IE 8 - Faster, But Still Trailing

Microsoft recently released version 8 of Internet Explorer (IE) and we're glad to see that it's faster than IE 7.  As a rich, JavaScript-based Internet application, the faster the browser, the better our user experience. 

When IE 7 was released, Smartsheet performance jumped by 50% compared to IE 6.  And in our latest performance tests, Smartsheet runs even faster on IE 8.  Even so, Internet Explorer still has work to do to catch up to the competition.  The chart below shows relative performance of a smartsheet containing 200 rows.

Approximately 55% of our customers use Internet Explorer, so we applaud the progress that Microsoft has made over the past two years.  As the chart shows however, there's still plenty of work Microsoft must do to deliver a leading browser platform for rich Internet applications.

Beyond performance, there are features we'd like to see Microsoft add as well.  At the top of the list?  Spell check.  In our last release, we enabled customers using Firefox, Chrome and Safari to take advantage of the browser's spell check capability.   Our IE users are out of luck though, as IE doesn't have a spell check feature. Let's hope Microsoft continues to prioritize IE performance and feature strength.  If they do, everyone benefits.