Mozilla employee: IE9 is not a ''modern browser''

[nsane.forums]

Not even a week after the Internet Explorer 9 release candidate hit the web, a Mozilla tech evangelist has taken a public swipe at Microsoft bragging about web standards compliance.

In a blog post, Paul Rouget takes issue with Microsoft's public chest-beating about IE9's compliance with various standards, particularly HTML5. What appears to have particularly rankled Mr Rouget is a table, included in a February 10 post by IE boss Dean Hachamovitch, proudly proclaiming IE9's near-perfect performance on a bevy of standards tests as compared to other browsers, including Firefox.

Those tests, according to Mr Rouget, are not as objective as Microsoft would have you believe.

''Does IE9 support 99% of the HTML5 specification as insinuated by Microsoft? No, they're actually pretty far from it. The tests Microsoft are referring to are the ones they created during the development of IE9,'' he said.

Given that the tests are effectively in-house, it is unsurprising that the IE9 RC performed so well, he said.

''We score pretty well against our own unit-tests as well. The primary use case for these tests, however, is to spot regressions and validate code changes. In other words: the tests ensure that future changes don't break the things you just built. They don't actually test all elements of a specific standard,'' he said.

Using tests at caniuse.com and beta.html5test.com, Mr Rouget argued that IE9 is far from the modern browser Microsoft paints it to be, before listing more than 15 standards elements that IE9 doesn't support.

''The reality is that IE9 is 2 years late. Microsoft is glad to come out with the video tag, the canvas tag, SVG, and some CSS3. Like other vendors did years ago. Firefox 3.5 had the video tag, the canvas tag, Geolocation, SVG in 2009. Canvas and SVG existed 5 years ago,'' he said.

Given that these accusations are coming from a Mozilla employee, the case for bias is a clear one. Mr Rouget also appears to be somewhat of a lone voice when it comes to strong criticism of IE9's standards support - the release candidate performs quite well when put through a set of W3C tests, though it's worth noting that this particular suite is far from exhaustive. It's possible that after so many years of sub-par standards support from IE, developers are simply glad that Microsoft has finally begun to lift their game.

View: Original Article

[T4C Fantasy]

mozilla is just full of jealous retarded devs -.-

[HX1]

That would explain all the furries...uhh hmm.. Yes from a FF Fan.. uhh hmm... j/k.. :lmao:

[Atasas]

mozilla is just full of jealous retarded devs -.-

I hear what you say :ph34r:

[Atasas]

That would explain all the furries...uhh hmm.. Yes from a FF Fan.. uhh hmm... j/k.. :lmao:

radicalism heh :D

[HX1]

You know whats funny is Firefox used to be this top secret spy/war plane that was ultimately cool and fast.. that Clint Eastwood was supposed to steal back from the Russians or from I can't remember.. in a movie I saw as a small child..

but now.. pfft...

[T4C Fantasy]

lol!

[TheRuan]

Never have too much hope on IEs because Microsoft always leave it behind, their main goal will never be a browser, their main goal will most likely ever be Client-Server OS's, IE has always been behind, only a blind one can't see.

In back days I took a long time to migrate to Firefox, right now i have trust, and won't be a blow of 10 to 30% speed that is going to change our minds.

Firefox didn't become the best because its customizing abitilities, trust is something we give with time of speed plus high stability.

No one needs to claim that there is something wrong when Microsoft says IE9 is a boost, their are doing their job, selling the product.

No one needs to claim that Firefox is the best, because we already use it everyday, we can see.

[Tunerz]

To think Mozilla would go this low...

[DKT27]

Well I downloaded IE9 RC. And I got to say, I'm left disappointed. I'm opening it and getting all those nightmares I had before. The startup and it's loading of plugins is still sluggish. And I did some personal tests and let me tell you guys, except javascript, in no way IE9 RC is faster than Firefox 3.6.13. Yes, let me make myself clear, it's NOT faster than Firefox 3.6. I'll do some benchmarks tonight, of both Firefox 3.6 and IE9 RC back to back, to prove it.

[HX1]

Maybe you should get rid of all of your addons that are not for IE9 .. I had to get rid of everything but the basics.. and it seemed to iron out the kinks I was having in LUA'a and Admin Accounts as well.. though it did seem to run a little in Admin... and most of the time its quite fast... ( when compared to previous versions ) .. It can be faster with protections not in place.. and I did leave my AdBlock Pro addon in place as well.. ( which I probably should upgrade )

[JessicaLeigh]

Well I downloaded IE9 RC. And I got to say, I'm left disappointed. I'm opening it and getting all those nightmares I had before. The startup and it's loading of plugins is still sluggish. And I did some personal tests and let me tell you guys, except javascript, in no way IE9 RC is faster than Firefox 3.6.13. Yes, let me make myself clear, it's NOT faster than Firefox 3.6. I'll do some benchmarks tonight, of both Firefox 3.6 and IE9 RC back to back, to prove it.

My money is on DKT27!!! Go, DKT, go! WOOT! :w00t:

[HX1]

Yeah.. spammers and bots usually are the fastest browser.... :P :lmao: GO DKT27... Probably outrun them all.. :rofl: j/k..

[DKT27]

I'm shocked! :mellow:

I still don't understand how did IE9 perform so well. I did all the personal test and IE was just performing like a grandma. So if this benchmarking is to believe. I admit. IE9 has improved drastically. Now it's Firefox that is at the bottom and is needed to be laugh at. Congrats to IE9 and Microsoft.

It still can't beat Chrome or Opera though. And Firefox 4 looks fabulous when compared to IE9's GUI. :P

[just1acc]

I'm shocked! :mellow:

I still don't understand how did IE9 perform so well. I did all the personal test and IE was just performing like a grandma. So if this benchmarking is to believe. I admit. IE9 has improved drastically. Now it's Firefox that is at the bottom and is needed to be laugh at. Congrats to IE9 and Microsoft.

It still can't beat Chrome or Opera though. And Firefox 4 looks fabulous when compared to IE9's GUI. :P

Its look fabulous though with my extra dark windows 7 theme. I'll upload screenshot tomorrow. Exam time, l'il busy. :(

[HX1]

One word.. PAINT DELAY.. well two.. same fu(k1n6 problem in Opera.. fast as 5h17.. or was it.. :huh: few other little tweaks there.. try it with and without GPU Accelerations.. depends on the system too.. mine is actually faster without it.. FF modded Paint Delay time and tweaked network .. instant load...

EDIT: I always forget we are testing the ' off the lot ' or ' out of the box ' ( still haven't figured out how to test how fast it is outside my box though.. Tried USB.. but it was only as fast as I could throw it.. or other means of propulsion ) so to speak..

[Atasas]

One word.. PAINT DELAY.. well two.. same fu(k1n6 problem in Opera.. fast as 5h17.. or was it.. :huh: few other little tweaks there.. try it with and without GPU Accelerations.. depends on the system too.. mine is actually faster without it.. FF modded Paint Delay time and tweaked network .. instant load...

EDIT: I always forget we are testing the ' off the lot ' or ' out of the box ' ( still haven't figured out how to test how fast it is outside my box though.. Tried USB.. but it was only as fast as I could throw it.. or other means of propulsion ) so to speak..

Browsers are best developed tools- at least weekly

IE- is just degenerate nonsense- I'll leave that out of consideration, even without trying...

FF is good tool, but matter of time and it does lead, then follows

Opera on the other hand- just out of box- always did and does perform well- without extensive tweaking or other efforts

still, I use both as per when needed, but main one remains... (let you guess) ^_^

[DKT27]

Mozilla's "modern browser" attack on IE overlooks Firefox shortcomings

Microsoft and Mozilla traded barbs this week in a dispute over what constitutes a "modern" Web browser. The competitive friction is starting to heat up because the Redmond software giant and Silicon Valley nonprofit are preparing to release the next major versions of their respective Web browsers.

Mozilla's Firefox 4 is expected to arrive this month and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 is in the release candidate stage. Both browsers are set to introduce a significant number of new features for end users and Web developers, including extensive support for critical next-generation Web standards.

The release of Internet Explorer 9 is particularly noteworthy, because it will mark the first time in recent history that Microsoft has delivered a browser that doesn't lag far behind on standards compliance. Despite the great strides that Microsoft has made with IE9, Mozilla contends that Microsoft still has a long way to go before it can truly characterize IE as a "modern" browser.

Mozilla developer Paul Rouget, who is probably best known for his innovative HTML 5 demos, issued a statement and accompanying infographic that attacks Microsoft's claims regarding IE9's support for modern Web standards. Rouget says that Microsoft has misrepresented the extent of IE's standards compliance by using the company's own test suite as a benchmark rather than vendor-neutral tests devised by the W3C and other independent parties.

Firefox 4 vs. Internet Explorer 9 on Web standards compatibility, from Mozilla's point of view

Microsoft's recent blog entry about the availability of the IE9 release candidate includes a table that purports to compare IE9's standards compliance against that of stable versions of other mainstream browsers. As Rouget has pointed out, the table is based solely on Microsoft's own test cases and omits prerelease versions of other browsers.

IE9 standards compliance from Microsoft's point of view

In software engineering, it's common for developers to create elaborate testing suites that are designed to evaluate a software implementation's conformance with the project requirements. IE9's conformance with Microsoft's own internal test suite for the browser does little more than signify that Microsoft has fulfilled its project goals for the IE9 release milestone. It doesn't reflect IE9's compatibility with the full spectrum of browser standards—just the specific features that Microsoft has chosen to focus on implementing.

When tested against an independently maintained HTML5 feature matrix at caniuse.com, the breadth of IE9's HTML5 conformance looks much less compelling. In fact, the scores show that IE9 supports roughly 54 percent of HTML5, compared to the 88 percent covered by Firefox 4. It's worth noting that Firefox 3.6, which was released in January 2010, scores 54 percent, just like IE9. The takeaway message is that, despite advances, Microsoft's HTML5 support in IE9 is still lagging roughly a year behind Firefox.

Although IE9 is still obviously missing support for some important standards-related features, we aren't totally sold on Mozilla's contention that this precludes IE9 from being characterized as a "modern" browser. There is a lot more to being a "modern" browser than merely supporting the latest standards.

Standards bearer

The standards story itself is also far from clear. When Mozilla was defending its poor score on the Acid 3 test in 2008, Mozilla's Rob Sayre decried what he called standards "grandstanding" by browser vendors. As was the case then, evaluating standards compliance is a task that requires a lot more nuance than you can get from tables, infographics, and test scores. Microsoft still has a lot of work to do, but they are finally moving forward at a good pace and have arguably caught up with a big chunk of the feature set that Web developers want to use today.

Rouget provides an abridged list of some of the standard where Microsoft has fallen behind. Perusing the list proved to be an instructive exercise. Many of the standards that Rouget identifies as missing pieces in IE9 are indeed unfortunate omissions by Microsoft. Some nascent features that Microsoft doesn't support yet, like Web Workers, are going to be important for high-performance next-generation Web applications.

There are some omissions in IE9, however, that are understandable. For example, Microsoft is faulted for not supporting CSS3 gradients. It's worth noting that Firefox's Gecko rendering engine and WebKit implemented this feature with very different syntax. It was only last month that Mozilla and Apple reached a consensus on the syntax, leading the WebKit team to change their implementation.

Along those lines, some of the weak areas in IE9 relate to standards that are still basically in flux and are implemented with vendor-prefixed flags in other browsers. Microsoft still falls behind far too often, but is arguably getting better at tracking standards that are works in progress. The company has an experimental implementation of the WebSockets specification, for example, though it won't be included in a browser until it stabilizes and some standing technical issues with the standard are addressed.

Another one of Rouget's points of criticism is Microsoft's lack of support for SMIL animations in SVG, a declarative XML-based syntax for animating vector graphics. It was one of the few major SVG features that arrived late in Firefox. Firefox has had relatively robust SVG support for years, but didn't get a SMIL implementation until 2009. SMIL wasn't a high priority for Mozilla because developers have generally been satisfied with using JavaScript for animation. SMIL is still a desirable feature that IE is very late to support, but it's not something you'd necessarily expect to land in a browser vendor's first pass at implementing SVG.

On that note, Doug Schepers of the W3C SVG working group recently dismissed critics of Microsoft's SVG support in IE9 and lauded the company for implementing a "very large, functional subset" of the standard.

"But it's silly to hold Microsoft to a higher standard than the other browser vendors, for their first release. Everyone, even Microsoft, has limited resources, so I'd have been stunned if they did all of SVG 1.1 in IE9," he wrote in a blog entry. "And I'll be surprised if they are missing features like filters and animation in IE10."

SMIL is one of only two missing IE9 features that prevent the browser from scoring 100/100 on the Acid 3 test. The other major feature is SVG Fonts, which Mozilla has also declined to implement, due to the availability of the superior WOFF standard.

What makes a modern browser?

The question of what constitutes a "modern" browser seems to tread into the shaky realm of ontological inquiry. In a response to Mozilla, Microsoft's Tim Sneath accuses Rouget of assuming a "very narrow definition" of what makes a browser modern.

Indeed, there are a lot of ways in which IE is arguably more "modern" than Firefox if you look beyond the issue of standards. The most noteworthy example is IE's support for process isolation for tabs. Although a number of mainstream browsers support this capability, it's not supported yet in Firefox 4. Mozilla's 2011 roadmap highlights tab process isolation as a major goal and indicates that it could come later in 2011.

Rouget isn't doing himself any favors by elevating the word "modern" to the heart of the discussion. He's effectively burying the lede, which is his more defensible position that Microsoft's support for HTML5 is still lacking and lags behind Mozilla's.

Mozilla's mission-oriented agenda and emphasis on the open Web create a culture where the tendency is to assign a high priority to standards compliance. Mozilla's vigilance in this area is highly beneficial to the Web and has arguably played an important role in catalyzing the current competitiveness and relative health in the browser ecosystem. The downside of Mozilla's standards fixation is that it also occasionally makes it look like the organization has fallen out of touch with users.

As a Firefox end user and occasional Web developer, I don't particularly care whether I can use SMIL in SVG. There are other factors that more significantly impact the quality of my day-to-day browsing experience where Mozilla still falls short. To cite standards conformance as the chief measure of a modern browser is to downplay the importance of all of the work that goes into making a good browsing experience. That was obviously not Mozilla's intent, but that's the attitude that resonates from this kind of ham-handed marketing effort.

Microsoft's long history of wilfully crippling the Internet with IE's lack of standards compliance understandably makes it difficult to give the company the benefit of the doubt. I'd say, however, that the progress Microsoft has made in IE9 goes a long way towards repairing the damage. Mozilla is still fundamentally right in saying that Microsoft's HTML 5 compliance isn't as good as the company wants users to believe. It's still pretty good, however, and is on track to get better—just like Mozilla is on track to address its own problems, such as the lack of process isolation for tabs.

View: Original Article

[T4C Fantasy]

it still makes mozilla look like children because microsoft can sell better and come up with better test results in a more detailed manner, you have to admit, those standards tests microsoft proviides is unrivaled, no other browser shows you in that much detail what standards it supports :P

[Lite]

I think its a little case of Mozilla being worried.

Internet Explorer 9 RC Hits 2 Million Downloads

Just a few days after its public availability, customers have already downloaded Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate two million times and taken it for a spin. As you may have seen on our engineering blog, current IE9 Beta users will be prompted to download RC via Windows Update this month. However, even as these prompts are starting to kick into gear, we have had two million user-initiated downloads of IE9 RC. We continue to be humbled by the enthusiasm and uptake of IE9.

Early testers are already experiencing the beauty of the web across their favorite websites – and enjoying one-click access to a site-centric browsing experience by pinning their sites directly to their Windows 7 taskbar. We’re encouraged by this early response and urge you to download IE9 RC today and let us know your thoughts!

To download and learn more, please visit: www.beautyoftheweb.com.

[JessicaLeigh]

I'm shocked! :mellow:

Be nice to DKT27, Heath. Shame on you! :ermm:

...and with that; Jessica blows a kiss to DKT27 for his gallant efforts, undoes her ponytail, walks back to the CL locker room, and hangs up her pom-poms... :sadwalk:

[DKT27]

Thanks. :wub:

Don't worry JessicaLeigh. :)

Thanks to a recommendation of a friend, I already know that there would be a time where Firefox will almost sink. But I ain't gonna leave it so fast. No other browser suits my needs. If Firefox 4 is not fast enough, than be it, atleast it's faster and beautiful than Firefox 3.6. And IE9 has showed that in browser wars, nothing should be taken for granted and no browser cannot make a comeback. :D

[JessicaLeigh]

Thanks. :wub:

Don't worry JessicaLeigh. :)

Thanks to a recommendation of a friend, I already know that there would be a time where Firefox will almost sink. But I ain't gonna leave it so fast. No other browser suits my needs. If Firefox 4 is not fast enough, than be it, atleast it's faster and beautiful than Firefox 3.6. And IE9 has showed that in browser wars, nothing should be taken for granted and no browser cannot make a comeback. :D

Aaw! You have such a humble way about you, DKT27. It's very admirable, and extremely rare to see that anymore; especially on a software BBS Forum. Everyone usually thinks their choice is smarter than the rest. :argue: There's hardly anyone who will have the candor to just pause, take a few steps back, and then look at the big picture with generous consideration. :clap:

[HX1]

:ermm: :snooty: