Wipes the floor on Chrome.

 http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/PsychedelicBrowsing/Default.htm

 

 

 

 

Microsoft have put up their latest IE9 platform preview, where they have some nice examples of hardware accelerated graphics (the reason why the browser won’t run on XP). This is their final developer test before they release their beta, looking to be out early autumn.

 

They are strongly recommending developers and designers start getting sites ready for IE9. Among the obvious, serve the same code as for IE9 as other browsers (so using conditional comments correctly) they suggest:

• Testing sites in IE9 standards mode

• Using feature detection, not browser detection to handle cross browser support

• Start taking advantage of HTML5, CSS3, SVG and Canvas

Take a look from the IE9 Test Drive site. 

How will this affect browser support? It will obviously be hugely time consuming to get sites working across four versions of IE, so we’ll need to look again at how we support different browser versions using tiered support dependant of each browser’s support of new features. Perhaps using a traffic light system of support based on available features.