be the technical specs that Chrome, or Opera, or Firefox may be looking at, but if a browser/company wants to convince end users to use their browser then speed is probably going to be very high in the performance test beds. The browser community has accepted a series of tests for benchmark performance. One is the Sunspider Test, and the other is the Acid3 Test.

The SunSpider Test

This is a Javascript test. It is broken down into three components: Real world, Balanced, and Statistically Sound.

Real World: This test mostly avoids microbenchmarks, and tries to focus on the kinds of actual problems developers solve with JavaScript today. This includes tests to generate a tagcloud from JSON input, a 3D raytracer, cryptography tests, code decompression, and many more examples. There are a few microbenchmarkish things, but they mostly represent real performance problems that developers have encountered.
Balanced: This test is balanced between different areas of the language and different types of code. In addition to having tests in many categories, the individual tests were balanced to take similar amounts of time on currently shipping versions of popular browsers.
Statistically Sound: One of the challenges of benchmarking is knowing how much noise you have in your measurements. This benchmark runs each test multiple times and determines an error range (technically, a 95% confidence interval). In addition, in comparison mode it tells you if you have enough data to determine if the difference is statistically significant.

Sun Spider Test
The Acid3 Test

Acid3 is primarily testing specifications for “Web 2.0? dynamic Web applications.



The Acid3 Test on Chrome
Hardware Acceleration

The second consideration that the developers of IE9 have in mind is hardware acceleration. The hardware acceleration component is about Windows, DirectX 11 Windows APIs and the GPU (the computer’s graphics processing unit), and IE9 will take advantage of all these resources in tandem. In the process development from Internet Explorer 8 to IE9, Microsoft has changed the rendering engine from leveraging GDI to using DirectX.

At point is the graphics card. The graphics cards on computers running IE9 will be used from no on since the browser will turn to the Graphics Processor Unit for webpage operations and display. By embracing the GPU, IE9’s performance will get a boost. Ultimately, IE9 will be designed to deliver a superior users experience to IE8, and to all current competitive browsers available on the market.

The Graphic Patent description

The patent shows that IE8’s “quick tabs” feature will be substantially modified. Thumbnails will enlarge when you hover over them with the mouse allowing an easier preview of the page. Also, users will be able to drag and move the tabs from within the Quick Tabs page.




Internet Explorer9 Patents
How successful will IE9 be? It is too early to tell.

So what do you think?

Hi there
Why do we need all this BLOAT added into a browser by default.

Why can't it be SIMPLE and let people add their own plugins.

Am I the only person who HATES tabbed browsing.

I find its much easier just to open several individual sessions -- W7 quick taskbar allows easy identification and windows / session switch - and its even easier if you use some type of "Virtual Desktop" software.



Cheers
jimbo

CarlTR6 said:

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
Why do we need all this BLOAT added into a browser by default.

Why can't it be SIMPLE and let people add their own plugins.

Am I the only person who HATES tabbed browsing.

I find its much easier just to open several individual sessions -- W7 quick taskbar allows easy identification and windows / session switch - and its even easier if you use some type of "Virtual Desktop" software.



Cheers
jimbo

I really like and utilize tabbed browsing. For me it is a Godsend. I do agree with your idea of a bare bones browser and letting the consumer add the bells and whistles that he or she desires. FF is far superior to IE in this regards though FF, too, is bloated.

I use SeaMonkey. It's a Mozilla product,but much leaner and MUCH faster than FF.

IE8 all over again.