IE 9: Surfing on the GPU with D2D

Posted By: Charles | Nov 18th, 2009 @ 10:58 AM | 104,288 Views | 29 Comments
The IE team is busy working on the next version of the world's most popular browser. IE 8 is the most widely used browser on Windows. IE 9 is currently in the oven and the IE team is ready to talk about what they're working on. Here, IE GM Dean Hachamovitch leads us through the halls of IE (literarally) and takes us to meet graphics developer Christian Fortini and test lead Anjali Parikh. They're taking IE to a new level with all graphic rendering taking place on the GPU via the DirectX technology D2D. So, IE 9 will take advantage of the power of the GPU for all page rendering and, further, enable web developers to exploit this power in ways they already understand (CSS, DHTML, JavaScript). The increase in performance and smooth rendering is stunning as you will see in the demos that are part of this conversation. This is incredible news for web developers and web surfers. IE 9, surfing the GPU! Oh yeah.

Be sure to check out interviews on IE 9's new JS engine and the importance of testing to achieving interoperable standards.

Enjoy.
Tags: D2D, GPU, IE 9
Rating:
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#Nov 18th, 2009 @ 10:38 AM
exoteric
exoteric
embarassingly sequential

IE9 w/ D2D & DirectWrite. Nice - I was waiting for this!

#Nov 18th, 2009 @ 11:50 AM
intelman
intelman

I have kept requesting this since IE7. It makes sense, the web is pquite graphical and computationally intensive now.

 

Now the problem is waiting.

#Nov 18th, 2009 @ 12:21 PM
DCMonkey
DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

I don't know if this was covered in the (I wasn't paying enough attention when I watched it Smiley, but would the move to rendering IE9 via DX allow a future version of the WPF WebBrowser control to function without the airspace issues of the current GDI based control?

#Nov 18th, 2009 @ 12:52 PM
CreamFilling512
CreamFilling512

I didn't watch the video yet, so apologies if this was covered, but how do you handle printing if the browser is rendered on the GPU?  Do you keep the GDI pipeline around for the purpose of printing support?

#Nov 18th, 2009 @ 1:02 PM
intelman
intelman

I forgot to mention, hopefully zoomed pages beyond 100% are smooth.

#Nov 18th, 2009 @ 1:10 PM
Charles
Charles
Welcome Change

We do talk about this. The net net: printing will work... Smiley
C

#Nov 18th, 2009 @ 3:40 PM
Simo
Simo
With me it's a full-time job.

Now this I like...

#Nov 18th, 2009 @ 7:01 PM
ktr
ktr
two sides to everything

Charles, you did a great job on this video.  I also really like the way it was filmed; it felt real ... as if you were in the room. Very cool.

#Nov 18th, 2009 @ 8:19 PM
CreamFilling512
CreamFilling512

Yeah they didn't really give you an answer though.  Either they will keep a legacy GDI pipeline, well not really legacy because it'll need to be kept up-to-date, for printing.  Or they will target the new XPS print path, probably the latter.  Either way they're going to have to basically have two render paths for everything.  It's going to be a hard problem.  Abstracting the whole presentation system and supporting arbitrary render methods seems indicated.  If they were using WPF they'd get printing and GPU acceleration for free, but I'm kinda glad they're not cause it's probably too heavyweight.

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