But even if this parameter isn’t given the Windows under Windows 7 draws without much flickering. Why? (If you haven’t tried the WS_EX_COMPOSITED style, just create the Window using WS_EX_COMPOSITED style or call ModifyStyleEx( hWnd, 0, WS_EX_COMPOSITED, 0 ); in the Initialization routine).

In Windows 7, the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) manages all the Windows running in the system. DWM uses GPU available in the system. When Windows Aero is enabled, the entire desktop area is a Direct3D surface. All drawing operations made by Windows are sent directly to the offline buffer for rendering. DWM will swap this buffer to screen whenever required. Thus by default all Window operations are done through double buffering. This architecture is quite different in prior versions of Windows, where all the operations are redirected to the main screen(buffer).

To explain a bit more detailed, the Window itself being mapped as texture on the screen, the way this texture appeared is controlled through shader programs. Like Window transition effects are implemented through shaders. The shaders are small programs which can control the coordinates and pixels being displayed.

Since the desktop itself a 3D surface, DWM has access to all the Windows displayed on the screen. This it can effortlessly implement the new features like, aero peak, flip 3D etc. The double buffering is also provided by DWM during Window movement, repainting etc. for flicker free drawing.

The DWM double buffering methods are sometimes not compatible with real-time graphics applications and games. In this case, DWM will not do window compositing so the application can gain the desired performance and no overheads of DWM implemented double buffering.

DWM also employs efficient rendering techniques called culling to avoid displaying the WIndows which are not visible in the screen (minimized, small windows hidden behind other windows etc). But we can’t flickering will never happen under Windows 7. The high refreshing rate application may still cause flickering. These kind of applications must use Windows Native Double buffering support provided. I already have covered about double buffering and double buffering helpers introducing since Windows Vista in separate blog post.

3 days ago, IE has released it’s latest and greatest version of browser. Internet Explorer 9 beta is available for download from http://beautyoftheweb.com/

After several years IE 9 became my default browser. Despite of my early review I’m not really happy with the rendering of many websites, including facebook, cool tumblr websites. The hardware acceleration is amazing and it’s damn fast. While on the other hand, firefox is doing a real good job with Direct2D rendering and if you believe it or not, almost all websites works well. I’m not sure it’s because of the sites are optimized for Mozilla Platform, while less cared about Internet Explorer. By default Mozilla Firefox 4 isn’t not hardware accelerated. You can run simple test to ensure if the hardware acceleration is enabled or not. Run this stress test. You will get at least 60 FPS if you’re running a good graphic card. If it’s not enabled see my previous post on how to enable to hardware acceleration in Firefox 4.

Here I’m running IE 9 Beta 1 (64 bit) and Firefox 4 beta 6 (32 bit) for tests in my Dell XPS M1330.

Hardware Acceleration performance

– Firefox outperforms Internet Explorer. IE – 60 FPS and FF – 76 FPS. Some application ensure the rendering performance to monitor refresh rate (normally 60FPS) because higher FPS may cause high CPU utilization and make the application wait to refresh the screen. May be Internet Explorer limited this to 60FPS. Both are using using same technology for rendering

But in IE Psychedelic Browsing test, IE outperformed Firefox even IE renderer slightly higher number of vertical pixels. (They’re just close anyway)

Broken Websites

Here where Firefox rocks. Most of the websites works stunning in Firefox while IE 9 is broken with many websites. Here are some examples.

http://codereflect.com/ (I’m using Google Open Fonts in this website. This is the reason why I selected my own website)

Tumblr Blog

IE Broken Facebook Wall – (You can see two share buttons)

Hope all these fixed in the final release of the product!

The Installation took around 35MB in size (English Windows 7-64 bit). The package contains both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Internet Explorer 9. The installation is hectically slow as usual and it’s required to restart the machine after installation

Once after you launch IE, you will notice that it’s so clean! Wait, even before that did you notice it’s too fast like google chrome to start up? The tabs and addressbar is aligned in the same raw which give more vertical pixels in your view area. Now almost all browsers marries Google Chrome Style Tabs and Window arrangements Including Mozilla Firefox 4.

You may noticed that rendering is faster than previous versions and text content is more readable and smooth. Thanks for Direct2D and DirectWire. The new Windows APIs are hardware accelerated and use your GPU to render the text and images.

Where’s your bookmark bar? Well it’s hidden under the star icon at right top side. Just pop it up. The browser has all it’s conventional menus and all you can control it as your old browser. Alt+F, Alt+T etc will popup the original menu of the IE.

Another cool thing about IE is pinning. I used to keep all my favorite apps in the Windows 7 taskbar for quick launch. This feature is similar to Google Chrome’s application short cut. Just click on the tab and drag to the taskbar. You’re done! The Application shortcut is created.

New IE is completely compatible with Windows 7 and effectively uses it’s aero peek feature for previewing tabs.

The notification became simple and effective. You can see the notifications with a minimal but effective UI at the bottom of page.

The java script performance has significantly improved from it’s predecessors. The new IE supports several HTML5 features. Direct2D rendering ensures the pages are rendered fast in high quality. If some websites are broken with the new rendering, it’s easy to switch back with compatibility icon displays in addressbar.

I run 64-bit version of Internet explorer. One of the nightmare of the 64 bit browsers under Windows is the flash player. So far Adobe did not support 64 bit browsers. Now the pre release version of flash player is available for download. This will meet our essential requirements to keep the flash content available in a 64 bit browser. Also you can simply run 32 bit version of the browser if required. Some of the plugins like Google Voice/Talk is not compatible with 64-bit browser.

Finally my website http://codereflect.com/ is not really rendering good in IE9 because I use Google’s open fonts.

Now twitter becomes more serious about mobile experrience and the smartphones are on boom. They’ve simply acquired Tweetie instead of creating a new one. Now it’s known as “Twitter for iPhone”. See the announcement from Twitter.

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world. Loren’s work won the 2009 Apple Design Award and we will eventually launch Twitter for iPad with his help.

You can see full scoop here.