back to article Firefox bloke blasts Microsoft IE 9 hardware acceleration claims

A New Zealand-based Mozilla programmer has spanked Microsoft's marketeers for making what he believes to be misleading claims about Internet Explorer 9's hardware acceleration credentials. Robert O'Callahan is so narked that, just one day after Microsoft confirmed IE 9 would be pumped out to the world on 14 March, he once …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Didn't they get the memo?

    Who really cares about navigating those waters of perpetually limited and buggy layout, rubbish user interaction, sucky offline storage and plus video codec wars anyway.

    Only companies interested in keeping track and moneytizing every little step you do on those apps are really interested in it.

    To do stuff, give me applications which I can use as I please.

    The web is for information. Even says so in the label (HTML, aka *Hyper Text* Markup language)

    1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

      The real meaning of HTML..

      Actually, judging by most tech websites "Hyper Text" appears to refer to the language by which products are pushed that haven't even been near live use yet.

      Remember Windows Vista? Boy oh boy, what a torrent (no, no - not the program) of gushing reviews.

      It appears HTML is a just acronym - in more ways than one..

  2. JDX Gold badge

    blah blah

    I'm on the mozilla mailing list and they are currently discussing how to catch IE9 on hardware accelerated tests. Stop whinging, get on with making it work.

    1. Paul 135

      agreed

      While I use Firefox as my main browser and will continue to do so, I have noted that the latest Chrome builds offer the only working hardware acceleration on my Windows 7 machine (admittedly my machine's 4 years old, but still). Firefox = fail. IE = fail.

  3. The Alpha Klutz
    Linux

    IE9 uses hardware?

    Well it won't be using mine.

    1. Ilgaz

      Absurd thing is

      Nobody should have to write mad tricks to make use of GPU. The windowserver/2d display layer should make use of GPU in reasonably coded apps, at least "native" widget using apps.

      Lets not give example of who already does it, as their fans made people a bit irritated. ;)

  4. SmallYellowFuzzyDuck, how pweety!
    FAIL

    We will need a review

    When IE9 comes out can El Reg do a review?

    In the same way that I like reading reviews of expensive sportcars I would also like to read a review of IE9.

    I.E, Interesting to read about but something I'm never likely to own or use.

    XP user.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Not IE vs IE

    Yay, another Not-IE vs IE debate.

    Chrome it is then...

  6. cosmo the enlightened
    Coat

    I could

    care less about speed. I want secure.

    alright, alright I'll ge my ...

    1. CraigRoberts

      No- you couldn't...

      ... It's COULDN'T care less... If you could care less, then it means you care some what...

      ... That said, you're absolutely right - speed is no good when your browser's downloading all kinds of nasties through drive by downloads...

      I use Chrome... It's fast enough for my needs, it boots quickly, renders well and most importantly is apparently pretty damn secure. That'll do for my personal use (I have to use the others to test layouts etc for work)...

      While on the subject - wouldn't it be nice if there was ONE rendering engine that all browser manufacturers used and built their bells n whistles around? Or is that just me?

      1. Basic
        Gates Horns

        The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

        "While on the subject - wouldn't it be nice if there was ONE rendering engine that all browser manufacturers used and built their bells n whistles around? Or is that just me?"

        Not in this lifetime. We just aren't that lucky

      2. Anonymous Coward
        WTF?

        duh

        "... It's COULDN'T care less... If you could care less, then it means you care some what..." - LMAO... In essence, either way is right! Like saying "you're lower than a snake's belly" if ever heard that one. So you couldn't care less, mean you're at 0 caring and technically couldn't go any lower. But if you say you could care less, when it is assumed you're already at 0, it's like a smart remark meaning you could care even less than 0. lol

  7. DrXym

    Yeah it's silly marketing

    The job of rendering elements to the screen is the job of a layout manager. It's responsible for figuring out where elements are, if they are invalidated by changes, need to be painted etc. In response it will set about painting damaged / dirty elements in turn and then refresh the screen. A really fancy layout manager might recognize that some elements haven't changed between invocations and cache the result in a bitmap or surface to save having to individually ask each one to render from scratch.

    But the layout manager is usually the last in a long chain of other things that must happen first. DOM manipulations, application of CSS, updates from JS & plugins, So claiming to hardware accelerates the lot is rather meaningless. What does acceleration even mean? Does it mean that they use a hardware blit to shift everything into the screen or accelerated primitives to render the content? What about blending & effects? What about 3D?

    It's such a vague term that it's meaningless. I would hope every browser makes at least some use of hardware acceleration. What matters is how long it takes to render, not the means taken to get there.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    IE9 does not run XP or Windows Server 2003

    So I won't be installing it.

    I'd rather have a Tape Backup facility instead (which has been removed from subsequent versions of Windows).

  9. mhenriday
    Pint

    Thanks, Mozilla, for introducing an element of veracity

    in all the marketing hype about «hardware acceleration» ! Doing so may be in line with (enlightened) self interest, but it's refreshing all the same. Let us hope that even people outside of geek circles will listen !...

    Henri

  10. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    You can tell what you want Mozilla...

    ...but IE9 beats FF4 with ease in the benchmarks.

    http://bit.ly/g8SbSc

    1. SharkNose

      Re You can tell what you want Mozilla...

      Wow!! Awesome. I will look forward to using IE9 on my Mac and Linux machines as it's apparently so great...

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