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Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 2:13 am
by omniuni
Well, with all the buzz surrounding IE8, and in particular Microsoft's claims as to its speed, these are my thoughts, and I was wondering about yours.

1. What is Speed?
Of all the browsers, IE8 has a HUGE advantage when it comes to pure rendering speed. Firefox has to have a non-accelerated canvas portable from Windows, to Linux, to OSX. Same for Opera. Safari uses KHTML/Webkit, and is the same. When it comes to drawing something on-screen, IE8 can safely use any and all of the available benefits that Windows could offer, because it doesn't have to worry about being cross-platform. Yet even in Microsoft's own tests, it only renders websites fastest a weak majority of the time. We're not even talking about JavaScript, or otherwise. Just pure and simple display of HTML elements. If they want an interesting challenge, they should try comparing against Konqueror. Try loading the rather horrid http://www.havenworks.com/ in FF, and then in Konqueror. The difference in rendering speed is amazing... yet Konq is still cross platform! Sorry Microsoft, but as far as I'm concerned, this still indicates some seriously lacking performance in draw speed.

2. Slices
One term for ya, Microsoft: RSS.

3. Accelerators
Here's another term: Plugins.

4. "Porn Mode"
If you really need to be off the record, there are already Firefox extensions, and really, is it such a big deal? I could always just clear my history using "Clear Private Data".

5. Speed as in "Memory"
As per http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/ ... ?artc_pg=2 which is one of the few memory tests I can find so far, IE is still a memory hog.

6. JavaScript
Please, Microsoft. Dismissing it as such a small thing when it is so widely used? As Google's JS engine becomes more widespread, and competition increases, Microsoft needs to get on the ball.

7. Gooey GUI
Still not a fan of the IE8 GUI. My Firefox has been customized. Konqueror is sleek enough to not need to be customized. IE8 seems a little strange, like it doesn't necessarily use the host operating system's GUI toolkit. (?)

8. Separate Processes
It's a good job. Done after Chrome, after Konqueror, and slightly before Firefox (3.5). Not bad. I will give Microsoft a lollipop.

9. Security
Still part of explorer.exe, so I'm sorry, but still very much lagging behind everyone else.

OK. That's about it. What say you all?

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 3:53 am
by Weirdan
omniuni wrote: 8. Separate Processes
It's a good job. Done after Chrome, after Konqueror, and slightly before Firefox (3.5). Not bad. I will give Microsoft a lollipop.
Are you implying that Fx 3.5 is a multiprocess browser? It doesn't seem to be true.

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:21 am
by arjan.top
konqueror and firefox are not multiprocess

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 12:34 pm
by omniuni
Weirdan: It's on the roadmap, and already demos are available. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes and http://blog.mozilla.com/cjones/2009/06/ ... -near-you/

Arjan: Each tab in Konqueror spawns a new instance of the KHTML engine. Like most pieces of KDE, Konqueror is built with plugins or "kparts". The HTML handler is separate for each tab, and in fact, you can switch view modes at any time. For example, I can load Kate Part to handle HTML files if I want, or Webkit. Each tab is interchangeable, so under the hood, each is a separate process. If you have a misbehaving tab, you can safely close it without affecting the rest of Konqueror.

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 1:06 pm
by arjan.top
if it would be 1 process per tab there would be a process for every tab in process list, but it's not

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 1:21 pm
by omniuni
The KDE programs do not identify like that, nor does Chrome. It provides an internal process manager. Kind of like Konqueror gives you the option to close a tab, it ends the associated processes. If you want to, though, look for kio_http, the name of the process spawned by Konq for each HTTP transaction.

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 1:44 pm
by arjan.top
if there is a process it would be shown in process list, and chrome has process for every tab if you look at task manager

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 1:58 pm
by omniuni
I'll admit I have not used chrome, but can you not see the ksockets? Try "ps -aux"...

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 7:42 pm
by JAB Creations
90% of the work done on IE8 was CSS 2.1 related and Microsoft usually doesn't BS with the things that Mozilla will simply never fix...granted it takes MS a long time to fix things but once they do fix it then usually it's pretty solid. It's not much right now but when we start looking at IE9 and IE10 it'll really start to put the pressure on Gecko rendering wise...this is of course presuming IE9 isn't a half-assed release like IE7.

JScript...what can I say, who here loves being limited to JavaScript 1.5? Not I though Microsoft would have to be totally off their nut to not put in the same amount of effort in to JScript in Ie9 that they did was CSS 2.1 in IE8. It's simply a matter of how far they're willing to go.

CSS3...nothing...I mean tiny little minor things...but really nothing worth mentioning.

GUI...uh, we now have the ability to move the stop and refresh buttons to the left...that's the customization they were ranting about early on?! No...Firefox still whips everyone else as far as GUI is concerned...or at least being able to customize it.

IE8 (with the exception of XHTML, SVG, and CSS3) looks about the same as Opera...nothing special really. Granted Opera has some interesting highlights but it won't be until Presto 2.3 that it'll VEGA.

They haven't caught up to any one but it's a solid half-way point they've reached. If they get JScript up to par with Gecko 1.9.0 and Presto 2.0 I'll be happy. I don't really give a dam about performance from the likes of IE, I just want to see the dam thing WORK!

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 10:35 pm
by jackpf
Half my javascript doesn't work for no reason, and I still need conditional IE statements.

For these reasons it still sucks. Way better than all previous versions put together...but it still sucks.

I am quite impressed with their CSS2.1 features though...but why are the still using alpha crap for opacity and stuff? And it still doesn't support border-radius. Or xhtml.

But all other browsers are moving onto CSS 3. So in conclusion, it still sucks in comparision.

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 4:21 am
by Weirdan
omniuni wrote:Weirdan: It's on the roadmap, and already demos are available. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes and http://blog.mozilla.com/cjones/2009/06/ ... -near-you/
But 3.5 is out already, and this is still on the roadmap - meaning it will be introduced in something like 4.0 at best.

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 2:38 pm
by omniuni
Darn it! You're right, Weirdan! Package was just released. I can't believe I missed it. :D Oh well, time to go upgrade to FF 3.5!

Re: Thoughts on IE8

Posted: Thu Jul 09, 2009 1:42 pm
by Jonah Bron
Yup, Firefox is definitely the most customizable. Chrome doesn't have anything to customize.