Microsoft posted the third platform preview of the upcoming IE9 web browser and it appears that Microsoft will have a shot at challenging the fastest browsers today: Microsoft claims it is already faster than Chrome 4 was and is within reach of the fastest browsers on the market today.
HTML5 rendering in IE9 PP.
It is obvious that Microsoft is not happy with IE9 yet and that it invests a significant amount of time and money to help IE return to old glory. While IE9 seems to be stable in general already today, the browser is still in a pre-alpha stage and not in a shape to be used for every day tasks since basic elements, such as the URL bar, are still missing.
Instead, Microsoft appears to be focused on engine tuning and if we believe the company, then it is now close to be offering a similar Javascript performance as the fastest browsers on the market today. While we were not able to confirm Microsoft’s claims as the PP3 download was prevented as a KB update package requested by the installation routine was not available at the time of this writing, we take Microsoft’s word and assume that the company has, in fact, made progress again.
Microsoft’s charts now indicate that IE9 PP3 is slightly slower than Safari 5 and posts a Sunspider performance of just above 400 ms. While we cannot compare our own test results to Microsoft’s due to different hardware configurations, we have seen similar results in the past and we would guess thet PP3 is notably faster than PP2, which came in at 583 ms in our test. Microsoft’s chart shows the latest versions of Opera, Chrome, Safari and IE9 in close proximity as far as the SunSpider benchmark is concerned. This benchmark now lists Firefox as the slowest popular Javascript browser.
Mozilla needs a clear speed improvement over Firefox 3.6.4 and Firefox 3.7a5 with Firefox 4.0. The beta release of this browser was due today, but Mozilla has changed the release date to “to be determined” earlier today. There is no information available when Mozilla could release its new browser.
What makes IE9 interesting to watch is the fact that Microsoft isn’t focused on Javascript alone. With the third platform preview, IE9 extends hardware acceleration support to HTML5 Canvas, audio and video. “Like all of the graphics in IE9, canvas is hardware accelerated through Windows and the GPU. Hardware accelerated canvas support in IE9 illustrates the power of native HTML5 in a browser. We’ve rebuilt the browser to use the power of your whole PC to browse the web. These extensive changes to IE9 mean websites can now take advantage of all the hardware innovation in the PC industry.” According to Microsoft, IE9 hardware acceleration now works with video services such as YouTube as well.
IE9’s Acid 3 web standard compatibility test now comes in at 83 of 100 points., which is another big step for IE9.
We will update this post with detailed test results as soon as Microsoft makes its KB2117917 update available.
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