IE 9 and Webhelp

[hans_hatton]

Has anyone installed IE 9 and can comment on whether "Chakra, the new JavaScript engine" delivers a performance increase for our Webhelp help systems, in particular the load times thereof?

[RamonS]

As far as I know is IE9 still in beta. Besides that, there are currently browsers available that already have fast JS engines.

[Madcap Guru]

Bornally the madcapa guys don't support beta versions of browsers.. so once it no longer beta you may want to check then

[hans_hatton]

I understand that IE 9 is still in beta, and that MadCap cannot officially support it yet.

If I understand the responses correctly (... reading between the lines ...), there is little pointing in me testing it with the current Flare output because there are likely to be compatibility issues (which MadCap will need to resolve prior to the commercial release of IE 9) that would thwart my efforts to evaluate any supposed performance increases.

[RamonS]

That is not what I meant. I don't know if there will be any issues. I don't have the time to fiddle around with beta releases, especially not from crapware like IE.

[LTinker68]

If I understand the responses correctly (... reading between the lines ...), there is little pointing in me testing it with the current Flare output because there are likely to be compatibility issues (which MadCap will need to resolve prior to the commercial release of IE 9) that would thwart my efforts to evaluate any supposed performance increases.

I wouldn't bother with it since you don't know how much tweaking Microsoft is going to make to IE9. You may test it and find no problem in one area, then when it's finally released you realize it broke something else. In short, you could waste time going in circles, especially since if changes are needed to Flare, MadCap won't release an incremental or full update until IE9 is officially released.

[hans_hatton]

Thanks Lisa for the considered advice (and without gratuitous MS bashing)

[RamonS]

That wasn't bashing. What IE9 promises is available in several other browsers for months if not years. Tomorrow's IE is yesterday's technology, so why even bother? Besides that, given how many MS and non-MS browser based apps IE9 will break adoption rate is likely small in the business world. I work for a Microsoft gold plated latinum partner company and IT blocked IE9 installs and downloads companywide, because it breaks too many things. Ironically, that is because it finally starts working right as a browser.

[dannh]

Hi,
I did a test this morning with IE9 because we are considering supporting it in the next version of our product. This was actually why I was on the forum.
All I get are the frames when I try to open a Flare 7 WebHelp system that works fine on IE8, FF3, etc. Although this is on a Virtual Machine running IIS on a 2k8 Server after the SP1 upgrade... so there are a number of potential causes of what I'm [not] seeing.
I will try to post impressions if I get this working.
Thanks,
Dan

[RamonS]

I just tried IE9 on W7 32 bit using kb.madcapsoftware.com and that works perfectly fine.

[dannh]

Interesting Ramon.
I actually see the same behavior I saw with my own WebHelp project (only frame borders appear) when I try to open the Madcap KB. However, when I add it as a Trusted Site, I can see everything.
Surprise! Looks like a Microsoft security/permissions issue.
Note: I am using 2k8 R2 64-bit.

[Andrew]

Interesting Ramon.
I actually see the same behavior I saw with my own WebHelp project (only frame borders appear) when I try to open the Madcap KB. However, when I add it as a Trusted Site, I can see everything.
Surprise! Looks like a Microsoft security/permissions issue.
Note: I am using 2k8 R2 64-bit.

The browser for Windows Server versions is locked down quite extensively. Since servers should not typically be used for web browsing, this usually isn't a problem (and, as you noticed, you can set the site to trusted -- when I was using IE8 in Server 2K8 R2, it notified me of the security issue and how to get around it; surprised it wouldn't do that for IE9).