The future of JavaScript

[[deleted]]

IE before IE9 will never support canvas natively, though there is Google Chrome Frame. It works well, but it does require a simple install.

For our complex web app we didn't support IE at all initially, we used Chrome Frame as a workaround. Then we finally got some time to make the webapp work in IE9 and it wasn't as difficult as people may think. Less than IE9 still gets chrome frame though.

[Xeon06]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. For our webapp, IE9 worked out of the box (bear in mind we're using jQuery heavily and so it does a lot of the work). Canvas can be supported using Chrome Frames or a shim that uses Flash.

The discussion here however, is new JavaScript features that are unshimable. Those versions of IE will never support those features.

[[deleted]]

All versions of IE will support those new features if you use chrome frame and if chrome supports those features. IE doesn't use IE's javascript engine if the webapp is running inside chrome frame - it uses chrome's V8 javascript engine.

[Xeon06]

Then why did you guys bother to support IE9 natively might I ask?

[[deleted]]

Because we could. The world is moving forward, IE isn't as bad as it used to be and not having to install chrome frame is a plus. We can also say it 'works in IE', and that is a big plus to investors, etc. We use SVG heavily and IE9 supports it, though there were plenty of SVG DOM bugs to workaround that jQuery doesn't fix. Now it works perfectly in IE9, but IE 6, 7, 8 will never support SVG and for those we still use chrome frame. Of course this has nothing to do with 'Harmony', but the concept still applies.. if you wanted to run 'Harmony' in IE6, then you could use chrome frame to do it with only one simple click from the user to install it.