14 DAY TRIAL // With Internet Explorer 9 early in the making, Microsoft revealed at the Professional Developers Conference 2009 in Los Angeles that it had identified a total of three pillars for IE’s evolution: standards and interoperability, hardware acceleration, and JavaScript performance.
At the bottom of this article, you will be able to find three videos embedded, each dealing with one of IE9’s development focuses. The videos feature the General Manager of Internet Explorer but also additional members of the IE team, actively involved in building the next generation of Microsoft’s proprietary browser.
“At the PDC, in addition to demonstrating some of the progress on performance and interoperable standards, we showed how IE and Windows will make the power of PC hardware available to web developers in the browser. Specifically, we demonstrated hardware-accelerated rendering of all graphics and text in web pages, something that other browsers don’t do today. Web site developers will see performance gains and other benefits without having to re-write their sites,” revealed Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager, Internet Explorer.
Although the Redmond-based company did deliver a taste of IE9, it did not offer the actual bits for the browser. Now, it could have done so, since Internet Explorer 9 is just a few weeks old. Fact is that the development of IE9 did not start until the last bit of Internet Explorer 8 was released on the market. This happened with the general availability of Windows 7 on October 22, 2009. Following Windows 7’s GA, Microsoft moved onward with the IE project, starting to build Internet Explorer 9.
“While we’re still early in the product cycle, we wanted to be clear to developers about our approach and the progress so far. We’re applying the feedback from the IE8 product cycle, and we’re committed to delivering on another version of IE,” Hachamovitch added.