IE10 – What do you think of it?

[Watson90]

Hey

I have just this minute installed Windows 8 and now giving Internet Explorer 10 a go. First impressions are that it’s really nice! I think they’ve made a bunch of improvements from IE9 (Obviously these “improvements” have been included in other major browsers for a long time already before IE10) such as being able to render box-shadow effectively etc.

What are your thoughts guys?

[Paulie_D]

Meh…I’m so over IE.

Sure it can now render more stuff than IE9 but it’ll stay lagging behind FF & Chrome unless MS can suddenly ramp up their update schedule…which I doubt.

Visually, it’s almost indistinguishable from IE9 and I think they missed a trick there.

[Watson90]

Yeah I see what you guys mean, I definitely agree that it will ALWAYS lag behind the rest of the current trendsetters. What is the reason behind IE and it’s crappy developments?

Is it due to Microsoft’s Developers? Money? What?

[Paulie_D]

For my own part, I suspect it’s due to the somewhat monolithic nature of MS itself.

Implementing these new features is probably pretty easy (he said knowing nothing about it) but getting them approved to be incorporated into regular builds is probably a lot harder.

Chrome & FF (and others i suspect) have their various build channels but even these seem to roll out new versions every couple of weeks.

I remain unconvinced that MS has the willingness & /or ability to do that.

[dstorey]

IE10 is actually a pretty good modern web browser. Its CSS support is particularly good. It has all the recent CSS features we rely on in other browsers, such as gradients, CSS transitions, 2d and 3d transforms, animations, Multi-column etc, and they are all now unprefixed. Flexbox is also supported and needs a prefix, as the syntax changed after Microsoft implemented it. It is also the only browser AFAICT that fully supports CSS 2.1.

It also has great support for a lot of the more experimental or newer specs, such as @viewport (CSS version of viewport meta, only supported by Opera and IE), Grid Layout (only IE so far), Regions (IE and disabled by default in Chrome), and Exclusions (IE and nightly webkit builds).

Like most other browsers, it has complete support for ES5 (latest version of JavaScript), and they support some interesting new specs such as Performance Timeline and Resource Timing from the Web Performance group, which are not yet in other browsers: http://blog.trasatti.it/2012/12/measuring-the-speed-of-resource-loading-with-javascript-and-html5.html

So, from a developer’s viewpoint there is a lot of new toys to play with and most gaps in standards support have been plugged, bar a couple of exceptions. But, most browsers lack some features that developers want.

[Kitty Giraudel]

Sadly, I couldn’t test it yet, but from what I’ve read about IE10, it’s actually a very good browser. And for now, IE10 is the lead concerning security if no mistake.

The question is not “is IE10 a good browser?” but “how long will it be?”.

[twincy]

talking css, then so far i’m very happy that i can concentrate on other issues than ‘worrying about IE’. conditional comments for older IE == no problemas. it feels like an important step that IE10 behaves more like the ‘others’. good start. keep it rolling.

[Senff]

I love the fact that it supports so much more and that it’s not a big stumbling block for developers anymore (“ok, it works everywhere, now let’s see how it is in IE” is pretty much in the past…although I never minded that much).

But I still prefer the developer tools of Chrome. Not because that’s so much better, but simply because I’m so used to it.

I guess the biggest hurdle IE has to overcome is the terrible reputation it has amongst developers, and that’s why it’ll be a tough road to catch up with the other browsers.

[chrisburton]

Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Microsoft issue a warning NOT to use their browser (IE 5.5 – 10) because of this vulnerability? Sounds like a great start for them. I honestly wish that all developers would stop supporting it.

I prefer that Microsoft partners with Mozilla and Google and let the users select which browser they want on their OS.

[Watson90]

@chrisburton – really!?

It would be cool if Microsoft paired up with Mozilla and/or Google to make the experience better, my favourite browser is still Chrome. Although it has this horrid TypeKit bug _I believe_ that makes CSS-Tricks look ugly =(

[chrisburton]

@Watson90 Yes, really. And CSS-Tricks isn’t using Typekit. It’s using beta webfonts by Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

[Watson90]

@chrisburton – Ahh right, I see. It must just be the way Chrome renders custom fonts. All jaggerdy and gross looking.

[Senff]

> I prefer that Microsoft partners with Mozilla and Google and let the users select which browser they want on their OS.

I agree. Microsoft doesn’t always make it clear enough that people can install other browsers.
However, while MS is getting bitched at for this all the time, it seems it’s all OK for Apple to do the exact same thing with Safari on iOS (actually, it’s worse because even though you can install other browsers on iOS, there’s no way to make them default).

Can someone point me to the warning Microsoft issued about not using IE? First time I hear about it.

[chrisburton]

@Senff I can’t find it with a quick search.

@Watson90 Windows renders fonts differently than OSX. It actually looks much better on a Mac but that’s no surprise. I believe IE10 uses the DirectWrite rendering engine which should show an improvement with webfonts. But this is also due to hinting.

[dstorey]

@jamy_za yeah, I’ve not used their dev tools too much. I have to dig into it properly now I have a Windows machine to test. I was the PM of Opera’s developer tools, so I’m sure I’ll have quite a lot of feedback to give to MS when I have a better idea of the capabilities. Its a good start that they actually exist though. By all accounts, Visual Studio is a great IDE and debugger, so they certainly have the talent to make a top class tool. I’d be surprised if this is not a priority considering you can make Windows apps using web technology now.

Yeah, IE10 doesn’t support WebGL, but I‘m not sure how much that impacts the average web developer or web site. Its certainly a nice to have feature, and certainly important for games developers, but there were probably more pressing features to add to IE10. I don’t think MS have ever said either way if they are going to implement WebGL or not. They have raised concerns however, and it is standardised in a group which MS is not a member (Khronos) rather than the W3C. That certainly does‘t help for MS buy in I would expect.

@chrisburton I’d be surprised if MS told people not to use their own browser.

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