Will IE9 support WebGL and/or WebSockets? [closed]

Answer 1

There are many discussions of the security issues of WebGL. I first heard of it on one of Steve Gibson's podcasts. Since it gives much lower level access to both the operating system and the hardware any flaw can be exploited much more severely. A quick Google search found this article with descriptions and video of some of the flaws: http://www.contextis.com/research/blog/webgl2/

Answer 2

Most answers to the question "When will browser X support HTML5 feature Y?" are answered by When Can I Use. In addition to list past, current and future support each item also generally has links to relevant news.

• WebSockets
• WebGL

Update:

Microsoft has been actively participating in the IETF HyBi working group (WebSockets protocol) and also participating in W3C work on the WebSockets API. The IE 10 preview release has WebSocket support built-in so it looks very likely that we will soon see a official release version of IE with WebSockets.

WebGL in IE still looks pretty uncertain. Microsoft claims fundamental security issues with the design of WebGL, but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that Microsoft has a vested interest in promoting their own DirectX framework rather than OpenGL (which is what WebGL is based on).

Answer 3

You can look at the current release notes for the platform demo - there is no mention of either WebSockets or WebGL.

Answer 4

Right now, the Microsoft IE team is struggling to get HTML 5 and SVG (2D graphics) into Internet Explorer 9. Other web browser makers have been shipping with those standards built in for years.

Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox all run fine on Windows. Takes one mouse click to launch a different browser. Takes a year or two to see what Microsoft might do.

IE progress has consistently been glacially slow this whole decade.

No, IE does not have WebGL support now and betas from other browser makers already run it. IE9 will not catch up with contemporary web standards like WebGL, just ones that have been out for several years or more.

IE9 is not a cross platform web browser either. It will only run on certain specific versions of Microsoft Windows. Just run one of the standard web browsers and you can see what WebGL can do. Their current betas are running some impressive WebGL demos now.

Answer 5

WebGL seems not to be include in IE's strategy because of DirectX. Anyway google already worked on that with the ANGLE project. http://code.google.com/p/angleproject/

Answer 6

Microsoft seems quite reluctant to implement WebGL in IE, since OpenGL is a competitor to DirectX. So I think it's unlikely we'll see WebGL in IE in the near future.

I’ve started an Open Source project called JebGL that can serve as a fallback for IE users. It’s a Java applet that when finished will serve as a plugin replacement for a WebGL canvas. It’s still in the early stages of development, but you can check out the demos at http://jebgl.googlecode.com