Internet Explorer 9 will have its official beta launch in August 

Just a very quick note to mention that the third developer preview of IE9 is now available!

HTML5, Native: Third IE9 Platform Preview Available for Developers

I will be detailing the new improvements through the next couple of blog posts, but right now I just got home from a binge 

Jason Garrett-Glaser, the primary x264 developer, has written an extensive technical analysis of the VP8 codec that Google has just open sourced in the form of the WebM project.

His summary verdict for the lazy rounds off his lengthy analysis:

VP8, as a spec, should be a bit better than H.264 Baseline Profile and VC-1.  It’s not even close to competitive with H.264 Main or High Profile.  If Google is willing to revise the spec, this can probably be improved.

VP8, as an encoder, is somewhere between Xvid and Microsoft’s VC-1 in terms of visual quality.  This can definitely be improved a lot, but not via conventional means.

VP8, as a decoder, decodes even slower than ffmpeg’s H.264.  This probably can’t be improved that much.

With regard to patents, VP8 copies way too much from H.264 for anyone sane to be comfortable with it, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free.

VP8 is definitely better compression-wise than Theora and Dirac, so if its claim to being patent-free does stand up, it’s an upgrade with regard to patent-free video formats.

VP8 is not ready for prime-time; the spec is a pile of copy-pasted C code and the encoder’s interface is lacking in features and buggy.  They aren’t even ready to finalize the bitstream format, let alone switch the world over to VP8.

Google made the right decision to pick Matroska and Vorbis for its HTML5 video proposal.

Today, Google launched the WebM project - short for Web Media - together with Mozilla and Opera.

This means that the VP8 video codec, as I previously hinted, is now fully open sourced.

The WebM format is royalty-free and, presumably, patent-free, but it does come with some pretty specific licensing requirements that reuqired a separate licensing faq.

The most immediate launch partner support includes Google Chrome, Mozilla/Firefox, Opera, Skype, nVidia, AMD and some others.

Seeing that nVidia is supporting VP8 brings about hope that it will eventually have hardware accelerated playback, just like h262 has had for many years.

In a turn of events that seem surprising, Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager for Internet Explorer, announced on The Windows Blog that IE9 will also be supporting VP8 - but only if the codec has already been installed on the system.

As such, IE9 does not seem to be bundling the VP8 codec itself, but will allow support for it if the VP8 codec has been installed.

This is just a quick note to let you know that the second IE9 developer preview is now available for download at ietestdrive.com 

More details will follow in the next couple of posts...

There has been a lot of speculation about which video codec formats would be supported by Internet Explorer 9. The practical choices ranged from h264 to Ogg Theora  and VP8.

VP8 is the successor to VP3, which was open sourced in 2002 and has become the Ogg Theora codec. Google now owns the company that developed VP8, and there are rumours that VP8 will be similarly open sourced at the upcoming May 2010 Google I/O conference.

As such, the option stands between h264 or VP3/VP8, and Microsoft has chosen to go with h264. This choice was first outlined on April 29 and later elaborated on with a follow up on May 3.

Follow Up on HTML5 Video in IE9

For many reasons, H.264 video offers a more certain path than other video formats and does so in a way that delivers a great HTML5 experience for developers and end-users. First and most important, we think it is the best available video codec today for HTML5 for our customers. Relative to alternatives, H.264 maintains strong hardware support in PCs and mobile devices as well as a breadth of implementation in consumer electronics devices around the world, excellent video quality, scale of existing usage, availability of tools and content authoring systems, and overall industry momentum – each an important factor that contributes to our point of view.

Whether or not you like this decision the choice has been made, and the only major browser that does not support h264 is now Mozilla Firefox.

I am just happy to have certainty about at least one video codec 

Just a brief note to mention that Microsoft is now officially backing WOFF - the Web Open Font Format that is already supported by Mozilla Firefox 3.6.

From Wikipedia:

The Web Open Font Format is .. a wrapper that contains (TrueType (TTF), OpenType or Open Font Format) that have been compressed using a WOFF encoding tool to enable them to be embedded in a web page. The format uses zlib compression .. typically resulting in a filesize reduction from TTF of over 40%.

Aside from being smaller, WOFF is also gaining a lot of industry support, not just in browsers.

From the ZDNet Blog:

It's not unusual to see Mozilla and Opera Software as WOFF backers--the two browser makers have been trying to advance the Web state of the art for years. But after years of going its own way, Microsoft has shown new interest in Web standards and now is a powerful ally that's sponsoring the submission of WOFF to be a W3C standard.

CNET has more:

The move was notable enough that Tiro Typeworks' John Hudson used bold italic to spotlight Microsoft's WOFF involvement. Type foundry Hoefler & Frere-Jones opted for ALL CAPS.

For comparison, Microsoft joined a Web graphics standard effort called Scalable Vector Graphics in January, and a few weeks later, the IE9 prototype emerged with strong support for SVG. And note that hardware-accelerated, high-quality fonts are one of the front-and-center features of IE9.

With all of this, it seems highly likely that Internet Explorer 9 will also support WOFF 

There has been some unconfirmed rumors floating around that Internet Explorer 9 will sport a shiny new user interface based on WPF.

This would come as no big surprise, as both Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend are also based on WPF.

The developer preview of IE9 was launched without a functional and practical user interface, which Microsoft representatives claimed was done to focus on the technology itself. Such a move also makes more sense if the entire user interface will be redone in WPF.

Have you got any insider details about the upcoming IE9 UI? Did you see it in action or do you have screenshots? Feel free to share any information or details you might have 

HTML5 encompasses a broad range of standards and technologies, from the core HTML specification to video and audio playback to offline storage databases and document editing.

All of these standards are open and interoperable, and are rapidly gaining wide support across modern browsers. It is because of this very openness that Microsoft has been able to provide GPU powered hardware acceleration of their HTML5 support.

But there is one thing missing from the list of supported HTML5 standards in Internet Explorer 9, and that missing item is the <canvas> element.

The canvas element is part of HTML5 and allows for dynamic scriptable rendering of 2D bitmap images. It has already been implemented in all browsers other than Internet Explorer, and a wide range of technology demos have started to appear.

The demand for canvas support in Internet Explorer is so high that Google even created a script library to implement canvas via Flash, aptly named ExplorerCanvas.

The IE9 keynote at MIX left most of us dazzled, yet dazed and confused. Why was there no announcement of canvas support in Internet Explorer 9?

Even today, after the launch of the IE9 Developer Preview, there has still been no official word from the IE team about whether IE9 will actually support canvas.

Internet Explorer 9 provides us with GPU powered hardware acceleration of text, images, SVG and even video playback. With all of these GPU features in place, it seems like a relatively minor task to provide a 2 dimensional bitmapped area where developers can plot and read pixels, preferably using the same Direct2D mapping that is available for text and image rendering.

IE9Buzz will continue to follow the development of, and buzz surrounding, Internet Explorer 9, and provide you with timely updates about the hopefully upcoming canvas support in Internet Explorer 9 

Microsoft is making some bold claims about their standards support in Internet Explorer 9. One of the pitches they have been throwing around is “same markup, same results” across browsers, which means that the same HTML5 markup and CSS3 instructions should produce the same results across browsers.

The first IE9 developer preview is already scoring 55 out of 100 in the Acid3 test, so things are looking promising.

However, the pitch should really be amended to say "same markup, same results – faster!".

The modern PC is quite different from the one that used to run Netscape Navigator 4 or Internet Explorer 5. You will be hard pressed to find a PC today that does not come with even a rudimentary GPU of some kind, as even the cheapest of netbooks from 2007 are powered by a GPU such as the Intel GMA 900.

In recognition of this, Internet Explorer 9 comes with a range of hardware acceleration features that do not require any changes to the underlying markup or media content.

All of the MSHTML rendering is now enhanced to use Direct2D and DirectWrite instead of GDI.

This enables GPU accelerated 2D graphics and text. Any text formatting now benefits from sub-pixel rendering, and bitmap images are mapped to textures and scaled via the GPU, which is great for zooming and moving images around.

Internet Explorer 9 is also the first browser to provide fully hardware-accelerated SVG support. This is particularly apparent in the Flying Images demo, with competing browsers such as Firefox or Chrome stuttering along while IE9 has no problems with delivering 60+ frames per seconds, the vertical sync limit on most monitors.

Just as interesting is the GPU accelerated playback of standard HTML5 <video>. 

Today, most video content is delivered through Flash and Adobe is still working on providing a stable release of Flash Player 10.1 which comes with GPU powered video playback.

YouTube and other sites are even now switching to HTML5 video, and will all benefit from GPU accelerated playback of HTML5 video without any changes to their markup.

The IE9 keynote at MIX had a demo of a single 720P HD video streaming to Firefox and Chrome, both of which were stuttering along with a high CPU usage, with IE9 chugging along just fine even with two simultaneous 720P HD video streams.

Things are looking promising for HTML5 application performance in IE9