Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Internet Explorer Windows Microsoft The Internet

IE 11 Getting WebGL, SPDY/3, New Dev Tools 119

rescendent writes sends this report about new features in Internet Explorer 11: "Microsoft released Windows Server ("Blue") to MSDN subscribers today, ahead of the BUILD conference later this week in San Francisco. The build provides us a number of clues as to what we will see in the official Windows 8.1 (Blue) preview. The server build number is 9341, the Windows 8.1 preview build will be: 6.3.9431.winmain_bluemp.130615-1214. IE11 scores 351/500 + 2 bonus point, and 25/25 for WebGL. Since this is a server build, the score may be a little higher than IE11 on Win 8.1, but this confirms WebGL for IE11. IE11 WebGL Conformance Test Results: 14,748 of 20,509 tests pass (71.9%). Many things seen in the Server 2012 R2 preview will also show up in the Windows 8.1 preview."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

IE 11 Getting WebGL, SPDY/3, New Dev Tools

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward

    why would that make a significant difference?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      why would that make a significant difference?

      well, because it's SERVER it has a much stabler kernel and supertuned internals and therefore is better for running an irc client... that's what one ms fanboi once told me anyhow.

      seriously though, dunno, maybe it boots straight to desktop and has couple of flags so it will run ms servers with higher connection counts..

      • Re:server build? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by _merlin ( 160982 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2013 @01:34AM (#44109503) Homepage Journal

        Server installations by default have the scheduler configured to prioritise services over UI applications, and to provide more deterministic scheduling at the expense of responsiveness to user input.

        • Kind of like /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, which decides that if you copy over 10GB junk to a backup drive, all your running processes get swapped off to make space for file cache because "it improves throughput".

          • Re:server build? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday June 26, 2013 @08:05AM (#44111097) Homepage Journal

            Swapped? What is this swap? I have 8GB of RAM, I neither need nor have swap. For people with too little memory to run anything without it, it's mandatory. To everyone else, it's just a way to slow down your computer.

            • LOL. How will swap slow your machine down if swap isn't used? Maybe you should get a real computer.
              • The only time my machine ever uses swap is when a program has a memory leak and takes much more memory than it needs. Usually this is garbage data and I want the program killed. Without swap, the out-of-memory killer would do exactly that for me. With swap, my machine desperately tries to keep it running by swapping out everything I'm trying to use, and wasting 5 minutes of my time.

                • It's amazing how many people don't get this, but posted (mostly anonymously) in response to my comment anyway. If you have more RAM than you're using then the only time you're going to swap is when something goes badly wrong, and then it just leads to a lot of disk thrashing before either the OOM killer comes into play or the kernel panics, whichever comes first. Either way, I'd rather not sit there trying to gain meaning from the HDD LED. 8GB may not be a "lot" but it's more than I need to run several siz

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by jrumney ( 197329 )

        It used to be the case that non-server versions of Windows had limits on simultaneous connections in the TCPIP stack, which could affect web browser benchmark performance.

    • by crutchy ( 1949900 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2013 @03:28AM (#44109907)

      maybe they're going for "year of the windows server"?

  • 351 +2 (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by narcc ( 412956 )

    IE11 scores 351/500 + 2 bonus point

    Wow, that's ... pitiful.

    • by Horshu ( 2754893 )
      It's also a preview build. Get over it.
      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        Considering IE 10's score, I seriously doubt that the fact that it's a "preview build" matters. It's not likely to improve much, if at all.

        Hell, give it another 10 points and it's still behind a number of televisions.

        Get over it.

        • Re:351 +2 (Score:4, Insightful)

          by RulerOf ( 975607 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2013 @04:25AM (#44110123)
          To be fair, those TV's are probably all running Webkit.

          I still prefer Chrome over Internet Explorer, but IE 10 (the "Metro" version anyway) isn't a mind-numbingly terrible piece of software in comparison to the competition. It's good to know that, however ironic it may be, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera are all working opposite Google to keep the web away from just a different monoculture.
          • Actually there's nothing wrong with an open source "monoculture" - maybe if everyone used their own fork of webkit web development would be simpler without any of the players being able to stop innovating without falling behind.

          • To be fair, those TV's are probably all running Webkit. I still prefer Chrome over Internet Explorer, but IE 10 (the "Metro" version anyway) isn't a mind-numbingly terrible piece of software in comparison to the competition. It's good to know that, however ironic it may be, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera are all working opposite Google to keep the web away from just a different monoculture.

            I've not had the personal "pleasure" of using IE10, since my long experience with previous MS products led me down a different path. But it is kinda of good to see MS is not shitting all over their own customers any more, just because they can and their customers don't know any better.

          • It's good to know that, however ironic it may be, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera are all working opposite Google to keep the web away from just a different monoculture.

            Opera? Opera is now a Chrome skin.

    • IE11 scores 351/500 + 2 bonus point

      Again a reasonable post marked flamebait. The quote *directly* from the summery presented the score in a preview browser as great when in reality it is pitiful. The figures are from http://html5test.com/ [html5test.com] and the Browser I am currently rocking is Firefox 22 (A released browser) which scores 409/500 + 10 bonus points.

      • With rapid releasing the new IE 6 is webkit. MS is being conservative as it does not want another box model scandal for 10 years as developers write 2 different standards. I know its cool to hate IE but it does have 90% of Firefoxes features and is updated annually now. W3C already changed standards which hurt older phones as they recognize webkit css for Android 2.3.

      • by Krojack ( 575051 )

        Weird, I get 410 + 14 with my FF 22. It's biggest failing points are the various FORM INPUT TYPE= test. I can live with that.

        Still I like Chrome more. Seems faster on my laptop. I also like the sync options to keep me laptop and desktop settings in sync. The FF sync system would keep failing on and off for months and they seemed to never get it fixed for good.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Is the name of the submitter rescendent writes?
    Is this article about a web browser or a web server?

    "IE11 scores 351/500 + 2 bonus point, and 25/25 for WebGL."
    So 25 for WebGL and 351+2 for ??

    And why the fuck are we even reporting some M$ marketing FUD to begin with?

    • Is the name of the submitter rescendent writes?

      Yes.

      Is this article about a web browser or a web server?

      Yes.

      So 25 for WebGL and 351+2 for ??

      Yes.

      And why the fuck are we even reporting some M$ marketing FUD to begin with?

      Yes!

  • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

    Why would the score be higher for a server build? What use would a server have for a web browser? Surely they should be making more effort on the client version of the browser, where it might actually be used?

    • Why would the score be higher for a server build? What use would a server have for a web browser? Surely they should be making more effort on the client version of the browser, where it might actually be used?

      It is the same version, but running on the server it may disable some features because of security settings. Actually I'm surprised that WebGL is enabled on a server build, given that WebGL has the potential to inject and run code on your GPU.

      However, there needs to be a server version for 1) those who install and maintain a server through it's own GUI and 2) servers used as "terminal servers". Yes, 1) is bad practice but it actually allows small shops to run their own server. Microsoft recommends installin

  • by gbjbaanb ( 229885 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2013 @06:31AM (#44110525)

    ok, so it is still considered harmful [technet.com] or was that the usual guff about how DirectX (or whatever brand-name they're pushing today) is vastly superior to anything standard.

    Have they done anything with WebGL to "fix" the mentioned problems, or have they just realized no-one listens to their FUD anymore?

    • by DrXym ( 126579 )
      The main requirement for WebGL is the driver supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and an extension which says it's "robust", i.e. it does additional range checking and recovery so it can't be abused by a site and cause a BSOD. Browsers may also implement a whitelist / blacklist of drivers which are known to be good or bad and act accordingly.

      But it's obviously an additional attack surface which is largely outside of a browser's control and it requires the driver author to declare robustness but how does it know? It's a

      • But it's obviously an additional attack surface which is largely outside of a browser's control

        A poorly written 2D graphics driver is likewise. What makes a 3D graphics driver substantially more so?

        ask on a site by site basis whenever JS attempts to access the API via the canvas.

        Which runs the risk of creating a "Cancel or Allow" type scenario where every site wants to use it, and you end up having to click "Allow" for every site you visit.

        • by Tailhook ( 98486 )

          A poorly written 2D graphics driver is likewise. What makes a 3D graphics driver substantially more so?

          Traditional web pages don't directly use a 2D API in the browser so even when vulnerabilities exist they are often beyond the reach of a web application. A web application is limited to manipulating the DOM. No direct access to blitters, compositors, video modes or other hardware features. Even with only this high level exposure there have been exploits, often in image format interpreters.

          WebGL directly exposes the complete OpenGL 2.0 ES API (soon 3.0) to Javascript. WebGL apps can probe hardware for fe

          • WebGL directly exposes the complete OpenGL 2.0 ES API (soon 3.0) to Javascript

            where did you get this? this is crap.

            WebGL truly is an exposure of GPU hardware and driver software directly to web applications.

            this is just complete FUD. WebGL is just an API.

            an implementation might blindly forward everything to an apparently compatible hardware device. it would be fucking stupid if it did. especially since it's trivial to statically determine such things beforehand.

            it would equivalent to having a "asm(...);" function in your browser's javascript JIT that allowed you to inject arbitrary x86 code into the function, or allowing you to write outside the bounds of arrays. this is pe

          • WebGL does things like compile shader code, directly manipulate texture memory and transfer large vertex buffers to video hardware. Traditional DHTML can't do anything like that. WebGL truly is an exposure of GPU hardware and driver software directly to web applications.

            WebGL doesn't necessarily "expose" the GPU to the web application any more than a site that allows HTML comments "exposes" the viewer's browser to the user posting a comment. Slashdot and several other web sites allow users to post comments with a subset of HTML. Arbitrary HTML can perform cross-site scripting using <script> elements, attributes whose name starts with "on", and URLs using the "javascript:" scheme. To prevent this, forum software used by these sites parses and sanitizes [wikipedia.org] the provided HT

      • The main requirement for WebGL is the driver supports OpenGL ES 2.0

        that's bollocks. there's no requirement that the driver support any variant of OpenGL. the requirement is that the browser can perform the operations requested of it by the WebGL program and fragments. the browser is free to ignore them, send them to an OpenGL ES 2.0 driver, transform them into DirectX calls, or send them by carrier pigeon to your grandma.

        somewhere along the long the line you might want to check your inputs, but this certainly doesn't need to be a function of any driver.

        it's the same with J

    • no, there never was anything wrong with WebGL. it was just FUD.

  • I know supporting XP is against two (different?)major strategies; Selling people on Microsoft's stupid everything is a tablet so we are winning(the new strategy of copying Apple), and the old we are Monopoly, buy a new version by crippling(discontinue) the old version so we can can roll around in cash(The old strategy when they were called Micro$oft).

    Ignoring problems from fragmentation, and support...and it holding back the web for many years, or how Microsoft basically won against the United States by bui

    • by Bacon Bits ( 926911 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2013 @10:03AM (#44112591)

      Windows XP was released in October of 2001. That's also the same month Red Hat 7.2 was released. I guess you could say that was a good month for operating systems.

      You know when Red Hat 7.2 was end-of-lifed? December 2003 [redhat.com]. Ten years ago.

      • Windows XP was released in October of 2001.

        Yet was not replaced for till Vista was RTM as of January 30, 2007...although XP was still the only viable alternative till Windows 7 in July 22, 2009, although still massively too bloated an OS for most existing XP machines. You measure from the last sale not the first one :)

        But that has nothing to do with my comment which is Browser market share...and the benefits from having one. Personally I love the fact your defending Microsoft treating its customers with second class versions of its software. I am ru

    • Supporting XP is especially complicated for IE, because starting with IE9 they've rewritten the rendering engine to use Direct2D and DirectWrite (Vista only), which depend on Direct3D 10 (Vista only), which depends on WDDM 1.1 (Vista only). Should they be backporting all of these APIs and kernel-mode code as well? Or maybe just maintain a large GDI fallback just for XP?

      XP is 12 years old, and its last major update is 5 years old. How long should they continue to develop new software and major updates for a

      • Supporting XP is especially complicated for IE,

        Then perhaps they should have designed IE explorer to be cross platform :). The fact that IE does not run on Android soon to be the most dominant platform is an example of what a failure it is. The fact that is supplies its own customers with a second class experience.

        • I know you hate IE as I hated it so much that I used ftp to download firefox back in the day as not to corrupt my cpu with such filth!

          but IE 9 and IE 10 have supperior smooth scroll and hardware acceleration. My Galaxy 4 is smooth and Chrome and FF can't match it due to the inferior XP support!

          IE is smooth when I hit up and down on the arrow keys thanks to using directx11.

          No I am not a MS fanboy but just stating the obvious. I welcome Chrome and FF leaving XP behind and using directX11 for win64 to catch up

          • No I am not a MS fanboy but just stating the obvious. I welcome Chrome and FF leaving XP behind and using directX11 for win64 to catch up. IE really is ahead for multimedia heavy sites.

            LOL no you are an MS shill a fanboy has something to be fanatical about; if I could get dollar every time you said "back in the day" and made out you used something other than Microsoft.(It kills me every time)

            Ironically in context of your comment this article is about Internet Explorer(in an unreleased version) finally catching up with WebGL after lagging behind.

            In context of this article FF both FF and Chrome are measurable ahead :) by about 2 years.

    • by LocalH ( 28506 )

      How come we never hear people bitching that the newest Safari doesn't run on anything older than OS X 10.7? It doesn't look like Safari 7 will be available on anything other than 10.9, as well. Why is that any different to MS not supporting XP, which is much older than 10.6?

    • Oh cry me a river.

      I work for a dirt cheap client. Even we have been moving off XP for a year now. That number is rapidly declining and non biased sites like g.statcounter show XP equal to MacOSX in the US. Only china uses it as 97% is all pirated and Windows 7 is harder to steal it. By 2014 it will be single digit marketshare in the western world.

      • Oh cry me a river.

        I work for a dirt cheap client. Even we have been moving off XP for a year now.

        Not pretending to be a Linux user today. I like you more as a straight Microsoft Apologist. XP exists on 220,000,000 computers. I personally love the fact that you use an Apple excuse to defend Microsoft it, shows how overpriced and under-supported Windows is.

        • I frankly dont know know where you stand? Statcounter shows its death accelerating. XP in my mind is like IE 6. Different era and on its way out. In 2011 when IE 9 came out yes it was debatable as XP loyalists were huge then. Ms is heading the direcrion though Metro is poorly executed. IE is growimg up

          • XP in my mind is like IE 6.... IE is growimg up

            Ironically the Problem with IE6 was it was tied to the OS through monopolistic abuse, outdated(And in the absence of competition did not update it), and everywhere, and simply wasn't very good when compared to its competitors. Its net result is it held back the web for a many years.

            XP on the other hand, Microsoft has tied to the hardware :) was better than its replacement...and better than its current offering. Still has 20% of the market about 220,000,000 users, and again IE will not work on it.

            Internet Ex

    • People are way too serious about their browser selection and take it far too personal. Some of you Slashdotters are starting to sound like broken records or a bunch of red necks arguing whether Dodge or Ford has the best trucks.

      Fact is that IE still fills a number of needs for enterprise and corporate customers. It has features Chrome and Firefox don't offer and don't plan on offering. Chrome and Firefox cater to WEB USERS and they do a very good job at it. IE is still a popular browser and will continue to

      • Fact is that IE still fills a number of needs for enterprise and corporate customers.

        Its not a fact. In reality any firm wanting a cutting edge advantage (as well as others) will avoid IE like a plague. The reality is targeting a platform dependant in today BYOD rather than a cutting edge browser specification, for internal...or mobile deployment is incredibly foolish.

        Less like comparing brands...more like hiring a serial killer as a baby sitter.

        • You opinion is clearly slanted or you don't live in the Enterprise world.

          Companies that do not keep their OS updated within reason most probably don't give a damn about new features in browsers. Companies that seek an edge through technology not only keep their software up to date but they train their staff to use is efficiently. They also stream line their deployments and force applications on their staff. In some cases IE may be the #1 choice because that's what the web applications were tested with.

          Many

  • WebGL is basically almost the same as OpenGL ES 2.0, which is missing on Windows Phone, Windows RT and Windows 8 modern.
    Nowadays most mobile apps use this API for 3D, which makes porting to their platform a big hassle (Only D3D in 9_3 profile is supported, which is even more limited than GL ES 2.0).
    Im sure that this is done with a wrapper over their D3D driver, so I hope they make it available for the C++ APIs.
    • by Lennie ( 16154 )

      Yes, I believe the WebGL implementations even in Chrome and Firefox on Windows are implemented in Direct3D/DirectX/whatever.

      Don't count on it the wrapper is probably in IE itself.

      Use a WebView and you can use WebGL, that solves your problem. ;-)

      • Firefox and Chrome use ANGLE, yes.
        http://code.google.com/p/angleproject/ [google.com]

        You can use native opengl though.
        In Firefox, about:config and search for webgl.
        Set:
        webgl.prefer-native-gl;true

        In past I've needed to do this on some windows machines to get some WebGL to work. Shader issue or somesuch.

        There's also:
        webgl.force-enabled;true

        While you're in that section, btw, if you feel you know your card/driver combo better than their blacklist does.

        Oh, and:
        gfx.direct2d.force-enabled;true
        or even
        gfx.direct2d.disabled;true

    • you can't use WebGL in web safari on the iPhone because that would allow you to write compelling content on the web that would cut into Apple's 30% of everything.

  • I can't wait to support the wonderful features in IE11. Going by my site stats for IE over the 2 past years and W3Counter's graphs (http://www.w3counter.com/trends), I look forward to 10% of my IE users (themselves only 15% of my visitors) using it in 2 or 3 years. (Or, I can support wonderful new features in Chrome, FireFox, and Safari and cover over 75% of my users.)

  • I wonder where they are getting this statistics from, who is their sources, if there is any bias, etc.
  • so this means that there's still people using ie?

To stay youthful, stay useful.

Working...