In my recent blog post, Chakra: Interoperability Means More Than Just Standards , I explained why IE9 only supports the ECMAScript 5 API for defining getter/setter methods. I also mentioned that it is fairly trivial to define a simple compatibility library to help transition existing code to this new API. This is part of what it means to support .. more »

On this blog we’ve repeatedly discussed enabling the "Same Markup" for Internet Explorer 9. Part of making "Same Markup" a reality involves supporting the right features in IE9 to make the same HTML, JavaScript, and CSS "just work" the same way they do in other browsers. Part of how IE9 contributes to enabling the "Same Markup" is through support fo.. more »

As discussed in previous blog posts, add-ons can have a material impact on browser users can make informed decisions about them. It is important to understand how add-ons arrive on a user’s system to begin with because browser performance is so important to site developers and to consumers. The notification and control that users have around the ad.. more »

For IE9 Platform Preview 4, we significantly re-architected how the Chakra JavaScript engine integrates into IE. This re-architecture, described in , subtly changes the programming model of the DOM for IE9 standards mode, making it consistent with new ECMAScript 5 capabilities, more interoperable with other browsers and aligned with emerging .. more »

the Professional Developers Conference last fall , we discussed how real world browser performance involves many different subsystems. Different websites use these subsystems in different ways, and to build a fast real world browser you have to start by understanding these overall patterns. This post provides an inside look at how these subsystems .. more »

demonstrated Test Driving Modern SVG using the SVG Dice sample currently on the Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive site . While building this sample, I learned that both performance and interoperability for SVG are a subtle continuum and are binary. This point resonated with me so much that I modified my presentation for this week’s The Future of SVG an.. more »

show the focus in IE9 on performance, interoperable HTML5 through same markup, and hardware acceleration. We’ve also posted here about the work we’ve done with , and we shared some and how we measure it. In this post, we cover more of our thinking about measuring add-on performance and how to help consumers to stay in control of their browsing expe.. more »

The first IE9 Platform Preview unveiled IE9’s initial support of SVG . As explained previously, SVG is a vector image format managed by the W3C. The release of the third and fourth Platform Previews come with feature-complete SVG. Major additions include support for SVG gradients, patterns, clipping, and masking. These features are often used to cr.. more »

How do we decide whether to implement a feature that isn’t included in a standards specification? Like all browser providers, we often have to make this decision. In this post, I’ll use some real-world JavaScript examples to illustrate some of the principles we use to deliver an interoperable browser when the standards specification isn’t enough.. more »

IE has traditionally drawn a 2-pixel border around the content area of a site. This border, drawn as part of the page rather than IE’s frame, affects calculations of distance from the top and left of the page. It also creates a not-so-modern beveled look. In the fourth Platform Preview, you’ll notice pages running in IE9’s Standards Mode no longer.. more »

Earlier this morning the W3C announced the formation of a new chartered with making it easier to accurately measure web application performance. Enabling web developers to understand the real world performance characteristics of their applications is critical to the success of HTML5, and we’re excited to have been selected as co-chairs of the new wo.. more »

IE9 introduces support for the , including its popular opacity property. As we have done with other standards-based features, opacity is implemented so that the same markup used in other browsers just works in IE9’s ­standard mode. Internet Explorer 8 and earlier versions implemented an alternative mechanism to apply opacity using the alpha fil.. more »

Recently, Google made available the “ Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on .” This add-on enables consumers to “indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics.” We agree that making it easy for consumers to protect their privacy is good, and Internet Explorer offers a to help keep you in of your informat.. more »

that we’ve published to help add-on developers create quality add-ons. We wrote these guidelines based on years of providing support to users and developers in response to questions from the developer community. of these guidelines and requirements in action in the past few months. As part of IE’s cumulative security updates, we’ve released an upd.. more »

IE Cumulative Security Update for August 2010 . This security update resolves six privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system .. more »

IE9 started from the premise that the modern web will deliver HTML5 experiences that feel more like native applications than sites. Building on , audio, and text, developers will use to achieve great performance. On the modern web, developers will use the same markup across different HTML5 browsers. With IE9, we have worked much more closely with .. more »

In previous posts, we’ve written about the ways we’re making IE9 much faster, like the new script engine that uses multiple cores, and the new rendering subsystem that uses the dedicated graphics chip found on modern PCs. Another aspect of browser performance involves the external code that IE runs on behalf of users, or add-ons. Add-ons intr.. more »

our plans for Internet Explorer Platform Previews we said that “developers and people interested in standards and web development can try out new platform functionality and provide early feedback.” We are now getting such on a daily basis and are using it to improve IE9. However, sometimes the impact of the feedback extends beyond just IE9. Here.. more »

Web design is 95% typography ”. So much of the content produced and consumed on the web is text yet designers and users have been confined to a set of compatible fonts available across client operating systems. Escaping this typographical island has involved everything from cross-browser CSS workarounds, , with trade-offs ranging from extra st.. more »

A few weeks ago, we the performance characteristics of our sample. We showed how hardware acceleration benefits real world scenarios such as browsing photos, and how easily web developers can build these types of applications. Recently, we released a new set of . Today we’re going to discuss the concept application (also see the companion Much li.. more »