IE9 Races As The World's Fastest Browsers

Performance-wise, the release of Platform Preview 3 Build 1.9.7.8.74.6000 has brought Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) closer than ever to the latest versions of Chrome, Opera, Safari and Firefox. It’s clear that with the next generation of Internet Explorer, Microsoft has a real shot at grabbing the world’s fastest browser spot, in the detriment of rival browsers developed by Google, Mozilla, Opera or Apple. But such glory will undoubtedly be short lived, by any standards, as neither Internet Explorer 9, nor any other browser will be capable of achieving a speed advantage sufficiently comfortable to allow it to maintain the lead for a longer period of time. 







Then again, this aspect matters little to all interested parties, from browser vendors, to users, web and add-on developers, etc. Google, Mozilla, Opera, Safari and even Microsoft have used various opportunities to applaud the performance of their respective browsers over that of rivals, enjoying different levels of credibility. It is after all an ongoing race, much like the overall evolution of browsers.

The Redmond company has the toughest job of all rivals in bringing to the public conclusions of its own measuring contests in which IE comes on top of its competitors. The software giant’s comparison of browser speed done for IE8, using real-world scenarios, put IE9’s predecessor on top of Chrome 1.0 and Firefox 3.5 in early 2009. But I remember a range of user feedback that expressed skepticism of Microsoft’s findings.

With IE9, Microsoft has adopted an entirely new strategy. First off, the company actually seems keen on delivering a final IE9 which will outperform rivals in popular benchmarks, such as the Webkit SunSpider. And secondly, the software giant has not only made consistent progress from one developer preview of IE9 to another, but also touted IE’s new performance metrics. 






“Today, people expect less from a website than they do from native applications in terms of power, richness, responsiveness, and interactivity. With the third platform preview, we continue to deliver on the promise of a fully hardware accelerated browser where all of the support for text, graphics, and media uses the underlying hardware through Windows, making the full power of the PC available for the Web. Using the power of the whole PC shatters the previous constraints that limited websites,” revealed Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager, Internet Explorer.