Some of the most recent releases of Firefox and Chrome are no match for
Internet Explorer 9 when it comes down to the performance delivered because of hardware acceleration capabilities. Back in June 2010, Microsoft threw Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 2 in the hardware acceleration arena against a set of rival browsers, and the next generation of IE wiped the floor with products traditionally perceived by the public as delivering superior speed. It’s now the turn of IE9 Platform Preview 3 Build 1.9.7.8.74.6000 to leave browsers like Firefox 4.0 pre-Beta 1 and Chrome 5.0 Stable in the dust.
While for the first set of
hardware acceleration tests, Microsoft used the Flickr Explorer sample on the IE Test Center website, for the latest browser measuring content, the company leveraged the Amazon Shelf concept application which was released concomitantly with the third IE9 Platform Preview.
“Much like Flickr Explorer, Amazon Shelf is written using standard HTML, CSS and Javascript. Amazon Shelf also incorporates a key new HTML5 feature – the canvas element. Canvas is an incredibly powerful way to draw directly to the screen using simple Javascript API calls,” explained
Seth McLaughlin, Program Manager for IE Performance. “When you launch Amazon Shelf, you’re shown a list of the top selling books from Amazon. This data is retrieved using the Amazon Product Advertising API. You can search for specific books, browse, and “open” books to view detailed information and customer reviews.”