9 ms·

IE10 review: still disappointing for HTML5 games

54 points by AshleysBrain 14y ago

bluetidepro 14y ago
Is anyone really THAT surprised, though? I feel like indie game developers who are using HTML5 techniques still mainly target modern browsers (Chrome, Safari, and Firefox). There might have been a hope of say "it will be awesome if everything starts to work on IE", but I highly doubt those developers were dying for IE. Plus, if you look at the majority target market for HTML5 gamers, those users will most likely be using modern browsers anyways.
- meaty 14y ago
  I thought IE10 was a "modern browser"?
  - tokenizer 14y ago
    Not according to this: http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html. BUT, IE will start to auto update their browsers here sometime soon, and in my books that's what makes a browser modern right now.
    - Zr40 14y ago
      The score for IE10 is 320. It's close to Safari 5.1, the previous version of Safari, which scores 319. Of course, it's not as high as the current leader (Maxthon 3.4.5 at 457), but IE10's got a decent score, and is definitely a big improvement compared to IE9.
  - danmaz74 14y ago
    Or at last, it was supposed to be...
  - bluetidepro 14y ago
    You are right, that was a poor usage of the phrase "modern browser", but I'm sure you know what I meant (Chrome, Safari, and Firefox).
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    It is. It's just one step behind, and that's one step too far for some people.
- freehunter 14y ago
  I'm not sure how you're categorizing "modern browsers", but this is disappointing for any developers who hope to reach audiences on Windows RT or Windows Phone 8 without needing to make an app for those platforms.
  - bluetidepro 14y ago
    As mentioned below in another comment reply I made, that was a poor usage of "modern browsers". I meant like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Also, I agree that it's disappointing, but I also don't think it's necessarily a "deal breaker" for the features that IE10 is missing. However, that will depend on the style of HTML5 game that you are building.
- kevingadd 14y ago
  It's currently easier to get a HTML5 game working in IE10 than it is in Windows Safari, for what it's worth. But I think I agree with your premise that HTML5 game developers aren't really targeting Internet Explorer in general. People who care about users on IE seem to be sticking with Flash.
  - anatoli 14y ago
    I don't really see the point of comparing IE10 (just released) to a browser that has a minuscule browser share and hasn't been actively developed or updated in something like 6 months.
    - kevingadd 14y ago
      You can compare a preview build of IE10 from 6 months ago with a Windows Safari nightly from today and IE10 will still win. I have.
CJefferson 14y ago
This benchmark is a bit misleading, as it is not comparing like with like. On the only benchmark where WebGL doesn't help, IE 10 does respectably. I have found in my limited testing of 2d canvas that IE 10 performs quite well. While it would be nice to see WebGL in IE10, 2d canvas-based apps perform very well.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Until recently I recall seeing some canvas apps performing much smoother in IE9/IE10 than in Chrome.
kevingadd 14y ago
Disappointing, perhaps, but somehow it still manages to be better than Opera and Safari (Windows Safari, at least) for HTML5 games based on my testing [1]. Going from last place to third place in such a short time period is an achievement in my book, even if I'd still never use IE as my primary browser. Admittedly IE10 is still missing some features I would mark as important for game development, but when I contacted some IE devs over at Microsoft (just send an email!) they got back to me with simple workarounds that made it possible to get my games running with a few lines of additional code. (Not IE-specific code either, just clever feature-detection fallback for any browser.) Here's how I suggest looking at it instead: Holy shit, the browser that comes stock on Windows 8 can actually run a large majority of HTML5 games and applications! You don't have to nag people to install Chrome or Firefox just to use your app! Sure, you want them to upgrade anyway - and they probably will - but that's something! Now if IE11 comes out and doesn't advance the state of things here I'll certainly be disappointed, but at present I'd say I'm actually quite pleased: in the jump from 9 to 10 MS has brought IE forward enough that you can run HTML5 games in it without having to write a ton of browser-specific hacks or feature implementations. WebGL support would be nice, but you still can't rely on WebGL in HTML5 games anyway since it doesn't work on a large percentage of desktop machines and is basically unusable on mobile. I think this is another area where the pressure should be on MS to get a rock solid implementation of WebGL into IE11, not to complain about IE10 not having an API that is arguably still not ready for prime time (Though increasingly close). Complaints about not having the Web Audio API are similarly missing the point since you can't use it anyway unless you're writing a Chrome Experiment - your real complaints should be reserved for the fact that IE still has an undocumented limit on the number of live <audio> instances you can put in a single page, or for IE's latency when playing new sound effects. Finally, allow me to repeat others' comments that it's incredibly stupid to benchmark a canvas-based game against a webgl one and present the numbers side-by-side with a straight face. Canvas performance is miserable in every single browser and IE has nothing to do with this. IE actually has one of the better Canvas implementations out there. The fault lies with Canvas being a poorly-specified, poorly implemented API, not with IE. [1] I regularly test all my HTML5 game ports across the major browsers and regularly hit crash bugs in Safari and Opera. Also, Windows Safari still can't play back audio which is... inexplicably stupid.
- 14y ago
jaipilot747 14y ago
Though the comparison HAS to be between 2d canvas and WebGL due to IE not implementing the latter, it does feel a tad unfair. Maybe someone with more knowledge could chime in about what optimizations are possible 3D that aren't possible on a 2D canvas. It would also be interesting to see how FF and Chrome performed on the same 2D canvas test.
- kevingadd 14y ago
  It's possible to achieve a factor of 10 (perhaps even 100) better performance for typical 2D workloads by using WebGL instead of Canvas. This is a mix of the Canvas API specifying that things have to be rendered in a relatively expensive fashion, and the actual Canvas implementations not being particularly performant (despite some really impressive efforts in that area by the browser vendors).
megaman821 14y ago
I agree with respect to games Chrome and Firefox are pulling ahead, but with respect to publishing IE10 is ahead. Things like grid layout, positioned floats, and regions are awesome to more easily make good looking websites. While I do enjoy games, I would rather Chrome and Firefox work on adopting these new css primitives more than working on OpenGL and audio APIs.
lampe 14y ago
how can be a markup language disappointing? The Interpreter in this case IE10 can only be disappointing...
tantalor 14y ago
Recently Chrome and Firefox also added an experimental feature currently being standardised to also allow point sampling in their Canvas 2D renderer Anybody have a source or reference for this?
- AshleysBrain 14y ago
  I was referring to the new Canvas 2D context 'imageSmoothingEnabled' property: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-canvas-element.html#image-smoothing http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...
proee 14y ago
Can developers use IEWebGL as a fallback for IE users?
dotborg 14y ago
WebGL is not supported in IE because of some important reasons, it's just not secure enough.. yet. Most succesful games are not using it anyways.
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
As with Vorbis, the lack of WebGL is political as its based on OpenGL which is a threat to DirectX. Theres some hope for Opus as Microsoft's Skype division is pushing it (its partly based on Skype tech)

54 points by AshleysBrain 14y ago

Is anyone really THAT surprised, though? I feel like indie game developers who are using HTML5 techniques still mainly target modern browsers (Chrome, Safari, and Firefox). There might have been a hope of say "it will be awesome if everything starts to work on IE", but I highly doubt those developers were dying for IE. Plus, if you look at the majority target market for HTML5 gamers, those users will most likely be using modern browsers anyways.

meaty 14y ago
I thought IE10 was a "modern browser"?
- tokenizer 14y ago
  Not according to this: http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html. BUT, IE will start to auto update their browsers here sometime soon, and in my books that's what makes a browser modern right now.
  - Zr40 14y ago
    The score for IE10 is 320. It's close to Safari 5.1, the previous version of Safari, which scores 319. Of course, it's not as high as the current leader (Maxthon 3.4.5 at 457), but IE10's got a decent score, and is definitely a big improvement compared to IE9.
- danmaz74 14y ago
  Or at last, it was supposed to be...
- bluetidepro 14y ago
  You are right, that was a poor usage of the phrase "modern browser", but I'm sure you know what I meant (Chrome, Safari, and Firefox).
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  It is. It's just one step behind, and that's one step too far for some people.
freehunter 14y ago
I'm not sure how you're categorizing "modern browsers", but this is disappointing for any developers who hope to reach audiences on Windows RT or Windows Phone 8 without needing to make an app for those platforms.
- bluetidepro 14y ago
  As mentioned below in another comment reply I made, that was a poor usage of "modern browsers". I meant like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Also, I agree that it's disappointing, but I also don't think it's necessarily a "deal breaker" for the features that IE10 is missing. However, that will depend on the style of HTML5 game that you are building.
kevingadd 14y ago
It's currently easier to get a HTML5 game working in IE10 than it is in Windows Safari, for what it's worth. But I think I agree with your premise that HTML5 game developers aren't really targeting Internet Explorer in general. People who care about users on IE seem to be sticking with Flash.
- anatoli 14y ago
  I don't really see the point of comparing IE10 (just released) to a browser that has a minuscule browser share and hasn't been actively developed or updated in something like 6 months.
  - kevingadd 14y ago
    You can compare a preview build of IE10 from 6 months ago with a Windows Safari nightly from today and IE10 will still win. I have.

CJefferson 14y ago

This benchmark is a bit misleading, as it is not comparing like with like. On the only benchmark where WebGL doesn't help, IE 10 does respectably. I have found in my limited testing of 2d canvas that IE 10 performs quite well. While it would be nice to see WebGL in IE10, 2d canvas-based apps perform very well.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Until recently I recall seeing some canvas apps performing much smoother in IE9/IE10 than in Chrome.

kevingadd 14y ago

Disappointing, perhaps, but somehow it still manages to be better than Opera and Safari (Windows Safari, at least) for HTML5 games based on my testing [1]. Going from last place to third place in such a short time period is an achievement in my book, even if I'd still never use IE as my primary browser. Admittedly IE10 is still missing some features I would mark as important for game development, but when I contacted some IE devs over at Microsoft (just send an email!) they got back to me with simple workarounds that made it possible to get my games running with a few lines of additional code. (Not IE-specific code either, just clever feature-detection fallback for any browser.) Here's how I suggest looking at it instead: Holy shit, the browser that comes stock on Windows 8 can actually run a large majority of HTML5 games and applications! You don't have to nag people to install Chrome or Firefox just to use your app! Sure, you want them to upgrade anyway - and they probably will - but that's something! Now if IE11 comes out and doesn't advance the state of things here I'll certainly be disappointed, but at present I'd say I'm actually quite pleased: in the jump from 9 to 10 MS has brought IE forward enough that you can run HTML5 games in it without having to write a ton of browser-specific hacks or feature implementations. WebGL support would be nice, but you still can't rely on WebGL in HTML5 games anyway since it doesn't work on a large percentage of desktop machines and is basically unusable on mobile. I think this is another area where the pressure should be on MS to get a rock solid implementation of WebGL into IE11, not to complain about IE10 not having an API that is arguably still not ready for prime time (Though increasingly close). Complaints about not having the Web Audio API are similarly missing the point since you can't use it anyway unless you're writing a Chrome Experiment - your real complaints should be reserved for the fact that IE still has an undocumented limit on the number of live <audio> instances you can put in a single page, or for IE's latency when playing new sound effects. Finally, allow me to repeat others' comments that it's incredibly stupid to benchmark a canvas-based game against a webgl one and present the numbers side-by-side with a straight face. Canvas performance is miserable in every single browser and IE has nothing to do with this. IE actually has one of the better Canvas implementations out there. The fault lies with Canvas being a poorly-specified, poorly implemented API, not with IE. [1] I regularly test all my HTML5 game ports across the major browsers and regularly hit crash bugs in Safari and Opera. Also, Windows Safari still can't play back audio which is... inexplicably stupid.

14y ago

jaipilot747 14y ago

Though the comparison HAS to be between 2d canvas and WebGL due to IE not implementing the latter, it does feel a tad unfair. Maybe someone with more knowledge could chime in about what optimizations are possible 3D that aren't possible on a 2D canvas. It would also be interesting to see how FF and Chrome performed on the same 2D canvas test.

kevingadd 14y ago
It's possible to achieve a factor of 10 (perhaps even 100) better performance for typical 2D workloads by using WebGL instead of Canvas. This is a mix of the Canvas API specifying that things have to be rendered in a relatively expensive fashion, and the actual Canvas implementations not being particularly performant (despite some really impressive efforts in that area by the browser vendors).

megaman821 14y ago

I agree with respect to games Chrome and Firefox are pulling ahead, but with respect to publishing IE10 is ahead. Things like grid layout, positioned floats, and regions are awesome to more easily make good looking websites. While I do enjoy games, I would rather Chrome and Firefox work on adopting these new css primitives more than working on OpenGL and audio APIs.

lampe 14y ago

how can be a markup language disappointing? The Interpreter in this case IE10 can only be disappointing...

tantalor 14y ago

Recently Chrome and Firefox also added an experimental feature currently being standardised to also allow point sampling in their Canvas 2D renderer Anybody have a source or reference for this?

AshleysBrain 14y ago
I was referring to the new Canvas 2D context 'imageSmoothingEnabled' property: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-canvas-element.html#image-smoothing http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...

proee 14y ago

Can developers use IEWebGL as a fallback for IE users?

dotborg 14y ago

WebGL is not supported in IE because of some important reasons, it's just not secure enough.. yet. Most succesful games are not using it anyways.

ZeroGravitas 14y ago

As with Vorbis, the lack of WebGL is political as its based on OpenGL which is a threat to DirectX. Theres some hope for Opus as Microsoft's Skype division is pushing it (its partly based on Skype tech)