Microsoft Build 2013: Internet Explorer 11 places HTML 5 at the forefront

100 tabs per window, contextual keyboards, low battery and RAM demands all impress

Microsoft shed some light on the inner workings of its Internet Explorer 11 browser at San Francisco's Build 2013 conference today, accusing no other browser in the world of "running with excellence" in any particular way; an affliction IE 11 intends to fix.

HTML 5 seems key to the experience, with vice president of the Internet Explorer team Dean Hachamovitch proudly displaying an interface that uses HTML 5 so efficiently, it can run NetFlix and YouTube straight from a browser with no plugins or extra software, as well as process some serious 3D graphics.

Contextual keyboards, deep-search web address autocompletes and a possible 100 tabs per browser window were also mooted in a browser that promises to run almost entirely from a system's GPU, leaving RAM free for other tasks, and maximising battery life in a mobile age.

"The best experience of the web is on a Windows device, with IE 11," stated Hachamovitch.

"With Windows 8.1, the browser is no longer a commodity. It's a way to differentiate the device and the operating system. Other browsers run here, there and everywhere, and don't run with excellence in any one particular place, particular device or particular anything."

Hachamovitch and his team demonstrated IE 11 happily crunching and scaling a spinning Microsoft logo, and 3D first-person geographic displays, comparing the performance to those of Chrome or Firefox, with the apparent result of 60 fps [frames per second] on IE 11 while the other browsers displayed the graphics in single figure frame rates.

"We're not acutally using the CPU at all. As your finger touches down on the screen, we're using the GPU to do all of this," said Hachamovitch, before revealing that IE 11 draws text 3000 times faster than other Microsoft, and current rival, browsers before it.

"That's because IE 11 is the first browser to draw and cache text on the GPU itself," he reinforced, also adding that a single window on IE 11 can open 100 separate tabs without any performance hit.

The same principle applies to the JPEG pipeline, which is fully hardware accelerated, as Hachamovitch showed images in a browser-embedded gallery being browsed instantly with no pause or pixellation.

There were more everyday practical concerns to address, too.

"When you put an old browser and its UI on any new device, you're going to run into problems," said Hachamovitch.

"Most of the web today wasn't designed for touch."

The browser compensates for the state of the internet at large by placing tabs invisibly off the bottom of the screen, recalled with a swipe - or toggleable to display permanently should a user wish - and text input keyboards are now contextual depending on whether numbers or letters are required.

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Microsoft Build 2013: Internet Explorer 11 places HTML 5 at the forefront

100 tabs per window, contextual keyboards, low battery and RAM demands all impress

Right-clicked links also now divide the screen equally in half and open a new window alongside the old, allowing easy contrast rather than Windows' traditional overlapping style.

Finally, emulation of older browser technology is more deeply-integrated, better options that are easier to access ensuring what appears to be a more seamless compatibility and speed boost for legacy sites, or web pages still designed to classic convention.

The team also confirmed that JavaScript-based 3D and 2D rendering API WebGL is finally supported, after Internet Explorer has traditionally lagged behind every other popular browser on the market in this regard.

The team explained how security concerns had been holding back support in the past, stating that exploits could allow malicious sites to read everything on a WebGL user's screen at that moment. But, explained Microsoft, WebGL's specification has since changed to disallow image stealing, Microsoft has added a pre-screening process for WebGL activity, and Windows' own Direct X technology also helps prevent it.

Overall, Internet Explorer 11 seems an extremely encouraging step in the right direction for both Microsoft's flagging browser brand, and for a positive move forward in HTML 5 integration. The battery-saving innovations in themselves are sure to make IE 11 a browser to look more closely at as mobility increasingly leads productivity.