Internet Explorer 9 Released, YouTube Embeds Fixed April 5, 2011

I’m usually the last person to toot the horn that there have been any major updates to the Microsoft Windows Operating System on the site, however since this is site related I thought it would be important to post it here.

For those of you who have access to Windows Vista (sorry) or Windows 7 (like me), you’ll notice Internet Explorer 9 added to your Windows Update list today.  IE9 has been in it’s final version for at least a week or two (and it’s been in beta testing for longer), but today is the first day that it’s being brought through on Windows Update.

I’ve been pretty embarrassed by the performance of the YouTube embeds on the site, because the performance across the board was likened to a flipbook.  This was probably because WordPress had changed their embed from flash-based to HTML5.  While this made it compatible with whatever people were throwing at it (it would work on your iPhone, and probably if you didn’t have flash installed) the embeds ran poorly across the board to the point of being personally embarrassing.

Well, since IE9 is now doing everything hardware based, HTML5 sings pretty good, and my site YouTube embeds now run MUCH faster.  So if you’re looking for better site performance, please consider accepting the update to IE9.  There are still going to likely be problems with it (I’ve noticed problems with some Blip.tv embeds on other sites and Blip has told me they’re working on getting a fix to their users) but at least you’ll be able to watch videos on my site again without getting sick!