IE9, Silverlight 4, and Live Mesh

[Rhonda the Sly]

Web (IE9 + Silverlight)
ZDnet: Microsoft shares a few tidbits on IE9 and (lots) more on Silverlight 4

IEBlog: An Early Look At IE9 for Developer

WinSuperSite: Internet Explorer 9 Preview

istartedsomething: Internet Explorer 9, a free upgrade for the web

Cliffs:
About a month into development.
IE9 is another performance oriented release.
Standards adherence is another pillar or IE9.
» IE9 gets 32/100 on ACID3, compared to 20 for IE8. (fixed, reported IE8 as 21)
» IE9 scores 574/578 on the CSS3 Selector test, compared to IE8's 330/578.
IE9 will add hardware accelerated rendering using Direct2D and DirectWrite.*

Live Mesh
ZDNet: So where's Microsoft's Live Mesh?

Cliffs:
No longer pushing Mesh as part of the Azure platform.
Next announcement will be around Spring, during the Mix 2010 event.
In other words: not much new.

Direct2D and DirectWrite are Windows Vista SP2 and Windows 7 only. Whether Windows XP doesn't get IE9 or these features are simply not added to the XP release, I don't know. I just read comments on the IEBlog and it seems that the question is unanswered and people aren't too happy that Windows XP could lose out on IE9 or hardware acceleration. I doubt Microsoft will make IE9 NT6-only but I don't see what people could possibly be angry over. Of course an OS that has been succeeded twice now might begin to miss out on new features.

Edit:
Two more links, first includes a video.
http://www.betanews.com/article/PDC-2009-Microsoft-cares-about-Web-browser-performance/1258611668

http://www.betanews.com/article/PDC-2009-Postkeynote-Day-2-What-are-we-learning-today/1258572043

Edit 2:
Uhhh... forgot the Channel 9 links. Forget the video up there.
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/IE-9-Surfing-on-the-GPU-with-D2D/

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/IE-9-First-look-at-the-new-JS-Engine/

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/IE-9-Standards-and-Interoperability/

 

[Snapster]

Nice heads up 🙂

 

[MrChad]

I have strong doubts that IE 9 will be released for XP. Microsoft made IE7 for XP and up (leaving out 2000), and I feel like they will be making IE9 for Vista and up. It doesn't make sense to invest the money to develop for an 8+ year old platform that people are moving off of anyway.

 

[bruceb]

They just put out IE8 about 6 months back. It must be obsolete already.

 

[MrChad]

They just put out IE8 about 6 months back. It must be obsolete already.

Credit Firefox with lighting a fire under Microsoft's IE team. They have been aggressively developing IE for several years in an effort to preserve their marketshare.