We developed a web based game BattleCell that uses Ajax/CSS instead of Flash for all the heavy lifting. We discover at least one new bug in the IE rendering engine every month. Our pile of IE bugs in the back room that we have to track every time we develop a new feature is testament to the dread with which we view this new hardware-based rendering engine. We know what we're doing.

Just last week, we learned that once you have a stack of enough semi-transparent layers (combination of PNGs with alpha channels coupled with DIVs with various opacity CSS settings), IE fails to render the top-most layers. This doesn't happen after 20-30 layers. This happens after 5-7 layers. At first we thought our code was faulty, until we realized that scrolling down such a page with multiple layers will cause text that was previously "invisible" to suddenly be rendered in its specified color... as we kept scrolling, the text would then disappear again. You get the idea.

Obviously, this all works flawlessly in Safari, Chrome, Opera. For IE, we get to re-architect all sorts of work-arounds --a house built on sand.

If they're smart, they'll build it out on IPV6.

(Those who consider this to be obvious should remember that the government is involved.)

Merchants, immersed in the bustling commerce of Rome, who suddenly found themselves shipwrecked along with a handful of other sailors on some island in the Mediterranean would likely have, "showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function well without their " ...familiar environment around which their lives had come to revolve.

...when they do.

Is anybody else bothered by the false advertising that well funded corporate marketing and headline-seeking news is shoving down the public's collective throat?

Claiming that a stereoscopic picture is the equivalent of a 3 dimensional projection is the equivalent of presenting a stereo entertainment center and claiming that it is surround sound.

...or not.

I sincerely hope that this wasn't someone's doctorate thesis.

There are too many such "learned" individuals out there who are incapable original thought. I wonder if this has always been the case...

You mean like BattleCell? Offensive/defensive military strength of each cell depends on troop counts as well as altitude differences between cells. (Yes, we used STRM data to acquire our altitudes.)

Mark makes some excellent points. We are rapidly evolving the BattleCell game (BattleCell.com) to fit the gaping-wide hole that has become today's Social Gaming world: If it's a Social Game, how come I can't interact with my friends and other players? Zynga has brilliantly demonstrated that you can build a successful business model by effectively marrying good viral marketing (aka, News Feed) with the addictive behaviors identified in your article. Today's Social Gaming offering is comprised of hyped up Tamagotchi digital pet reproductions that allow players to look over their friends' shoulders. One can't really argue with success, of course. But, Mark's final statement nails it --players are left wishing that the game was more fun, that it had more depth after all their investment, that it offered something more meaningful than just another way to spend one's time.

Ok. Let me get this straight. The conclusion is to use IE 8 because it uses the least battery life? Presumably, that implies (loosely) that it has the most effective algorithms for rendering modern pages. AnandTech should really compare apples to apples, and leave the orange out of the picture. What good is a modern browser that saves a bit of battery life, when it doesn't have a working Javascript garbage collector to free up memory on Javascript-heavy sites? I suspect that any user who's IE8 browser session just caused their Windows[File] Explorer to crash due to memory resource starvation might not care about how much battery life their IE8 session just saved them. I could be wrong, of course. "They tested on simple web pages..." --kudos. Because, that's what surfers are most likely to encounter on today's modern world wide web. My impression is that this study is seriously flawed, although I might have missed the point.

Pull my finger and find out.

If you're going to have the whole world playing... (well, a few million players, anyway) ...then 42 countries just won't do. So you'd need to break the world into smaller units... say, 1 minute by 1 minute cells.

Likewise, you can't really do a turn-based system... You'd have to use a time-based troop-earning mechanism instead. But, earning money in time makes a bit more sense than earning troops... so each "cell" can earn some currency every-so-often, and then you can buy the troops with that currency. (or maybe buy a few other extras as well... We've survived Y2K after all, so the board game should evolve into something more current. No?)

...or did you really expect the new Monopoly game to be turn based?

Why not Risk on Google Maps instead? Something like BattleCell ? It should have:

1. Troops that travel (of course)
2. Ships that can attack by sea (new)
3. Topographic component (altitude matters in a battle)
4. Instant Messaging (language translation?)
5. Allies (allies are important... maybe they can give me stuff?)

It would have to be all AJAX. Flash slows everything down. Plus, Google Maps API is a great AJAX implementation anyhow. The graphics would have to be decent. It can't look like a web page... should look like a console instead... something like Starcraft. That would work.

Ballistic Missiles could make things interesting too. That would be a new concept. But, it would have to be something similar to Scorched Earth that requires players to refine their projectile settings. Maybe make things interesting depending on the warhead used?

Then, one guy can conquer the whole planet... I wonder how that would compare to Monopoly...

...and it will continue to fall until IE can get its act together. Browsers have evolved far past where they just need to render pretty CSS pages properly.

IE 8's Javascript may be faster, but it's still broken. When coupled with its garbage-quality garbage collector, this just means modern sites that use things like jQuery and Prototype crash sooner. IE has had trouble with their garbage for years now: JScript Memory Leaks, QuirksBlog: IE 7 and Javascript

Now this may all seem trivial to those who visit traditional sites and regularly restart their IE, but sites such as BattleCell can cause memory starvation issues within 30 minutes or less on IE.

Some people are initially surprised when we tell them to use any browser other than IE. Though, after a few months, their own conclusions of what this all means creates an effort barrier that Microsoft must overcome in order to bring people back...

We're doing this with BattleCell. (Risk on Google maps for millions of players)

Slashdot Submission

There are many variations, but the weather makes a good example. Say that you have cells in Florida. Now, suppose that the real-world Florida gets hit with a hurricane. Naturally, production rates of your cells in Florida will suffer.

Obviously, news can be applied in many ways to keep things interesting.

Every schmuck who wants to get in the news slaps "Artificial Intelligence" on their contraption and suddenly the world stops to take notice.

Unless this system:

1. employs (or provides) some sort of multitiered malleable logic established by prior experiences that can identify a scenario based on inputs,

2. identifies the best case response to the identified scenario, using not only stored experiences (preprogrammed memory), but relevant characteristics of the scenario itself.

3. implements that best case scenario, checking constantly (or at least regularly) that the implemented actions are yielding results along the desired/expected solution path.

4. identifying the resolution phase of its response, so it can consider the scenario resolved and cease its response process. ...then there's no intelligence to it. What these fellows have sounds more like an advanced sound analysis engine that autonomously controls a camera swivel.

Good for them. Yay. Fun. Hurrah.

But, where's the AI again? Next...