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Feedback on the IE9 Platform Preview

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Since the release of the IE9 Preview, we’ve gotten feedback on issues ranging from the tests we’ve submitted to the standards body to problems running particular sites. First – THANK YOU for the feedback. We updated the feedback system specifically for this purpose: to get and act on your feedback. This post offers a high level overview of the feedback overall, and a deeper look at a couple of specific issues that many people have reported.

As of April 16th, people have logged 533 issues in Connect. We review each issue, and confirm we can reproduce the problem. If necessary, we ask the person who logged it for more information. We also consolidate duplicate items.

In looking through the confirmed issues, two are particularly interesting: displaying small fonts, and using GMail.  I’ll use these as examples of how we use your feedback. 

Displaying Small Fonts

Several people reported that while fonts in general are smoother and clearer, in some scenarios small fonts look less clear. This type of issue has certain characteristics that make your feedback crucial:

  • Fonts render differently on different graphics hardware.
  • People browse different sites, each with a different selection of font styles, colors, sizes, and background colors, and each impacted differently by Direct2D.

This is a good example of how your feedback directs changes to IE, and helps us scale to the many different combinations of hardware and sites used across the web.  For example, there’s a pattern around some scenarios, like light color fonts on dark backgrounds.

We’re working on improvements in DirectWrite’s ClearType font rasterization. Specifically, in the first Platform Preview, GDI logic was used to select fonts though DirectWrite was used to render them. That creates some text spacing differences. Future updates to the Platform Preview will use DirectWrite throughout and will address this spacing issue. In addition, we are making specific changes to the rendering algorithm when light text is displayed against a dark background.

Using GMail in the Platform Preview

Some users have run into an issue with button layout in Gmail. For some people GMail in the Platform Preview looks like this:

Gmail account looking normal

However, others reported that GMail looked like this for them:

Gmail account with some of the buttons in the wrong place

The content GMail sends to IE is different in these two cases, and apparently the difference results in GMail not working correctly for some people.  This is an example of when we may come back to you for more information on an issue reported in Connect, and ask about details like the Browser Mode and Document Mode. 

Another GMail issue involves some links on pages not working in the IE9 Preview’s Standards Mode.  Standards Mode is where we build new features like SVG, DOM Events, and border-radius (Marc wrote about this and other modes previously) and thus it currently has incomplete features.  This issue is an example of trying to understand if the site isn’t working properly because of a problem with a new feature or because we haven’t finished implementing the features.  We use different debugging tools to make that determination.  For example, IE9 logs instances of unsupported events so we can quickly see if the issue might simply be a missing event.  Here’s the output when loading GMail:

error console with many unsupported event errors.

That tells us not to expect the site to function perfectly since it’s trying to use features that are not yet implemented.

We also have internal debugging tools to turn off the new eventing model entirely.  With the new eventing model disabled, GMail works correctly.  We further debugged and found the events register properly using addEventListener (good), they fire correctly (good), but fail to initiate any action (bad).  We’re still working through this issue.  In the meantime, you can use GMail in the Platform Preview by clicking ‘Debug’ and choosing ‘Force IE8 Document Mode’. 

That’s it for now.  Thanks again for taking the time to use the Platform Preview and sending us your feedback!

John Hrvatin
Program Manager

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Internet Explorer shouldn't be used to browse untrusted content. FTFY.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Please, before add new features solve the bugs...

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Internet Explorer shouldn't be used to browse untrusted content. FTFY.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Internet Explorer shouldn't be used to browse untrusted content. FTFY.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Internet Explorer shouldn't be used to browse untrusted content. FTFY.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Internet Explorer shouldn't be used to browse untrusted content. FTFY.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    You miss the point. If I can't use the preview to surf webpages on the internet trough the address bar I won't use it at all. It is vastly more usefull for MS if people use the IE9 preview on more webpages and see more possible issues with either the preview or with the webpages.

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    Thanks. I would suggest you to ask people that have a strong background in web rendering engines, i mean: KHTML people, the mozilla guys, for example. Anyway, it's wonderful to hear "SVG" in this blog. This is a huge advance.

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    Looking for your improvements. And please enable COM/ActiveX ONLY in the compacity view. And please note the Chinese font problem: Some CSS font combinition will cause Chinese characters displayed into boxes. Here is the page : http://coro.in/ie9/cntest.htm Here are some article about my design for IE9's ui. Written in Chinese -- It means maybe you need a translator ;) http://corodidea.net/blog/index.php/archives/185 http://corodidea.net/blog/index.php/archives/192

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    My question is with your resolutions to issues. Currently a quick search does not seem to show a single resolved as fixed issue, and only a handful of fixed non repro or by design. Have you not actually checked in fixes for any of the bugs yet?   Dont take this the wrong way but please mark things as they get done, in the IE 8 beta you seem to seemed to mass mark as fixed or postponed just before a new build was released. It is more effective for testing if we can see things as they get resolved. Please consider adjusting your policy to help your testers know where to focus.

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    The strange google mail button layout is caused by enabling the offline sync feature. I am not sure anymore if it happens immediately or after the first sync has completed. But disabling the offline feature got me back to a correct button layout.

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    We can expect the next IE9 platform preview in 2 weeks at the latest?

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    I know that in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter, but would it be possible to have nicer screenshots included in blog postings? Lash out and buy a copy of Kenny Kerr's Window Clippings (he might even give it to you for free). None of this Aero Basic awfulness :)

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    I personally hate antialiasing, it makes my eyes sore. Would it be possible to still have accelerated font rendering with disabled ClearType? I'm not able to turn it off in current technology preview version...

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    @marek: With this you would also disable subpixel positioning.

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    @Quppa: Well, at least the images are free of visible JPEG artifacts this time.

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    I think the font problem is the same as the new Visual Studio 2010 had. They fix that in .NET 4.0 have you talk with the VS team about it? Beside the font problem I think IE9 is really great! :-)

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2010
    I agree with Steve_web that without a address bar the preview is to much hassle to use for real surfing experience.

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    Yes, you are great, but why can't you answer my simple question? If a bug appears in both IE8 and the new developer preview, should I file a new bug report or should I reopen the old one. I noticed the old reports got prefixed with "IE8:". So if your answer is the latter, how am I able to rename my old reports? Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    @hAl: You shouldn't be trying to have a "real surfing experience" in the platform preview-- it lacks the vast majority of the security features found in Internet Explorer and shouldn't be used to browse untrusted content.

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    @Tom Stack > please mark things as they get done, > in the IE 8 beta you seem to seemed to > mass mark as fixed or postponed just > before a new build was released. It is > more effective for testing if we can > see things as they get resolved. Tom, I have been intensely involved in the IE8 beta development cycle and I think that marking a bug report as resolved and fixed just before a new beta build is released is ideal for bug reporters and bug report voters/confirmers. Usually, the marking as resolved and fixed is also accompanied with an invitation to test and verify with the newest beta build. It makes sense. What IE beta feedback should do that other public accessible bug tracking systems (bugzilla.mozilla.org, bugs.webkit.org, bugs.kde.org, bugzilla.w3c.org, etc) have done already is to use keywords (like testcase, hasReduction, needsInfo, crash, hang, accessibility, reproducible, clean-report, etc.) and to use the verifyme keyword so that each and all bug reports which need to be verified for the fixing the problem can be verified. I have already explained all this before in this blog. Marking bug reports as resolved (with whatever resolution field it is: fixed, by design, wontfix, etc) as they get resolved and immediately when they get resolved is not going to help complete the bug cycle between reporter and developers or to alert the interested people (reporter, voter, confirmers). It may in fact just make reporter, voters and confirmers pressure IE team to release another beta build soon, immediately. regards, Gérard

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    @John Hrvatin [MSFT] Regarding displaying of small fonts (and legibility issues), the nr 1 first responsible for such situation - and there is a consensus on this among accessibility groups - is the web author: it's not the hardware, the graphic card, it's not the cpu, etc. A font size of 10px, 11px or 12px for unstyled body text is often not big enough for a wide majority of people over 40 years old and anyone with a lower vision. And a font size of 10px, 11px or 12px is unfortunately very frequent on the web: eg just glance at Tony Ross latest TonyRoss_WritingCrossBrowserCode.html or any post in this blog. If the default font-size of browser stylesheet is 16px, then some kind of education on accessibility should be done by Microsoft, MSDN and IE team. The very first way to achieve such education is by practicing in posts, blogs, in webpages and microsoft-controlled websites what you preach. Forcing IE8 to ignore font-size as set by web authors in webpages is not assured of making content accessible on top of all this: remember bug 399794 .. > we are making specific changes to the rendering algorithm when light text is displayed against a dark background. Again, the nr 1 responsible for making a webpage text difficult to read is the web author. Visitors should not be expected to be living in a cave or be/live like night owls. regards, Gérard

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    I agree with others above - I absolutely loath ClearType and find the anti-aliasing hurts my eyes. (yes I've used the tuner to no avail) I can clearly see the rainbow effect on all black/dark text on a white background (90%) and thus it is unreadable without strain. If IE9 requires the use of ClearType in order to render pages I will NOT be upgrading IE past version 8.

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    Internet Explorer 9 seem to be epic, I can't wait to the middle of May to the second dev release, hoping it will be with UI :D

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    There is new HTML5 Test Suite/Demo that you may want to test IE9 with: http://apirocks.com/html5/html5.html#slide1

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    @thenonhacker As of this moment in time, that "test suite/demo" cannot be used to test IE 9 as it uses Mozilla and WebKit specific extensions to do things instead of the standardized tags.

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    [quote]You shouldn't be trying to have a "real surfing experience" in the platform preview--[/quote] You miss the point. If I can't use the preview to surf webpages on the internet trough the address bar I won't use it at all. It is vastly more usefull for MS if people use the IE9 preview on more webpages and see more possible issues with either the preview or with the webpages. I used IE8 previews in the past to inform many website owners their site was not correctly written/configured for use with IE8. This I won't do with IE9 as it I do not use it for the internet. Only for testing some specific pages.

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    I request support for the Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis codec. I also request canvas support and more SVG implemented.

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    @hAl: I am sure IE9 will have an usable interface  once the rendering engine is feature complete. This is not a beta but just a 'platform preview' (whatever this means).

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2010
    @hAl: I don't misunderstand you at all, I'm merely telling you that the Platform Preview is explicitly not designed for the purpose you describe. The future IE9 Beta is designed for that sort of use. The Platform Previews are designed for examining your own pages, and benchmarking progress against standards support and new capabilities.

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2010
    @Tom >If a bug appears in both IE8 and the new developer preview, should I file a new bug report or should I reopen the old one.< Thanks for the question!  We ask that you please open a new bug ... in the bug form you can indicate that this issue reproduces in IE8, and it would also help if you provide a link or reference to the bug you previously opened. Thanks again!

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2010
    maybe you try to use webkit?:)

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2010
    I have the similar problem "Unsupported event type..." with drag-and-drop events. It seems the error occurs only if I add event handler with new addEventListener interface. And it work fine if I add event handler with old syntax like element.ondragenter = function() {...}

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2010
    hAl, are you using the Ctrl.+O shortcut? It brings up the preview's address window for you to enter an address. It works exactly the same as Ctrl.+L in IE8 (a shortcut other browsers use to jump to the address bar). I find it a lot quicker than fiddling around with the mouse and clicking there.

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2010
    Re "A font size of 10px, 11px or 12px for unstyled body text is often not big enough for a wide majority of people over 40 years old " Please see my blog post on this: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/04/09/Benefits-of-GPU-powered-HTML5.aspx IE8+ and Windows will automatically enable highdpi and zoom web content - to improve readability.

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2010
    I have a question for those who work on IE 9,Can we expect newer release in the middle of May? Tt will be another dev version or beta maybe?

  • Anonymous
    May 03, 2010
    Going to http://fetchak.com/ie-css3/ crashes the IE9 platform preview for me.

  • Anonymous
    May 03, 2010
    Thanks for the note, Avo. This issue appears to be fixed in the upcoming update.