Sneak Peak: Membee Running in Internet Explorer 9 Beta
On September 15th, Microsoft released the first public beta of the new Internet Explorer 9 so we took one of our test machines, installed IE 9, and fired up Membee for a bit of a test drive. Before we get into what we found, please don’t try this at home! This new IE 9 is …
On September 15th, Microsoft released the first public beta of the new Internet Explorer 9 so we took one of our test machines, installed IE 9, and fired up Membee for a bit of a test drive. Before we get into what we found, please don’t try this at home! This new IE 9 is a beta release, the first beta in a series of beta releases so installing and using it may be risky. We installed this all-new IE9 on a test machine so our risk was low and based on our first look, we like what we saw!
Less is More
From the first look, its plain to see that this is just not a cosmetic upgrade to IE and there are some major improvements including the new interface which is greatly simplified. According to Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer division, “the browser needs to get out of the way” so the new IE9’s interface is very clean, very sparse. Below is Membee’s People & Organizations in the current IE8 and IE9 Beta.
IE8
IE9 Beta
Both of these screen captures are 250 pixels in height. Notice how much more of the web page is visible in the IE9 Beta. Hidden are all of the infrequently used menus and icons which assists in bringing the user’s attention to the web page itself.
Release the Horse Power!
There are a ton of improvements and new features in this browser with one of the greatest enhancements is one you can’t see! With Membee, we are fanatical about the software’s performance and that’s a tricky undertaking when applications like Membee manage and manipulate large amounts of information. We are very dependent on the underlying capabilities of the browser. Specifically, the browser’s JavaScript rendering engine is a very important to the performance of Membee.
The JavaScript engine in IE9 is completely re-written from the ground up and the following graphic highlights the improvement (Note: Lower values are better – measured in milliseconds).
This is a great improvement that will be very helpful to all web-based applications like Membee. To see the specific test results, check out the WebKit SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark Results.
While speeding up the tons of script in advanced web pages is wonderful, this isn’t the only contributor to a performance of a web page. Currently, it’s a bit of a mystery as to what other variables are impacting the performance of web page as it is displayed in your browser. Two different machines in the same office can display dramatically different performance when displaying the same web page. The new IE9 sheds some more light on the subject by analyzing on the fly, the various things that are running and/or loading when a web page is loading.
The new Add-On Performance Advisor in IE9 will not only tell you what add-ons are running in your browser but it will also tell you which ones are slowing the whole process down and allow you to disable them. Nice.
IE9 & Membee
With at least a couple more beta releases and a few months before the final version of IE9 is ready for release (Click here for a recent IE9 release date rumor) , we’ve got some time to test and optimize Membee to take advantage of as many of the new features and performance enhancements found in IE9 . The goal will be to maximize the experience for your staff users and your members who decide to use IE9. Remember that running Membee in IE9 before its official release is definitely not recommended until IE9 gets a little more polish and all of the add-on providers have a chance to thoroughly test their products.
But our first impression of what we see from IE9 is very positive!
The Backstory
There is much more to the new IE9. Things like full support for WC3 Standards, HTML5, CSS3, hardware-based acceleration and much more. If you are interested in learning more, here are some links that will help:
IE9 Performance & Compatibility Testing Center
Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report: IE9 Review