Are you a web developer? Is your website fast enough? If so, Microsoft is challenging you to take its 11% for IE11 test – and be assured, your efforts will be rewarded. The software giant is hosting a giveaway for developers to get them improve their website’s performance.
Microsoft bundled the new version of their web browser, Internet Explorer 11 with the recently released OS Windows 8.1. The browser is 9% faster than its previous version, and about 30% faster than other browsers it is competing with. Now that the browser is fool-proof, Microsoft wants to improve the quality of your website as well. Because, a browser alone can’t guarantee pleasing performance, the quality and complexity of your codes have equal importance.
11% FOR IE11
The challenge is if you can improve the page load performance of your site by at least 11%, Microsoft will reward you with some thoughtful gifts, which for obvious reasons come in a multiple of 11. The 11 goodness are:
- 11 copies of Parallels Desktop Virtualization.
- 11 one-year subscriptions to its cross browser testing tool BrowserStack.
- And if nothing, who doesn’t like pizzas? That too, free!?
To put some light on the freebies, Parallels is a Mac software. Microsoft knows that many coders use Mac for working, so it didn’t hesitate to put that in the giveaway list. BrowserStack has gained quite a reputation with firms like Wikipedia, ICANN, jQuery, GitHub and even the game maker Rovio. And we all love pizzas, don’t we?
More information about how you can participate is available on their website.
This “challenge” by Microsoft is pathetic.
As a user of IE11, I challenge Microsoft to provide a clear font rendering API instead of the painfully blurry headache inducing text rendering in IE11 (and also Office 2013).
Why are you using IE ?! o.o
Yes why are you using IE when there are far better browsers
Yes why are you using IE there are much better browsers available
Really? Which one’s? I have tried Firefox, Chrome & Opera, but found IE11 to be the fastest and most secure among them, although it does give some font rendering problems sometimes.
Firefox I found the best as well as Comodo dragon, there are many more besides the 4 you mentioned though. Font rendering is bad on IE I agree
I don’t use IE much at all. Firefox is my browser of choice and its text is perfectly clear.
However, the blurry text problem affects much more than just IE11.
If I open a document, email or whatever in Office 2013 I am greeted by the same terrible font rendering (Office 2010 is perfectly clear). That is potentially a much worse problem because I have no choice but to use Office. Fortunately, none of the organisations I work with have adopted Office 2013 yet. I dread the day they do.
When most competing products provide good clear text rendering, it just doesn’t make any sense for Microsoft to inflict blurry text on its customers.
Thanks for
the warning re office 2013 I still use 2010 myself you
could ask this bloke he’s a programmer http://www.howtogeek.com/