The way I see Internet Explorer 9

Here are few remarks about how I see the biggest features needed for IE 9. Yes, I know, IE8 is not yet really out, but I’m wondering the IETeam is already taking decision for the planning of IE9, so if you’ve critical requests, you shouldn’t wait too much before asking ;-)

Pour les anglophobes, une traduction est disponible ici

==> To make the developer tools better:

* Select element with UI from CSSSelector [implemented] and XPath [to implement]

* Add/Remove a new selector’s rule to a stylesheet
          →  Visual aid to doc.stylesheets[x].addRule/removeRule

* Enable/Disable a stylesheet
          → Visual aid to doc.stylesheets[x].disabled

* Change the page’s style (same as page > style)

* Explore objects printed in the console via console.dir (with a plus/minus button to expand/hide properties) and be able to edit properties values and call functions from it (like Visual Studio ObjectID)

* Be able to see both obj.currentStyle.xxx [implemented] and obj.computedStyle.xxx [to implement]

* Be able to see value of all CSS Properties or only those setted by the site (non-default values)

* See what the style would be if the object gets/looses ‘hover’, ‘active’ …

* See and edit what style is applied to ∷before/∷after of an element of the page [a pseudo-class style tab?]

* Change default element’s view to ‘Follow style’ and not ‘Style’ because former is not clear enough and provides a lot of unused information.

==> As general enhancement of the IE’s UI:

*Fix all the ‘freezing’ bugs (jscript, page loading …) that make the tabs no more selectable
          → BTW, should an alert unallow changing of tab?
          Same remark for prompt, confirm, and others dialogs like WinUpdate.

*Implements a feature like http://www.snap.com/about/addon.php over links with the difference that it would be the real page shown with a 50% (or 33%) zoom. So, the user can see the content of the page and interact with it without having to leave its current page. If the user finally decide to open the page in a new tab or window (with buttons at top of the preview or by clicking on the link directly), the page would be preloaded (because of cache).

* Having a greater way to explore history and favorites (the pane can be larger and have filtering possibilities like Windows Live Mail)

* Previewing tabs by putting the mouse on the tab’s button (like Opera does)

* Choosing the tab’s colors from the dominant color in the page, or using the page’s thumbnail.

* Having the address bar similar to WinExplorer or Opera, with a load bar when it's needed.

* Update dialogs like 'prompt' and 'alert' to be more secure and beautifuller

Here’s how I did for the tabs: Taking the first 200px of the tab, stretching the image to the tab’s button, adding some lightness, apply a 3px Gaussian blur (it’s smart to do).

==> My priorities for CSS 3 / HTML 5 / ES3.1
(from most important to less important) :

* Box-Shadow + Border-Image

* Content (full support + not only on ::after and ::before)

* Implementing ES3.1 (Array and function ‘extras’, ES3.1 compatible prototype for all JSO and not only DOM Object, ..)

* Support for calc() with lengths at least

* JScript compilation, or any method that can make JScript 3* faster at least.

* CSS compilation (the rule get parsed and then compiled to gain in speed)

* Support for a unit that have as value the with/height of the current element and another unit that have the value of the last element that create a new ‘positionning context’.

* Support for opacity and transitions

* VIDEO tag

* XHTML support

* SVG support

* <input type=”{ type here any new HTML 5 type }'” />

==> What do you think of it ?

That’s all about what I hope for IE9, and I know that all of this will not be part of IE9, it’s only a query list, I don’t bother here about timecost of implementing the things !

If you’re contesting my chooices of if you see something I did’nt mention, feel free to post a comment at bottom of this post.

Thanks for reading me to the end,

Fremy