IE9 Web App Performance Measuring Support Just the Beginning

The introduction of performance measuring in web pages support in Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) was just the beginning for Microsoft, as the company makes an important step designed to allow developers to accurately measure speed characteristics of their Cloud applications.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) revealed that the software giant will co-chair the new Web Performance Working Group, focused on simplifying the tasks associated with measuring web application performance.

Jason Weber, Lead Program Manager for IE Performance noted that the work of the Web Performance Working Group will be critical in allowing web app developers to build experiences that will rival desktop applications, especially when HTML5 is involved.

“Enabling web developers to understand the real world performance characteristics of their applications is critical to the success of HTML5, and we’re excited to have been selected as co-chairs of the new working group alongside Google,” Weber said.

“We look forward to partnering with the W3C and the broader web community to enable these scenarios through an interoperable API,” he added.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise the fact that Microsoft’s partner in terms of co-chairing the new group is Google. At this point in time, IE9 and Chrome 6.0 are the two browsers that support the WebTimings specification.

“The first deliverable for the working group is to recommend an API that measures the performance of browser navigations,” Weber revealed.

“The WebTimings specification provides a good starting point for these capabilities, so this specification will move into the Web Performance Working Group and become the foundation for our recommendations,” he said.

In terms of adopting new modern web standards, WebTimings is one aspect in which Microsoft beat all rivals, Google included.

IE9 Platform Preview 3 was the first browser to embrace WebTimings specification. However, Google wasn’t all that far behind, and also ended up delivering a Chrome 6.0 Dev build with support for WebTimings.

Both the software and search giants are using the same approach when it comes down to support, namely using vendor prefixes for the specification, ms for IE9 and webkit for Chrome.

“Through early collaboration between our engineering teams, we almost have interoperable implementations which is impressive for an API that has only been discussed for a few months. This is a great example of what’s possible through collaborative partnerships at the W3C,” Webber explained.

However, both IE9 and Chrome 6.0 offer nothing more than examples of early implementations of WebTimings. Microsoft and Google will work together in order to build a fully interoperable API, a move which will allow the specification to be used without any vendor prefixes.

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 4 is available for download here.