News - Internet Explorer 9 tops first official HTML5 conformance test

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W3C testing puts Microsoft’s latest in the lead while Safari trails the pack.

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Read more.

So they're testing a pre-beta quality "platform preview" of IE against a beta of Chrome, a beta of Firefox, an alpha of Opera, and a final release version of Safari that's a couple of months old instead of the latest Webkit nightly. Way to go on fairness there.

But then they would have been testing a Webkit nightly and not the newest Safari that is out there. Yes the underlying core of Safari is based on Webkit, but that doesn't make them the same thing really.

I would expect to see a great deal of progress made by the other browers by the time IE9 final is released. So much to that I would guess IE9 will end up in at least 3rd, perhaps fourth or fifth even.

All the other browsers have a much sorter release schedule than Microsoft, so instead of large jumps, expect to see incrimental improvements from the others as we go forward.

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Originally Posted by Rolphus

So they're testing a pre-beta quality "platform preview" of IE against a beta of Chrome, a beta of Firefox, an alpha of Opera, and a final release version of Safari that's a couple of months old instead of the latest Webkit nightly. Way to go on fairness there.

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I'd say that they are already on to 9 for IE, so I'm guessing they just used to most current versions they could find.

The news here is not that it was the highest scoring, but that the velocity at which they have managed to get there. That is the key thing.

In other news, the weather in hell is a nippy 10°K and there will be a flypast of suidae in classic V formation over trafalgar square this afternoon.

internet explorer could be first and come with free cake... i still wouldnt use it

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

internet explorer could be first and come with free cake... i still wouldnt use it

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CAKE? I'm in.

Seriously though, you'd not use something ever even if it became superior to your current choice? Don't get me wrong, I'm a solid Opera user but that's after trying all the competition for several weeks. IE9 (you obviously haven't tried it) is amazingly er.. good. It seems wrong somehow but it is. I don't think I'll jump ship (especially now Opera 11 has extensions) but it's hard to ignore such a paradigm shift from MS in their browser (which we all come into contact with once in a while anyway).

Well its unlikely that firefox will fall a million miles behind. The only reason i would try it was if it got a big following within the knowledgable community. I would then probably try it, eat the cake, realize i still prefer firefox and go back to that. Similar thing happened with chrome.

But the current fire fox is a bloated pig, unless you have some strange addins you need, I can't see it as a good browser, let alone the best!

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Originally Posted by TheAnimus

But the current fire fox is a bloated pig, unless you have some strange addins you need, I can't see it as a good browser, let alone the best!

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Tis true - I spent two weeks on chrome, firefox and Opera (in turn) - ended up on Opera because i realised i could get the functionality i needed (there by default or via a simple script) in a smaller, faster package than firefox (which takes forever to startup on the wife's machine - this made said wife unhappy, which in turn makes my life hell) and with a nicer Win7-style GUI too. Chrome I didn't like because it stuck itself in appdata (cardinal sin) but it was plenty nicer than FF. FF had it's day, and certainly has it's quasi-religious followers, but it's rapidly being marginalised by Chrome and if the current leader (IE) releases near it's current state it'll satisfy the unwashed masses enough to stay there. Like all things MS is only ever real threat when their product sucks sufficiently to drive people to alternatives - most people are lazy and most people will stick with what they know. And when it comes to browsers most people refer to IE as "Google" because that's their home page.

see i never notice Firefox being bloated, i also dont understand peoples comments on the 'quickness' of chrome... when i tried it it just didn't come through at all

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

see i never notice Firefox being bloated, i also dont understand peoples comments on the 'quickness' of chrome... when i tried it it just didn't come through at all

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Try it on a 939 based system (see below) - even with an SSD it's several seconds slower to fire up than either Chrome or Opera (or IE) with just the basic set of plugins (i.e. the stuff I consider essential).

i only have core2 and athlon II based systems with 2GB+ of RAM. Maybe thats it.

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

i only have core2 and athlon II based systems with 2GB+ of RAM. Maybe thats it.

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I've got a Core2 Quad based system and still notice that Firefox is slower to start up than IE8 even. I still use Firefox the vast majority of the time simply because I'm too lazy to try Chrome or Opera. I simply use FF day to day due to it's lack of Activex support making it sloightly more secure for normal day to day stuff and IE8 for anything that doesn't work properly on Firefox. IE8 may be more secureby design but FF's lack of activex support makes it more secure in reality. Once IE9 comes out of beta, I'll upgrade to it. I'll probably continue using Firefox out of habit.

Thing is i only start it up once, then leave it on in the background while im doing other stuff. People go on about start up times the most important feature when in reality its a couple of seconds at a single point in the evening/morning.

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

Thing is i only start it up once, then leave it on in the background while im doing other stuff. People go on about start up times the most important feature when in reality its a couple of seconds at a single point in the evening/morning.

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(in which case it's eaten all your memory through the day :D)

To many people it's important, because a heck of a lot of us habitually close things when they're finished with them. The OCD amongst us close after each website :mrgreen:

Oh god no i couldn't do that!i have like 4-5 tabs open permanently and that's about it. My housemate is terrible, he has like a million tabs open, every time he wants to change website he will open a new tab.