Performance standard two-legged walk: Preliminary Experience of ie9 Platform Preview

Yesterday, Microsoft finally announced the preview version of its next-generation browser ie9,Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview"(Ie9 Platform Preview). Apparently,Ie9 will no longer be a simple web browser, but it will become a Microsoft Network Platform. Check the version number. IE is 9.0.7745.6019 and platform is 1.9.7745.6019. This release is only an early version. It is only used for technical preview and evaluation. It is not even included in a beta version. It can only be said to be between alpha and beta. On it, many common browser functions have not yet been added, such as forward and backward buttons, home page buttons, address bar, tabs, favorites, parameter settings, and so on, more like a quasi system. Some shortcut keys can be used. For example, you can press F10 to open the home page or press Ctrl + O to open a new address. However, the shortcut key is invalid after you move it back.

However, it represents a development direction for Microsoft and Internet Explorer, that is, it does not follow industry standards and standards as it did in the past (especially IE6.True compatibility with W3C standards can be said to be the top priority of ie9, including full support for HTML5, css3, SVG, XHTML, H.264/MPEG4 HTML5 Video playback. At the same time, Microsoft also hopes to get feedback from web developers and designers through such a preview version and give the IE development team a new direction.

Microsoft assuredUpgrade will be performed strictly every eight weeksIncluding the overall improvement of the platform, gradually solving known problems, and improving the acid3 standard test scores.

I. Javascript Performance

Browsers such as opera, Firefox, and chrome are often selling at a faster speed during publicity, and IE is widely criticized in this regard.Microsoft hopes to support 2D, 3D, and thml GPU hardware acceleration rendering to narrow the performance gap, but also introduced a new multi-threaded JavaScript Engine, codenamed "Chakra" -- This is a term in Indian yoga and refers to the center of human spiritual strength.

According to the sunspider test data released by Microsoft, the JS performance of ie9 preview version is more than six times that of IE8, between Firefox 3.6/3.7 and Safari 4.0.5, it is also much better than the demo version on PDC 2009.

 

On a latitude XT notebook with a core 2 Duo u7600 processor, 3 GB memory, and Windows 7 operating system, the ie9 preview version is only twice faster than IE8, it is much worse than Firefox 3.6 and chrome 4.1, and I don't know where the problem is.

 

Switch to another machine, which is configured with the celon e3400 processor, 4 GB memory, and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The speed of this ie9 preview is finally reached, which is basically the same as the data published by Microsoft.

Since it is a preview version, the performance is unstable, and it will inevitably encounter various errors in actual use. For example, this occurs when you use different processor configurations to test sunspider performance:

Ii. Standard compatibility

Today, more and more web pages are available, and more technologies are being implemented. If there are no unified standards and strict implementation, it will naturally be messy. Now Microsoft has finally begun to learn well. Using the ie9 preview version to browse most websites is normal and the layout is accurate, with only occasional script errors (after all, the entire JS engine has been rewritten ).

For example, http://www.newmongod.com/, and check whether the pure CSS is used to achieve various page effects. In the ie9 preview version, everything is normal.

Acid3 standard test only55/100 pointsThis is also one of the priorities of the ie9 development team. However, Microsoft will not blindly pursue a higher score because the HTML5 specification is still being developed.

Microsoft also provided comparison results of CSS rendering in the latest versions of Firefox, chrome, and ie9:

3. HTML5 GPU Acceleration

In addition to the newly rewritten JS engine,The most powerful weapon of ie9 compared with other browsers is GPU hardware accelerated rendering, such as HTML5 . At the mix 10 conference, Microsoft used an ion netbook to display two GPU-accelerated videos simultaneously.

However, the public release of ie9 does not support HTML5 GPU acceleration, Microsoft said it will be added in future versions.

More Obvious performance benefits from 2D/3D HTML5 display AccelerationLet's take a look at a demonstration made by Microsoft using different browser logos.Program.

IE8: the speed is only 1-2 FPS, but the image quality is very good.

Safari 4.0.4: the speed of 2-3 FPS is also extremely slow, but the quality is also acceptable.

Firefox 3.6: 30fps is quite fast, but the image quality is poor and the color is not clear enough.

Chrome: similar to IE8 and Safari, it is of good quality and slow speed.

Ie9: the speed of 3.6-60 FPS is incomparable, but the image quality has a great loss, better than firfox, but worse than IE8, Safari, and chrome.

Of course, this is all publicized by Microsoft, and it cannot be ruled out to boast.

By the way, ie9 will no longer support Windows XP, but only Windows Vista/7. It may be related to the latter's windows display driver model (wddm) technology.

Conclusion:

From this rough and simple preview version, Microsoft does comply with public opinions. On the one hand, it strives to improve the compatibility of Web specifications, and on the other hand, it significantly improves the running performance. In the context of the fierce competition in the browser field, Microsoft finally woke up and began to learn from competitors such as Google, Mozilla, and Apple, and listened to the feedback and opinions from the industry.

This is the benefit of competition.