dstorey

The result is the same when comparing nightly builds. Actually IE updates each month now. Previously only critical updates were included on “patch Tuesdays”, but now features are added too. That is not to say that these particular features will be included in monthly updates to the stable version of IE11.

The VMs are not going anywhere. This is an additional service for those that can’t or don’t want to use virtual machines, or find this more convenient.

> IE11 just got prefetch and pre rendering, something the other browsers have had for years

Actually, Safari still doesn’t support either, and Firefox doesn’t support prerender. See http://status.modern.ie/prerenderattribute?term=pre and http://status.modern.ie/prefetchattribute?term=pre

The data from the links above is pulled in from Google‘s ChromeStatus site.

Also IE is updated regularly now. Feature updates are often included in patch Tuesday updates, such as big upgrades to WebGL and WebDriver support. As features are implemented (see in development in the links above) they're evaluated to see if they will be included in IE11 updates.

You’ll be pleased to know that we just updated it yesterday. A good chunk of ES6 is now under development. See the IE blog for further info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/09/18/updates-to-our...

Windows Phone 8.1 Update is final yet. It is in developer preview. You can get the preview right now by registering as a developer and downloading the Windows Phone for Developers preview app. See https://dev.windows.com/en-us/develop/phone-updates

Warning: you may void your warranty.

You can get free VMs at https://modern.ie/en-gb/virtualization-tools . And also a free 3 month BrowserStack trail from the same site.

I believe the data from the Chakra (IE’s JS engine) team hasn’t been updated yet.

It’s under consideration.

Microsoft are contributing to Object RTC, so I see this as unlikely.

There are only 13 features listed there not currently supported in IE and supported by Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Of those, 4 are currently in development.

Object RTC is under consideration instead.

Object RTC is developed by a community group at the W3C. It includes people from Google, Microsoft and a number of telecom companies, amongst others http://www.w3.org/community/ortc/

You can write native “metro” apps in Windows 8 with web technology and the Win.JS framework.

Even if IE11 has only “almost caught up”, that means, as you point out, that inertia to change will mean existing users will be less likely to switch away from IE, as alternative browsers will no longer be significantly better. Just that will help to halt any downward spiral.

Note that on Akamai[0] (who have many of the world‘s largest sites as their customers) IE’s share is relatively static. On NetMarketShare[1], IE’s share is increasing. It seems any such downward spirals has already halted. At least on two of the major analytics sites that release public data.

[0] http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset.html#stat=browser&t... [1] http://www.netmarketshare.com

MS has also focused a lot on security in its WebGL support. For example, it security audits the drivers.

Many people use conditional comments, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying most use them. There are tons of browser sniffing scripts out there on the web. I used to have to deal with them all the time when doing web site compatibility for Opera. They wouldn’t have made this change if they didn’t need to.

It is the same situation with hiding support for things like document.all, so they avoid the sniffers that do: if (document.all) { ie = true; } then use the ie variable to give those browsers the legacy IE code path.

IE has had auto-update since IE9. IE9 is in the process of being auto-updated to IE10, unless auto-update has been disabled.

I don‘t see why not. Two of the editors of the HTML5.1 spec are Microsoft representatives: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/

EME, MSE, and Web Crypto are very new specifications. They’re just starting to be rolled out in browsers. They’re not going to be rolled out everywhere overnight.

H.264 video codec is on pretty much every major browser now, including Firefox. This wasn’t the case when browsers first supported the video element. It is a similar situation to EME and friends today. Including the potential licensing fee (I assume vendors have to licence the DRM module to plug into EME or get it from the underlying OS in the same way to how they have to licence H.264, but I'm not sure about this area)

The key specs for all this to work are:

* Web Cryptography API[1], edited by Mozilla and Google

* Media Source Extensions[2], edited by Google, Microsoft and Netflix

* Encrypted Media Extensions[3], edited by Google, Microsoft and Netflix

These are not pseudo standards pushed only by Microsoft. ChromeOS already supports two of these specs.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/

[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/media-source/

[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/

Netflix already support ChromeOS on Samsung Chrome books using this method. Only that Chrome doesn’t support an end to end solution, as it doesn’t support the Crypto API, so Netflix rolled their own. They also support a different DRM plug-in.

As this involves three different specs, which are all from the W3C, this means that it will work in any browser that implements them, and supports the DRM that Netflix uses.

Microsoft and Google are already on board. I expect Opera will inherit this from Blink/Chromium. As both YouTube and Netflix support this already, I wouldn’t be surprised to see WebKit and Firefox/Gecko implement it eventually.

Yes. IE11 will be on Windows 7: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/26/microsoft-internet-explor...

I’m not sure there are many former employees that are speaking out in public. The ones I’ve seen are my own (obviously), Chaals, and Wilhelm’s comment here. All of us left of our own free will, (long) before these latest layoffs happened. I‘m not sure I’ve seen anything from anyone directly effected (not that this doesn't mean people have and I missed it).

I‘m not saying there is any fear involved, or a conspiracy theory, just that I haven't seen this as the case, bar private posts, and tweets from some that they left the company. When Google laid a large number off at Motorola (of which I was included), there was some sort of agreement in the package about not speaking bad of the company or products. This could be the case here, I don't know.

I’ve added 1080p to Android. The currently announced phone has a 5" diagonal. I'd like to include screen size too, but I'm not sure how to include it in the table. Having a row for each resolution/size combo would end up a bit much. Especially on Android. I may be able to do some nested table design somehow.

It is quite scary how much one has to learn compared to the old days if you’re just starting off on the Web. I did a post a while ago [0] that features a lot of these. It’s a long list. The games industry went through something similar, where games devs used to be able to write games in their basement, but now have multi-billion dollar budgets.

The web is quite different from the games industry though,and just because the technology is there it doesn't mean you have to use it. We’ve had the power of SVG available to us for at least 5 years (except in IE), and few devs can develop using it (it's not that hard once you try, honest!).

The web is expanding to one of apps, where we can create native like experiences. That isn’t a bad thing. It means people can pick up and use web technologies to make apps when before they would have had to use C++ or Java or whatever. Just because people can write apps on the Web though, doesn't mean there will not still be the demand for web pages, based around pages, articles and content rather than the app model. Both will stand side by side for quite a while yet.

And back to games. They can be made using web tech now, and that along with mobile platforms, and online stores on games consoles and the like have breathed new life into the indie development scene. It seems it is now possible for a few people in their basement to make top selling games again. These is no reason why it can't stay the same for the web too.

Its always better that the capabilities are there for when developers need it, than not being available at all.

[0] http://dstorey.tumblr.com/post/10657722675/openwebstack

The CSS filter property comes from SVG [0], and has been around for quite a long time already.

IE 10 will support filters in SVG [1], so IE should be able to cope with it ok.

[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG10/filters.html#FilterProperty [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/hh440437