THERE'S something weird going in the world of the web browser giants.
For the most part, Microsoft has – despite being the most commonly used browser in the world – weirdly been the critical underdog, with Internet Explorer 6 struggling to cope with the demands of the modern web user right from its launch, and IE7 and IE8 seemingly not doing enough to differentiate from each other, in order to convince users to upgrade.
Now Microsoft seems to have spoiled the party by getting all modern with the release of a beta version of Internet Explorer 9, adding HTML5s and CSS3s to make it a whole lot flashier, complete with extra moving bits and Aero Snaps.
Download the beta version here to find out what that actually means.
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IE9: The browser's dead, long live the browser
Rest assured the makers of Chrome and Firefox – Google and Mozilla - aren’t going to take it lying down.
The proper IE9 probably won’t even be released until mid-next year. HTML5 is still not functional enough to meet the standards of those in charge of such standards on the web.
So by the time IE9 is debugged by the public, there’ll no doubt be competitive versions of Chrome and FireFox ready to drag it back to the pack.
Only, when it gets there, there’ll be less scrapping and a whole lot more group hugging.
That’s because lately, browser makers have distanced themselves from the unsavoury behaviour of their users.
Any actual news value in yesterday’s beta release of IE9 was almost instantly lost in the online, 24-hour screaming match that broke out between the various online tribes desperate to prove to each other that it wasn’t them that’s made the wrong browser choice.
“The fishtank demo’s a fake.” “Everyone knows Firefox 4 is WEBGL enabled.”
Yawn.
Yet over at Mountain View, California, where Aussie-made Glen Murphy is helping Chrome stay in the race, Google is giving the digital equivalent of a polite golf clap for Microsoft’s efforts.
“We’re very happy whenever any browser moves forward in this way,” Mr Murphy told NEWS.com.au.
“We’re very excited by the HTML5 support and speed improvements becoming standard in all modern browsers.
“Getting the web to this point was a large part of the reason why we built Chrome.”
And that’s it. Not so much as a “We’ve been doing this for years”.
It gets worse. Lately, Microsoft’s been giving Mozilla cakes every time it release a FireFox upgrade.
Cakes.
In 2005, Mozilla even let Microsoft share its web feed logo at the same time Microsoft was asking it to come on over and help work out how to make FireFox and Vista play nicely together.
Mr Murphy’s excuse is that IE9 is not just a significant step forward for Microsoft, but for web users in general, and that’s exactly what Google’s been committed to right from the start.
“Browsers are not only getting faster and more powerful, but they’re also being updated and upgraded faster than ever before - internet users are going to benefit greatly from new features and capabilities as all the browsers compete and collaborate on making the web a better place,” he said.
“HTML5 is a good example of this - all the browser vendors have worked together to produce the specification for it, but they all compete to get the best and most complete implementation.”
It’s not quite cakes at 10 paces – and there’s no word yet of the IE9 team having received any reciprocal niceties from their FireFox buddies – but this kind of goodwill is typical of what’s been developing in the tech industry ever since the words “open source” became the trendy digital equivalent of “environmentally friendly”.
“Before we launched Google Chrome, JavaScript was 10 times slower, the first public working draft of HTML5 had only just been published, and the next generation of browser technologies were nothing more than research projects,” Mr Murphy said.
“By contrast, today browsers are innovating faster than ever before and we think that’s largely due to some of the advances made by Google Chrome.”
Some of the advances made by Google Chrome? Those sound like fighting words, Mr Murphy.
Maybe, hopefully ,there’s a bit of Aussie in Glen Murphy that won’t give completely in to the great global group hug among browser developers.
Indeed, he added that Google planned to release a major version of Chrome every six weeks “in order to stay ahead of such developments” as IE9.
“Because of this, our users will always be using the fastest, most secure, most capable browser,” he said.
Mr Murphy, you just cost your team a cake. Flame on, users.
Peter Farquhar is in San Francisco for the launch of IE9 as a guest of Microsoft
(source:news.com.au)
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