If you are developing modern web applications, pay attention. Microsoft has started releasing new versions of its browser designed exclusively for developers. This opens up the opportunity to tell the development team what you like or dislike about implementing the new standards. The freshly released version includes the WebDriver API, the Gamepad API, and WebGL support. The F12 developer tools include minor improvements. You can share your opinion on the new versions either via a dedicated website or via Twitter.
The difference between this release and past Developer Previews is that currently the development team has their infrastructure in place to release new releases for developers on a regular basis. So we can expect to be able to try new techniques every few months. In the past, this was only possible just before the release of a new version, and only once or twice in short succession. A new version was released about once every two years.
Versions from the IE Developer Channel can be installed on both Windows 8.1 and Windows 7. It does not replace the existing IE installation, both versions can be on the same system at the same time. At the same time, it does not change the settings in the registry and keeps its own history of visited sites. In short, it tries to be isolated from the system it runs on. It uses App-V for this, which means that these versions are not very suitable for measuring performance.
The area that pays attention to developers has also seen a noticeable improvement in internal procedures. They can share their opinions either through Microsoft Connect or via Twitter on @IEDevChat. Once in a while, chats with developers over #AskIE take place there.
WebDriver API
WebDriver allows you to control the browser with a program. The interface that makes this possible is standardized by the W3C. Because third-party programs controlling IE contained bugs, Microsoft complied with the developers' wishes and came up with its own support. You can download a demo that shows usage from C#.
Gamepad API
The gamepad API allows the website to respond to the gamepad in addition to commands from the mouse, keyboard, or touch screen. This is especially justified on the Xbox One game console. However, web games cannot be run on it yet, as it lacks WebGL support. This is because IE runs in isolation for security reasons and does not have direct access to the hardware. We can only hope that this will change over time with an update and web games like Runescape will be playable on Xbox One.
WebGL
And we'll stay with WebGL for a while. Its support is further improved. The rendering of many identical objects and triangles with a common vertex has been accelerated, support for 16-bit textures and shader variables has been added. The coverage of Khronos tests has also increased from 93 to 97%.
F12 Developer Tools
Developer tools are constantly being improved. The latest news includes a new field for quickly switching the render mode, which is displayed in the upper right corner no matter what tab you are on.
Finding the right place in the code to place a breakpoint is sometimes tedious. However, it is now possible to set a breakpoint to an event. When it occurs, execution stops in your code at the point that handles the event.
Another novelty is trace points. It allows you to log when an event occurs. This is useful in cases where a breakpoint interrupts an event, such as mousemove. Instead of setting a breakpoint and examining variables, you can now easily list them.
Other improvements are in the Paměť and Odezva uživatelského rozhraní tabs, which allow you to better browse and filter large amounts of logged data.
What’s next?
You can follow the techniques that are being prepared for the next edition on the status.modern.ie page. Quite a lot of attention is focused on EcmaScript 6, which will bring JavaScript closer to modern languages. JS iterators support will then allow you to extend TypeScript with asynchronous programming.
The aim of implementing WebSocket and SPDY was to gain enough experience to work on HTTP 2.0. It is supposed to bring greater security thanks to mandatory encryption of transmitted data and greater speed thanks to the ability to transfer multiple files at once over a single connection. It also allows the server to contact the client directly, without having to wait for their previous request. Currently, the server can only send data to the client when the client requests it.
For more information, visit the devchannel.modern.ie website.
I wrote the article for the Czech MSDN Blog and TechNet Blog CZ/SK.