Internet Explorer 9: The Most Comprehensive Developer Guide (and Not Only), Part 3

This is the third part of the innovation guide in IE9. In the first part I reviewed the support for CSS, HTML5, DOM standards, the second part was devoted to the implementation of IEG technology SVG. In the third final part, I will tell you about the support in IE9 of the new standard WOFF web fonts, ICC profiles, TIFF and JPEG XR formats, changes in the JavaScript engine, developer tools, and the user interface in IE9.

Web Fonts and WOFF

The history of the introduction of arbitrary fonts into web pages has long roots. For many, it will be a revelation to find out that the first browser that implemented the CSS2 @ font-face property was Internet Explorer 4.0, released 13 years ago in 1997. However, due to the fact that the technology was not widely used, @ font-face was removed from the CSS 2.1 specification, but the implementation of this property has been in all versions of IE since 4.0.

It should be noted that the font format for introduction into IE is not quite normal. It is called Embedded OpenType , is a subset of the OpenType format, and was designed to be able to protect the copyright of fonts, as well as to reduce the size of the font file by compressing and eliminating unused characters. The eot files were obtained significantly less than their counterparts from the TrueType and OpenType formats. The EOT format was sent for standardization to the W3C as an open format in 2008 .
')
@ font-face returned to the CSS3 specification and was implemented in other browsers only from versions Firefox 3.5+, Safari 3.1+, Opera 10+ and Chrome 4.0+. However, unlike Internet Explorer, these browsers allow embedding of TrueType (TTF) and OpenType (OTF) fonts . The problem of copyright and the huge size of some fonts in this case is not solved.

The new generation of web font technology should be the standard WOFF (Web Open Font Format). On April 8, 2010, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera together sent the WOFF 1.0 specification to the W3C. This request was posted on the W3C website on April 19th. WOFF offers the same features as EOT: it is based on sfnt , the character set can be shortened in it, it can be compressed using zlib and it has an optional section that authors can use to place encrypted or any other data.

The WOFF format is supported in Firefox 3.6 and will be supported in Internet Explorer 9.

TIFF and JPEG XR support

Internet Explorer 9 natively supports TIFF and JPEG XR image formats. In addition, IE9 uses image decoding via the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) , which can increase the decoding speed by up to 30%.

If everything is clear and widely known with TIFF, then JPEG XR is a new standard that has not yet become widespread. JPEG XR is an ISO / IEC 29199-2: 2009 standard and part of the ITU-T T.832: 2009 standard. Developed by Microsoft, this standard greatly improves the old JPEG format and adds many features to it. The main advantage of JPEG XR is that with the same file size as JPEG, it offers much better picture quality. You can verify this on this test page for Internet Explorer 9. The browser’s support for TIFF is also demonstrated there.

ICC profiles

The well-known international organization International Color Consortium standardizes formats ICC profiles . According to wikipedia: “The following specifications allow systems to maintain accurate color reproduction when using various applications and devices from the creation phase to the final print. The device responsible for color reproduction corresponds to its ICC profile . ”

Thus, ICC profile support is needed for accurate color reproduction. And Internet Explorer 9 implements such support for ICC v2 and ICC v4. A simple official test from the ICC organization will determine how accurately your browser transmits colors and which version of ICC profiles it supports, if it supports it at all.

Chakra - new IE9 JavaScript engine

At the MIX10 conference, Microsoft, in addition to all other innovations in the browser, announced a new JavaScript engine called Chakra . This engine even at an early stage showed excellent performance results overtaking IE8 7 times. Improvements in Platform Preview 2 only consolidated success.



What are the features of Chakra:



- background JavaScript compilation and the use of multi-core processors. When an IE9 application is launched, it loads the page using a fast interpreter. At the same time, the background compiler compiles the JS code into machine code and returns it back upon completion. Thus, the browser does not wait for the result of the compiler when the page is launched and the first page load is faster;

- for optimizing types, the IE9 engine uses techniques that are used today in dynamic languages: type representation, polymorphic inline caching, dynamic type inference, etc;

- a fast interpreter is used where immediate execution of the code on the page is needed, it uses efficient opcode, type optimization, register-based positioning engine;

- All components of the JS libraries have been significantly improved: for working with strings, objects, arrays, especially regular expressions.

Some details of the new Chakra engine can be found in this video: Inside IE 9's High Performance JavaScript Engine . There you can also watch other videos that relate to Internet Explorer 9.

Developer Tools

The fact that IE8 included developer tools was a big step forward, there were several innovative things for that time, such as the JavaScript profiler. However, the performance of the tools depended heavily on the complexity of the HTML page. On large pages the tools were inhibited and it was impossible to work with them.

Another complaint about the IE8 developer tools was the lack of monitoring and analyzing HTTP requests / responses. It was nice to know that in IE9 such a tool appeared.





In addition, working with pages with a very large DOM was also improved, although not as much as we would like. Let's hope that the final version of the performance tightened. From the little things that I would like to note:

- ability to change Agent String



- JavaScript console appeared (as rightly noted, it was in IE8, but now it has been made a separate tab)



In the two test builds of IE9, there was no JavaScript profiler tab, but the developers promise that this feature will return improved and updated.

Appearance

This section is completely my suspicions that may not have anything to do with reality. The fact is that the current test builds of IE9 are presented in an unattractive form: there are no controls, you cannot go back in the viewing history, there is no line for entering an address (the address is entered using ctrl + o).



To this mind, I find two reasonable explanations:

- a simplification is made intentionally, so that test versions are not used in practice and are not diverged among the townsfolk, which can lead to difficulties in translating them into final versions. In other words, the appearance of IE9 is made hardcore so that only developers use it for testing purposes;

- the simplification is made due to the fact that the appearance of IE9 in the final version will be completely different from IE8. He is either not ready, or he does not want to shine in advance, preparing a surprise for a certain time.

I like the second hypothesis more. I suspect that IE9 will get a WPF interface (GPU-accelerated, naturally, like everything else in WPF) with a bunch of visual effects. Not many people know that Microsoft already has a browser built on WPF with a radically new interface and a couple of frankly successful solutions. This browser is Pivot .



Designed for working with pivot data, it still allows you to use it as a regular browser. There are a lot of innovations in IE8: tabs in the form of thumbnails below, tagging pages and working with them in the form of pivot data, a functional scroll that, if pulled to the left, reduces the page scale to full fit on the screen, etc. In general, I recommend to download and evaluate yourself.

I like many Pivot ideas, but it’s hard and obviously not optimized for anything other than working with pivot data. However, I hope that Microsoft will make IE9 something similar to Pivot in terms of interface, using its best ideas.

Another speculation in my opinion could be the possibility of expanding the future of IE9. If the interface is drastically modified, the plug-in system in IE will also change. I hope that the future extension system will be built on a new successful MEF architecture , which is available in .NET 3.5 and 4.0.

Conclusion

In three articles I tried to tell you about what exactly awaits developers and users in the new Internet Explorer 9. Work continues on it, but now there is a huge progress in the functionality that browser developers have done introducing support for many new things and mechanisms for IE. Support for CSS3 / HTML5 / SVG, a new very fast JavaScript engine, GPU acceleration and maybe a new look is what awaits us in IE9.

Very soon, in the middle or end of June, the third test version of IE9 will be available, in which support for HTML5 video and other innovations is expected. I will keep you informed and continue this cycle of articles with a new piece of information.