Microsoft on IE8--speed not top priority
Summary
Topics
Stephane Kimmerlin, product marketing director, Windows client business group, Asia-Pacific, Microsoft, said during a press demonstration of IE8 beta 2 that the browser's important features were user-interface enhancements, aimed at automating some common actions for users.
Performance benchmarking, such as the speed of loading pages, was a secondary priority in comparison, he said.
"When we designed IE8, we did not start with performance in mind," said Kimmerlin, in response to a question on the speed of IE8's Javascript engine.
Nick Wong, platform strategy advisor, developer and platform evangelism, at Microsoft added: "It is about how discernable the [speed] difference is [between different Javascript engines]... IE8 reloads pages faster and responds quickly."
Competing browser, Chrome, has been touted by Google for its V8 Javascript engine, which the search giant claims is capable of processing Javascript applications much faster than the competition.
Kimmerlin also said it is premature to comment on IE8 beta 2's system resource requirements compared to IE7, adding that users should wait for the final release of the browser before running performance benchmarking tests.
Features new to IE8 will include various user shortcut menus, called 'Accelerators', accessible within pages that are aimed to speed up the ways users interact with the information presented.Microsoft also demonstrated a feature called Web Slices, which allow developers to create a snippet of sites that users can subscribe to for updates. This is different from RSS (really simple syndication) feeds in that the snippets are written in Microsoft's hAtom format, and are meant to work within the IE8 application, not a feed reader.
Search box privacy issue
Another feature Microsoft showed was an 'enhanced search box', which performs a full search through a user's history, bookmarks and RSS feeds to pull up matching search results for a query. Competing browsers, Mozilla Firefox and Chrome, have similar features.
One area of contention raised was privacy. Kirk Drage, Microsoft Asia-Pacific regional manager of its local software economy arm, said during the briefing this "full search" function does not send data back to Microsoft, where Chrome tracks user behavior to Google.
Chrome has raised concerns over the data it sends back to Google within its 'Omnibox'--a combined location and search bar within the browser--which sends data back to Google in order to 'suggest' matching search queries in real time, as users type.According to Dickson Seow, head, Southeast Asia, communications and public affairs at Google, this feature has been somewhat misunderstood by the online community.
He said a random two percent of entries typed into the Omnibox are logged by Google. Google has also decided to make the data collected for use with Chrome's live search function anonymous after 24 hours, according to an entry on Google's official blog.
However, the blog entry noted that this 24-hour expiry refers to the 'Google Suggest' Omnibox feature; Google intends to store the data for a longer period for its core web-search service.Seow said: "For those using Google Chrome, the information shared with Google when you are using our search engine is similar to the information that is shared when you are using a different browser and search on Google."
He added that the Google Suggest tracking feature can be turned off within the browser, and that it is automatically turned off in Chrome's 'private' mode, which it terms Incognito.
Talkback Most Recent of 60 Talkback(s)
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"IE8 reloads pages faster" ??
who cares how fast a browser "reloads" pages? I need a browser that "loads" pages faster.
itinko10th Sep 2008 -
IE/FF just as fast
I changed the IE process priority to High and browse speed became the same as Chrome, but consumed less memory and didn't impact system as much.
FrankSz11th Sep 2008 -
IE 8 runs fast enough...
only issues I have are in super standards mode, which are more rendering engine issues.
Spiritusindomit@...27th Jan 2009 -
speed is never a priority with mircosoft
just about all their products are clunky and slow. can we say VISTA, take a shoe to that lemon.
Autopia10th Sep 2008 -
My Vista 64 runs games blazing fast
Are you gonna give me a system doing it faster? What is it? Linux or OS/X? LOL. Get a brain, 'tard.
LBiege10th Sep 2008 -
So sad..
...its like watching people enjoy throwing away all their money at a casino...except here theres no jackpot.
storm14k10th Sep 2008 -
Sure not as promising as FOSS
where there's always next year, right?LBiege10th Sep 2008 -
USTechHead11th Sep 2008 -
RE: Sure ... promising, promises as ...
"where there's always next year, right?"
...where you WILL have to upgrade to Windows 7, right?.
Hence, FOSS doesn't get old, it only gets better.
n0neXn0ne11th Sep 2008 -
Oh dear
Just to explain the point:
If I asked you "What kind of system are you running" and your reply fitted into the area of "a good one", you would expect your computer to run fast. You have a fast computer.
Point is, Vista is not fast when compared to other modern OS's. Were you to run...hmm...well any other modern OS it could run your system faster/use fewer resources.
Of course, it probably wouldn't run your game
AndyCee10th Sep 2008 -
Actually
the commercial games that can be made to run under Linux run faster then under Windows.
This is what i've been hearing from every Linux fanatic that's die-hard enough to keep fiddling to get their game running.
I can't be troubled with it myself, too much work.
So i'm wondering where you based your post on? Did you do tests yourself as well?
TedKraan11th Sep 2008 -
My Eee PC boots faster...
Not that my point was any more relevant than yours. As if you have time to play games, one can also deduce that you have time to waste loading an Operating System as well.
As for the specs on my Asus Eee 701, I have a 600 MHz Celeron with 512 MB of RAM and a 4 GB SSD. I can be up and browsing on the web in under a minute. That can include manually selecting and typing in the SSID and WPA key to my network at home. I could automate that process, and I have, but I thought I would shove that in there for additional bragging rights.
nucrash11th Sep 2008 -
That's about the same time as my Vista system.
I can be up and browsing on the web in under a minute.
And it even cost less: $299.
ye11th Sep 2008 -
nucrash11th Sep 2008
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Lol
And that is a good point, of course Vista runs better in the box than it does in a computer
zeb 110th Oct 2008
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