This is the problem: the things you claim certainly can be disputed, not least because the second hasn't been true for several versions of IE. I know, the web apps I work on do a lot of this stuff, and there has been roughly an order of magnitude improvement in performance from IE6 to IE7 and then again from IE7 to IE8, which is now close enough to the other browsers that we don't notice the difference in day-to-day use.
I think you're making my point for me with the rest of your post: if you read it back, you'll see that you repeatedly contradict yourself about what does and doesn't work across different browsers, not just for IE but for Firefox vs. Chrome as well.
if you are going to dispute them dispute them with numbers, virtually every benchmark, independent or otherwise puts ie somewhere between bad and embarrassing
If you point is that we should just be happy with the web that ie6 supports then sure we wouldnt need to put up with fairly minor differences between firefox / chrome.
Personally I think we are still at an early stage of realising how computing can benefit our lives, for the last 5 years ie has been significantly slowing that progress down, hopefully recent signs continue to show that this progress will happen even if we need to drag ie along the way.
> if you are going to dispute them dispute them with numbers, virtually every benchmark, independent or otherwise puts ie somewhere between bad and embarrassing
1. Benchmarks aren't real world applications. I don't care if it takes 1s rather than 0.5s to run 1,000,000 operations, if all I ever need to do is run 5 of them.
2. The post you linked to is well over two years old. The entire web development world looked very different back then, and the possibilities of using JS and web apps for more serious work were in their infancy. At that point, Chrome did have a decisive advantage over all other browsers (not just IE) in JS execution speed, but of course that's just after Google had incorporated their new JS engine but before any of the more recent Firefox improvements and certainly not taking into account today's imminent releases like IE9.
3. I don't know what all those numbers are meant to mean, because there is no methodology information in the post you linked to. Charts and numbers without context prove nothing, rather like the "infographics" in the original article we're discussing here.
4. Even if you insist on using benchmarks, more recent ones (e.g., those highlighting jQuery 1.5 performance in some navigation features, published a few days ago) have IE9 still slower than other browsers, but more like a factor of 2-5 slower than the orders of magnitude it was just a few years ago. If they carry on improving at the rate they have been since IE7 -- keeping in mind that this seems to be one of their goals, and that the important context here is whether the IE team is following a healthy path for the future rather than whether they are better right now -- then we can expect IE10 to be directly competitive with the engines in other browsers.
As an aside, those few jQuery figures are a great example of the difference between real world usage and synthetic benchmarks. jQuery is a reasonably reputable bit of software, and the difference in performance in some basic document navigation tools -- hardly high-level code, but a step up from built-in JS/DOM functionality -- was as wide between jQuery 1.4.4 and jQuery 1.5 as it was between various pairs of browsers they tested.
> If you point is that we should just be happy with the web that ie6 supports
I've never said anything like that, anywhere in this discussion.
As it happens, I do think the latest HTML5/CSS3 features tend to be more about trend-setting than actually making web development more useful. If you want to make it useful, fire the guy at the W3C who thinks CSS shouldn't have tools like named constants and arithmetic, which web developers have been asking for since forever, and which everyone from programmers to those working in DTP considers entry level.
> Personally I think we are still at an early stage of realising how computing can benefit our lives, for the last 5 years ie has been significantly slowing that progress down,
How is that, exactly? IE has made a small impact in the speed of development of web sites. As we've seen, with competition to drive the market, Microsoft can still develop new browsers, they just chose not to for several years after IE6.
In any case, your point seems to assume that browsers are the only significant means for computers to benefit our lives, which is just crazy. If you want a disruptive technology, look at the iPhone: in just a few years, it has redefined the entire markets of both mobile computing and telecommunications, to the point where it's difficult to find any recent mobile phone that doesn't have a high-res touchscreen or any mobile platform that doesn't support installing custom software applications on the device, helping Apple climb back from relative obscurity in the PC world to one of the largest global brands in the process.
By the way, IE9 supports media queries -- a recent CSS feature that does have current widespread applicability -- just fine.
(Edit: Am I really being downvoted for arguing that qualitative factors and general policies/focus are more important than synthetic benchmarks, when the only quantitative data provided by the person criticising me for not citing hard numbers is one single blog post, from more than two years ago, containing a few numbers based on synthetic benchmarks, with no description of methodology to let us judge what if anything those numbers signify?)
> Benchmarks aren't real world applications. I don't care if it takes 1s rather than 0.5s to run 1,000,000 operations, if all I ever need to do is run 5 of them.
You are clearly forgetting where the web in general is going to. Browsers today serve as a wrapper to applications and NEED to be fast. Not a single web application today uses only 5 or 10 or 50 operations.
> IE has made a small impact in the speed of development of web sites.
IE has made BIG impact in the speed of development. The fact that it has not kept up with other browsers only made that worse.
Even IE8 rendering and its javascript engine have problems. Those are not present on modern browsers and it obviously impacts development because IE needs to have specific testing and specific coding (mostly workarounds).
Did you expect other browsers to be like IE, so that we could have a "standard" on not having standards?
> You are clearly forgetting where the web in general is going to.
No, I just take the view that the current trend of trying to treat a browser as an operating system is not going to last.
I think the web in the future will move back towards being a medium for presentation of information and some limited interaction, and things like native mobile apps and their app stores or Linux distros and their auto-installer tools will increasingly deal with what is sometimes done with "web apps" today. I think the important web technologies for the future will mostly be those that make it easier to present useful information, for example through more powerful presentation tools or providing useful context to web services so they can provide a more personal experience.
I already answered that question from someone else several hours before you posted it: no, I do not work for Microsoft, nor do I have any other connection to them that would bias my comments on this matter.
I simply disagree with what appears to be the majority view on HN in this case. Also, it doesn't help that a significant number of people seem to be responding to clichés that they assume I've repeated and not to what I actually wrote.
I think you're making my point for me with the rest of your post: if you read it back, you'll see that you repeatedly contradict yourself about what does and doesn't work across different browsers, not just for IE but for Firefox vs. Chrome as well.