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Jun

30

IE 9 - Most Popular Modern Browser on Windows 7 in the US, 22% Usage Share

Category: Vista News | Leave a Comment

June was another good month for Internet Explorer 9 and Windows 7.  IE9 has now become the most popular modern browser on Windows 7 in the US.  IE9 is now just second overall in the US behind IE8 with 21.8% usage share as of the last day of June.  Worldwide, IE9 usage share on Windows 7 is exiting the month with 17.0% usage share for June.

US

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Better, together.  We designed IE9 to make your favorite sites better.  A key piece of that is getting sites out of the browser box and letting them integrate right into your Windows 7 taskbar just like any of your favorite apps.   WordPress, which has over 20 million sites, recently took advantage of some of these unique capabilities to enable any of these millions of sites to be pinned right to your Windows 7 taskbar and instantly have a Jump List for all recent posts.  One of the blogs that caught our eye was Crazy4ComicCon, an enthusiastic ode to Comic-Con maintained by Tony Kim.

Pinning C4CC to your Windows 7 taskbar gives you instant access to the site, and a right-click will bring up the five most recent posts.

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As you can see Tony is incredibly passionate about comic books, Comic-Con, his blog and “the tribe.”  He launched his blog about a year ago as a means to “make the world a little smaller.” If you’re a fan of comics and want to learn more about the ins-and-outs of Comic-Con, definitely check-out Tony’s blog by pinning it to your Windows 7 taskbar.   And if you are a reader any of any of the 20 million blogs or news sites from WordPress, like TechCrunch – start pinning!

Go Scandinavia! The positive momentum in moving the world to a modern browser continues this month with IE6 and IE7 dropping a combined 0.8% share worldwide for the month of June.  Our website ie6countdown.com continues to get great traffic, and this month we launched our Champions page to celebrate those major countries that have dropped below 1% usage share of IE6.  The most recent country to join the ranks of these Champions is Sweden, where the Stockholm Webmonkeys got together on June 21st and celebrated IE6 dropping below 1% in Sweden.

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We also have expanded our IE6 Countdown efforts with two more global sites going live this month.  China which represents the largest portion of IE6 share worldwide has launched a local site, and our team in Latin America has also released a local version of IE6 Countdown to help get people there to move to a modern browser.

If you haven’t already made the move to Internet Explorer 9, try it by visiting www.beautyoftheweb.com.

Roger Capriotti
Director, Internet Explorer Product Marketing

Jun

30

Instant email: how we made Hotmail 10x faster

Category: Vista News | Leave a Comment

We announced last week a new version of SkyDrive, in which SkyDrive was redesigned from the ground up to have great performance on modern browsers. Like the SkyDrive team, we’ve also been hard at work on ways to speed up Hotmail.

We measured how fast our Hotmail pages loaded all over the world and how we compared to our competitors in a standardized environment, and then we dug deep into the numbers. In some ways, we were pretty good, but a number of very common actions were just too slow.

Making Hotmail fast

We trimmed content on our pages to speed up download time, and we eliminated a network round trip on login for further gains. But our goal was to make Hotmail feel instant, and we knew that speeding up downloads would only get us so far towards that goal. Even with today’s broadband speeds, the network is the bottleneck, and we needed to keep our customers from experiencing that latency.

The approach we decided to take was to get user data closer to the browser, and when the data is not available on the browser, get it there more efficiently, without the user noticing. We also decided to take advantage of modern browsers like Internet Explorer 9 to be more app-like, by doing more work in the browser and less on the server.

We identified three specific techniques to follow: caching, preloading, and asynchronous operations.

Caching

The old Hotmail requested fresh data from the server every time it was needed. For instance, when you signed in to the inbox, Hotmail would ask the server for the latest message list. When you opened and then closed a message, we would make you wait while we asked the server for the message list again. Similarly, if you opened that same message again, we would make you wait while we retrieved the message.

The new Hotmail is more app-like, because we now cache information after it’s downloaded. The message list is stored in the browser’s DOM (Document Object Model), so when we need it, we don’t have to download it. We also cache the email that you’ve read, so we can re-open the message nearly instantly.

When caching data, the trick is in knowing when to update it. In the new Hotmail, our server detects when your account changes – for instance, when a new message is delivered – and it sends a notification to the browser. The browser then retrieves the updated data, so your inbox is never out of sync.

Finally, when you close your browser or sign out of Hotmail, the cache is cleared so that data is never left behind to compromise your privacy.

Pre-loading

Our analysis of usage patterns of Hotmail showed that when customers sign in to their inbox, the first thing they’re likely to do is read the subject lines of new mail to decide which messages to open. In the new Hotmail, we use that time to download and cache the first few messages so they’re ready when you need them. That way, when you choose a message to open, you don’t have to wait for the download.

Our analysis also showed that when customers open an email message, they’re very likely also to view the one that follows it. So, in the new Hotmail, while you’re reading one message, we automatically download and cache the next one in the list.

We’re continuing to fine-tune our design to make this as efficient as possible, so not all users have this feature turned on by default yet.  If you don’t see this feature and you’d like to turn it on for your account, you can do so from an options page.

In addition to pre-loading messages, we also  preload code and data in the browser. For instance, we know that most Hotmail sessions involve sending email. So while you’re reading and deleting email, we download and cache the JavaScript and HTML code and address book data that you need for composing a new email message. When you click New or Reply, we just swap in the cached Compose code and data, and it’s ready instantly.

An interesting design problem we faced was to figure out how to download content without interfering with bandwidth or browser threading utilization. If done poorly, the app can feel non-responsive. We’ve separated and ordered the downloads to make the browser responsive, and to make the most important user tasks fast and available as early as possible. This is an area that we will continue to work on for even more gains in the future.

Considering the large number of Hotmail users, other challenges we faced were keeping our servers from being overloaded, and keeping the service cost efficient. We’ve had to invest in squeezing out more throughput from our storage system—we’ll describe how we did this in a future post.

Asynchronous operations

The old Hotmail used to wait for server responses before updating the UI. For example, when you deleted an email message, Hotmail would call the server and tell it to delete the message, and then wait for a response from the server before updating the message list. This made Hotmail feel slow, because you felt you had to wait for the operation to complete before you could continue working.

The new Hotmail no longer waits for server responses for most operations before updating the UI. In the new Hotmail, when you delete a message, Hotmail updates the message list instantly, and you can resume working right away. In the background, client code queues up actions and calls the server to delete the email. So email still gets deleted, but without the wait.

This approach also makes the client code more resilient to spikes in server activity and improves performance for users who have low bandwidth/high latency connections.

Finally, we also looked at the great improvements made by the IE9 team and invested in ways to make Hotmail run even faster on IE, such as using IE9 Standards Mode.

Results

We wrapped up these changes a few weeks ago, and just finished releasing the code to all our users (with the exception of the pre-loading feature, which, as mentioned above, is not yet turned on by default in some markets). So, what did we accomplish? The data speaks for itself:

 

Hotmail
Dec ‘10

Hotmail
June ‘11

Open message

3.3 seconds

0.18 seconds

Delete message

3.1 seconds

0.14 seconds

Compose new message

4.3 seconds

0.20 seconds

Data represents 75th percentile measurements from hundreds of runs of an automated test against a production server. Bandwidth is 300kb up/75 kb down/150ms latency, and browser is IE9. Your results may vary.

Here’s a video that shows it more clearly:

But, we’re not done. We believe performance is a feature, and we’re committed to making Hotmail as fast as possible. We will continue to find more ways to make Hotmail load faster, and we’re also working on ways to improve the efficiency of even more of the most common actions.

Enjoy the improvements, and watch this space for more to come.

Dick Craddock
Group Program Manager, Hotmail

Jun

30

The ASUS VX7 Lamborghini: As fast as it looks

Category: Vista News | Leave a Comment

Last week I got my hands on a brand new ASUS VX7 Lamborghini gaming laptop.  It’s a beautiful PC, as I noted in my unboxing photo gallery blog, so I wanted to devote this piece to the PC’s performance, which looks to be seriously impressive. 

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What’s inside

My VX7 is loaded with a second-generation Intel Core i7-2630 processor, 8GB of memory, a brand-new NVIDIA GTX 460M graphics card, and 1.5TB of storage spread across 2 drives.  It’s a beast of a PC and on paper, one of the most impressive I’ve seen to date, and is on par power-wise with offerings from Alienware, Maingear and Origin.  One like mine will run you about $2299.  That’s a lot of money for a PC, but like I always say, you get what you pay for.  In the case of the VX7, you’re getting great performance and a very unique look and feel, so I think the price is reasonable.

Using the PC

In many cases PCs trade off aesthetics for usability.  When I got the VX7 I feared that would be the case, but to my surprise ASUS did a very good job of making the PC as beautiful to use as it is to look at.  The leather palmrest feels great on your hands when typing or gaming, and the glass trackpad feels good on your finger, even when mousing for a long time.   Is it as good as the beautiful glass-coated trackpad on the Lenovo U260?  No, it’s not.  But it’s very usable and looks a lot better than the average matte-black polycarbonate trackpads on most PCs.  Typing is a breeze on the backlit keyboard, too, and keystrokes are crisp and responsive.  Gamers will tell you that having a good keyboard is critical; if the keys are too stiff, keystrokes are forced and unresponsive, and if they’re too soft, keystrokes are unintentionally repeated, resulting in wasted ammo and imprecise action.  This one is just right. 

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Even more impressive than the PC’s ergonomics is the sound and video.  The full HD 1920×1080 display looks fantastic when gaming or browsing the web, and the speakers on this thing are loud enough to rattle your windows.  Or in my case, invoke the ire of your office mates.   Together they provide a truly immersive gaming experience.  Really good stuff.

Performance

As you’d expect from a PC with absolute top-of-the-line specs – and a $2000+ price tag – performance was incredible, especially in core fundamentals:

Keep in mind that these numbers are with Windows 7 Ultimate installed on a standard 7200rpm spinning drive.  If this PC had an SSD, they’d be even more impressive. (Speaking of, be sure to watch the “Ben and Ryan Explain: HDDs vs. SSDs” video for more info on why SSDs are so dang fast).

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With a Core i7 and 8GB of RAM under the hood multitasking was no problem; I was able to load every application in my standard test set – Zune, IE9, Metrotwit, Windows Live Messenger, Mesh and Mail, and all of Office 2010, without any problem whatsoever.   Gaming is where things really got interesting; I tried out both Call of Duty: Black Ops and Crysis 2 and they both ran flawlessly.  At 1920×1080 resolution.  And full frame rate.  With all of the variables maxed out.  It was really, really impressive to see this kind of performance out of a laptop.

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking for a power gaming PC with style to burn, the ASUS VX7 Lamborghini is for you.  Its smoking fast, drop-dead gorgeous, and for what you’re getting, carries a pretty reasonable price tag. 

Have a question about this or any other PC? Post a comment, hit me on Twitter, or Ask Ben Anything via email!

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