[aChrisSmith]

I'm confused why Microsoft would sponsor something like this. Google going after game developers and getting them to port their apps to HTML5 makes sense, as it supports the Web as a platform as well as promotes the Chrome Web Store.

Is the plan that the Windows8 App Store feature Chrome Store-style URLs-as-applications?

[lloeki]

The whole "behind the scenes" reads like an advertisement.

Striking excerpts:

*

> cuttherope._ie_

> Canvas is an amazingly fast rendering surface, especially in a browser where that API is hardware accelerated (like Internet Explorer 9).

> Internet Explorer 9’s Chakra JavaScript engine pre-compiles the code on a background thread [...] The result is near-native execution speeds. Amazingly, this is something that you just get for free.

> while we can say Internet Explorer 9 users get a great plug-in free experience, Chrome and some Firefox users could have run into an audio problem

> Much of our development was done in Visual Web Developer 2010 (the "express" version is available for free here). This is a really robust web editor with autocompletion for JavaScript and CSS. It’s great that the express version is free.

> in most cases, anything we tested in Internet Explorer 9 “just worked” everywhere else.

> With some guidance from Microsoft, we decided to replace the recursive function with an “unpacked” iterative version of the same code.

> Frankly, we would have never found that without the profiling tools in Internet Explorer 9.

*

The whole performance part is worded to sound like porting from Obj-C to JS is a breeze, JS code is actually cleaner and more straightforward than Obj-C, Canvas offers more features and performs better than OpenGL ES, and so on.

This is not so much an ad for IE9 as an ad targeting developers, showcasing the (present and future) Microsoft development ecosystem as best class.

[fmoralesc]

What did you expect?

[powertower]

He expected them to fail in some way, and when they instead succeeded by using MS tools, he made up some fault to complain about.

Microsoft bashing is getting old.

My suggestion for the like-minded is to either try MS tools for yourself, pick a new target, or modify own identity to not require for self to be the victim oppressed by an evil giant.

[lloeki]

You are reading my post too far: I was not bashing anyone. If anything, I was complaining about the writing, not the stack itself (which I have used daily and still use from time to time since I moved to a mostly Ruby shop). I was hoping the "behind the scenes" to be a bit more technical and a bit less ad so the article, while an interesting story, was a let down.

[powertower]

My apologies.

[mathrawka]

From their development details (http://www.cuttherope.ie/dev/), this point stuck out to me:

With some guidance from Microsoft, we decided to replace the recursive function with an “unpacked” iterative version of the same code. The results were amazing. We saw a 10x improvement in every browser! Frankly, we would have never found that without the profiling tools in Internet Explorer 9.

[chucknthem]

To be fair, they probably could have found the same performance problem profiling using chrome or firebug

[Bockit]

This combined with the recent typography in IE promotion they just ran makes me think they're trying to push IE as a quality browser again.

[secoif]

Seems to be more a direct promotion for IE9 http://i.imgur.com/pLMyF.jpg

[deltaqueue]

There could be two reasons:

1. Microsoft is attempting to pique interest in gaming because they see Xbox Live as a key differentiator for the Windows Phone platform. 2. Microsoft is just trying to prove relevance for IE, since their numbers have been slipping for so long (a "me too", if you will).

[jQueryIsAwesome]

Is actually a pretty IE commercial; to play the third level you have to put it on your windows taskbar and play it with IE9.