What is most important in a browser? Microsoft discuss IE9

Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager, Internet Explorer recently blogged on the future release of Explorer, IE9. Titled 'An Early Look At IE9 for Developers', the post covers the direction that Microsoft are aiming to take with the next release of Explorer. If you want a good idea of the reaction to this post I suggest you check out the posts comments.


A picture says a thousand words, so here are some pictures (and quotes) taken out of context and hopefully they will say something:

One common test of script performance is from Apple's Webkit team, the SunSpider test

Our goal is to deliver better performance across the board for real-world sites, not just benchmarks.

With IE8, we delivered a highly-interoperable implementation of CSS 2.1

Some standards tests - like Acid3 - have become widely used as shorthand for standards compliance, even with some shortcomings. As we improve support in IE for technologies that site developers use, the score will continue to go up.

A more meaningful (from the point of view of web developers) example of standards support involves rounded corners.

Another example of standards support that matters to web developers is CSS3 selectors.

Ultimately, we want to work with the community and W3C and other members of the working groups to define true validation test suites, like the one that we're all working on together for CSS 2.1, for the standards that matter to developers.