Microsoft Previews IE9 — HTML5, SVG, Fast JS 473
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kdawson
from the this-time-stop-after-embrace dept.
from the this-time-stop-after-embrace dept.
suraj.sun sends this excerpt from CNET on Microsoft's preview of IE9 in Las Vegas just now. "At its Mix 10 conference Tuesday, Microsoft gave programmers, Web developers, and the world at large a taste of things to come with its Web browser. Specifically, Microsoft released what it's calling the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview, a prototype designed to show off the company's effort to improve how the browser deals with the Web as it exists today and, as important, to add support for new Web technologies that are coming right now. Coming in the new version is support for new Web standards including plug-in-free video; better performance with graphics, text, and JavaSript by taking advantage of modern computing hardware. One big change in the JavaScript engine Hachamovitch is proud of is its multicore support. As soon as a Web page is loaded, Chakra assigns a processing core to the task of compiling JavaScript in the background into fast code written in the native language of the computer's processor." Microsoft didn't say what codec they were using for the HTML5 video demo, but the Technologizer says it's H.264.
Re:compiling java script (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:H.264 (Score:5, Interesting)
Flash is an optional addon. There is no optional addon to play h.264. The support for the video is built into the browser, and once it's built in the browser cannot be redistributed due to patents. This is why Firefox can't play H.264, and the reason Theora doesn't have support from some key players. Without the patents, there is no control.
plug-in-free video? (Score:5, Interesting)
Meaning Microsoft controls the kinds of video IE can stream?
This is a big opportunity for Microsoft to force the Internet media standards AND generate some meaningful license fees. Those fees would be paid to Microsoft to enable streaming your hot-new-VC-backed media format. Microsoft would never have to deal with those pesky media streaming competitors they used to call partners.
If I made decisions at Microsoft, that's how I'd do it.
Re:firefox is getting old (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently? Firefox ceded the "lightweight alternative" throne to Opera years ago and it seems like ever since Chrome dropped they've just been rearranging deck chairs instead of trying to get out of the hole they're in.
When did we decide it was a good idea for a browser to interrupt its own startup procedure to ask you about reopening tabs and updating extensions?
When I clicked the icon, I wanted to go to a web page! Do all that other crap after you service my initial intent.
I knew Firefox was on its way out when I got a nag screen on startup asking me to upgrade. When I declined, it didn't go away and launch the browser, no, it popped up a survey web page, inside a modal dialog which was way too small and could not be scrolled or resized.
WAY TO GO, FIREFOX
Re:H.264 (Score:4, Interesting)
GIF is also patented format and had an uproar before as they required license fees from applications that output GIF.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format#Unisys_and_LZW_patent_enforcement [wikipedia.org]
In August 1999, Unisys changed the details of their licensing practice, announcing the option for owners of Billboard and Intra net Web sites to obtain licenses on payment of a one-time license fee of $5000 or $7500.[15] Such licenses were not required for website owners or other GIF users who had used licensed software to generate GIFs. Nevertheless, Unisys was the subject of thousands of online attacks and abusive emails from users believing that they were going to be charged $5000 or sued for using GIFs on their websites.[16] Despite giving free licenses to hundreds of non-profit organizations, schools and governments, Unisys was completely unable to generate any good publicity and continued to be vilified by individuals and organizations such as the League for Programming Freedom who started the "Burn All GIFs" campaign.[17]
The US LZW patent expired on June 20, 2003.[18] The counterpart patents in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy expired on June 18, 2004, the Japanese counterpart patents expired on June 20, 2004 and the counterpart Canadian patent expired on July 7, 2004.[18] Consequently, while Unisys has further patents and patent applications relating to improvements to the LZW technique,[18] the GIF format may now be used freely.
I don't think MPEG-LA is so stupid that it will try anything similar. In that case they also even didn't try to get licenses from 99% of websites. MPEG-LA has a long history in video formats and their usage on the Internet and other devices, it would be stupid of them to start charging individual websites and users.
Re:H.264 (Score:1, Interesting)
The way things look like, both H.264 and Theora are loosing the war. Rumors are that the major players in the field including Google/YouTube, Nokia, Microsoft, Apple, etc. (except for Adobe...) have put their animosities aside and started talks about settling on Dirac and even setting up a new standards body for it: http://diracvideo.org I personally think it's a good thing, especially since Dirac seems to deliver quite a bit better video quality per bandwith and per resource consumption than either H.264 or Theora.
Re:Market Share (Score:4, Interesting)
To continue the voting analogy, it takes 20 percent to force a roll-call vote in the U.S. House of Representatives or Senate.
I just recently learned about that practice. It's rather disturbing to think every little detail is recorded when you go to court for a traffic ticket, but no record is kept of who voted for what in our Legislature unless 20% of them agree to allow it.
It's not surprising they rarely do roll-call. By not keeping records, they can claim to have voted in whatever manner the group they are currently speaking to finds most acceptable... a very useful tool for each and every one of them.
Please tell MS to support Ogg Theora/Ogg Vorbis (Score:3, Interesting)
Slew of recent marketting... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know this is going to sound trollish, but hear me out.
I can't be the only one noticing that there is a recent upswing in what I'd call Microsoft "prototype news." All the blogs are full of Win Mobile 7 System Phone (or whatever they are calling it...), something called Courier that's probably vaporware, Natal, and now IE enhancements that aren't quite done yet. It feels to me like Microsoft shifted a good chunk of change into marketing for some reason.
It kind of feels like they are saying "Oh, don't look at that, we'll have something soon..."
Re:H.264 (Score:3, Interesting)
just because people are licensees doesn't mean they're going to implement it. I think you fail to understand what the significance of that list is. Maybe you should read at the bottom when it says (my bold/italic)
It's more likely that people have to be licensees to be able to read the implementation,and far less likely that it implies that they support it or use it.
Don't get me wrong, I agree H264 is pretty mainstream right now, and I'd like to see an open source alternative (h264 is not going to last if they don't go 100% royalty free, and if they did do that everyone would use it), but relying on the MpegLA list is anything but reliable.
Re:firefox is getting old (Score:4, Interesting)
Does it have real adblock or is it just hiding elements but still loading them? I use all three browsers on a fairly regular basis on Ubuntu, but have found Firefox's Adblock extension to have a better UI and better automatic integration of existing blocklists. Opera's blocking seems to work, but it's UI to select what to block I find awkward. And last I knew (maybe that's changed?) Chrome's adblock didn't actually stop the elements from being loaded on the page, it just hid them via CSS.
Re:Firefox not playing h264 is a political decisio (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't get it. If Firefox had h.264 support, it could not be redistributed. Period. Everyone would have to download the 'offical' version from Mozilla. No Linux distro could include it. No one could change the code and distribute it. It would cripple Firefox. Why the hell doesn't anyone understand this?
HW accelerated SVG (Score:1, Interesting)
Hardware accelerated SVG is pretty big. Qt does this and KDE uses it, but I believe that's a first in any web browser.
Re:Webkit (Score:4, Interesting)
Homogenisation leads to stagnation, even when it's not Microsoft driving it.
People need to realise that it's a *bad* thing if everyone's using Firefox or all the browsers are using webkit as their rendering engine or everyone's running AMD processors. Variety provides competition, which results in progress.
Re:Firefox not playing h264 is a political decisio (Score:5, Interesting)
Ubuntu doesn't seem to have a problem redistributing H.264 support in libavcodec.
Re:H.264 (Score:0, Interesting)
Agreed, everyone missed that (Score:4, Interesting)
With all the idiots fighting over the usual crap no one mentioned that it doesn't seem to support the canvas element. Microsoft has specifically tried to get the canvas element removed from the HTML5 spec. (as per here [canvasdemos.com]). And I know why Microsoft doesn't want the canvas element in there: because it's a direct threat to Silverlight.
Re:plug-in-free video? (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's try that again.
Microsoft has been fined in EU specifically for abusing the web browser market.
Do you think that EU would turn a blind eye if MS would now use the dominance it has on that market (which, according to EU, was achieved by illegal means) to harass a market that is directly related?
Also, there's no line in the sand. EU itself has redrawn it several times, as it wasn't happy with MS behavior during the trial. It may well redraw it once more.
Re:firefox is getting old (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is: Firefox does not have multicore support IE got.
And that's quickly changing. The ff efforts to bring each tab its own process means multi-core support - if albeit, coarse grained.
Bahhh... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Slew of recent marketting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing new. Just read this:
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/57261/ [lxer.com]
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html [joelonsoftware.com]
And spread the news to other newbies!
Re:Standard compliance? (Score:3, Interesting)
When Internet Explorer 6 was released, way back in 2001, it included two different rendering modes. The old 5.5 rendering mode, retroactively dubbed "quirks mode", and the new 6.0 mode. The new mode was only triggered on pages that included a modern doctype. The new mode gets centring right. The old mode gets centring wrong. So what you have done by asserting that Internet Explorer 6 gets centring wrong is tell everybody you've inadvertently been targeting Internet Explorer 5.5 by not using a modern doctype and not being aware of something the rest of the world has known about since 2001.