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56 pointsbpierre20 comments

This is slightly off-topic but does anyone know how pages on this site load so quickly? It's almost instantaneous on my computer.

Does it use something like this? http://alexmaccaw.co.uk/posts/async_ui

You can check using the network tab in the webkit inspector, or firebug. I don't see any async loading.

The html pages have this header:

    Transfer-Encoding:chunked

This means the html is streamed. The response on the sever-side is near-instant, only being hit for DNS the first time, and just the round trip latency the second. Due to the streaming, and the CSS being included at the top, the css is loaded super fast, in parallel with the html. In less than 100ms (for me), most things required to render the page are loaded up.

We're using Octopress (http://octopress.org/)

"push the boundaries of game development on all platforms."

- funny thing for Microsoft to say, no? I thought they were scared of denting Windows' relevance. Anyone know what their strategy is with this?

Ironic that this is sponsored by IE, and IE is the one browser holding back cutting-edge browser-based games.

Times have changed.

"IE9's smoothness on the other hand is remarkable. Of all browsers and systems I tested, IE9 subjectively produced the best results."

http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2011/08/are-we-fast-yet

It may be smooth, but my job is to make cross-browser HTML5 games (a great gig if you can get it) and almost all of my worries are 'solved in Chrome and Firefox' but that fix somehow is not available in IE9.

IE10 might, be better but then you have to deal with all the legacy people who don't upgrade. Also when it ships, it will still be behind Firefox and Chrome.

Not really. Our game studio builds browser-based exclusively, and IE is the biggest paint point we have.

How 'bout that WebGL? Without that, I don't give a fuck.

EDIT:

I'll elaborate. Go here ( http://www.caniuse.com/#cats=JS_API ) to follow along if you're playing the home game.

The problem is that for games--for smooth games with low invocation overhead--we really really need to be able to use the graphics card. There are cute tricks you can do with a 2D context (including, in Three.js's case, software fallbacks for some of WebGL), but nothing that really compares to being able to write modern programmable shading pipeline code.

Without that (and the Audio API, and Orientation events), game developers don't really care about your platform.

Now, there is (in my opinion) a storm brewing for WebGL. Go here ( http://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/extensions/ ) to see the coming madness. There is nothing worse in the world than being under the stewardship of Khronos/ARB. The fact that W3C et al. haven't taken over or provided an alternative to this is bad.

Microsoft could do something like make DirectWebX or Web3D or what have you. That would be annoying, but sure--we've been writing cross-API rendering backends for a decade and a half now, and so this wouldn't be terrible. Even better, Microsoft could go ahead with a WebGL implementation that calls down into DirectX.

Best, Microsoft could leverage their experience with good API design--don't scoff, seriously; compare OpenGL and the latest DirectX versions--and work with the W3C and browser vendors to fix some of the yawning holes in WebGL.

( For example, killing off the extensions mechanism entirely in favor of "Is this Web3D 10 compliant? If so, you get this and don't worry.", or a useful capabilities structure. getParameter() is kind of useful, but having a guaranteed caps baseline is nice. )

WebGL can also render twice as fast as canvas 2D for 2D games. So it's a nice perf boost even for 2D. Not to mention shaders.

Why do Microsoft evangelists tout IE9 when IE10 exists?

It was written before IE10.

And even now IE10 isn't even released yet.

Except IE 10, which, based on my development experience with it, is actually caught up in most respects and on the cutting edge in a few others.

Grab a copy of the Windows 8 preview, load it up in a VM, and give it a try.

I thought the IE 10 demos (http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Views/SiteMap/) were particularly impressive.

Does it support Ogg audio files? And as the other commentator mentioned does it support WebGL?

Microsoft and IE drag their heels at every opportunity with the web. I'd be happy to see IE completely fade into obscurity going into the future.

It's slowing progress down regardless of what their new fangled marketing campaigns say and we don't need it anymore.

Hand waving without substantive evidence to support your position is generally frowned upon here.

I do not see how the non-support of WebGL and Ogg supports your position that the IE team is dragging its heels.

Chrome and Firefox do not support CSS Grid Layout or CSS Regions by default, but that doesn't mean their teams are dragging their feet.

Does it support WebGL?

For questions about support for your favorite spec, see IE 10 Guide for Developers[1].

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/hh673549(v=vs.85)...

Hilariously, at least one of the people writing a tutorial uses Chrome. =)

Ooh, the irony.

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