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Web Developers - Does IE9 Change the Balance?

Feb 15, 2011 2:59 PM

  Latest reply: Hudechrome, Mar 24, 2011 10:03 AM
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 19, 2011 2:56 PM   in reply to gener7

    I just installed IE9 and it shows support for v4 here as well.

     

    As for FF et al, see this:

     

    http://www.tomsguide.com/us/firefox-google-chrome-apple-safari-ie9,new s-10510.html

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 19, 2011 3:17 PM   in reply to Hudechrome

    Rather confusing.

     

    I click on IE and I get the site along with the suggestion I D/L IE9!

     

    There are no tabs, no Advanced to check the video settings etc. Just a bunch of garbage designed to deflect attention from the real world (do I really give a dam about Jennifer Lopez?)

     

    There is no validation capability to confirm I am running/using IE9. The ICC check says v4 is running but did IE8 have it too?

     

    I don't need this crap. Back to FF!

     

    Why would an ad to upgrade to IE9 be on IE9?

     

    Ow! My head Hertz!

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 19, 2011 3:27 PM   in reply to Hudechrome

    I don't need this crap. Back to FF!

     

    Why would an ad to upgrade to IE9 be on IE9?

     

    Ow! My head Hertz!

     

    I'm still with FF because of the add-ons...especially AdBlock. Safari and IE9 are simply backups when a website might have a problem with FF,which is unusual.

     

    No ICC v4 support?  Don't miss it as long as I don't have to deal with schlocky video ads.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 19, 2011 6:55 PM   in reply to gener7

    Same here. I thought maybe not but.....

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 20, 2011 3:05 AM   in reply to Hudechrome

    I'm not finished yet. Here, today, is a poster with an excellent practical understanding of color management:

     

    http://forums.adobe.com/message/3557045?tstart=0#3557045

     

    Note that in the last two paragraphs he is saying exactly what I've been saying in this thread, only in slightly different words. So where does Noel Carboni find the audacity to threaten to report me for abuse?

     

    I know I'm not winning any popularity contests by this nagging. I know that's what it is, but I do it for a reason. I do it because BS needs to be called, and someone has to say that the emperor has no clothes.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 20, 2011 5:52 AM   in reply to sisyphos

    Nothing new there.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 20, 2011 9:42 AM   in reply to Hudechrome

    Nothing new, that's the whole point.

     

    But again an explanation why "sRGB reference system" is a meaningless and misleading phrase (politely put), cooked up just to give an air of authority.

     

     

    Edit: OK, that last bit could be interpreted as personal. Withdrawn.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 20, 2011 8:20 PM   in reply to Noel Carboni

    After mucking around the tiny icons in the upper right hand corner, I did verify I am running IE9. However, the "advanced" tab still is mot visible or findable.

     

    I think there is a difference between saying that the browser supports v4 as indicated by the icc test pattern and that the colors seen are the actual colors.If IE9 is behaving as Win 7 does when trying to figure out if your profile is loaded, then the same result will accrue.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 21, 2011 1:00 AM   in reply to gener7

    Just to clarify, for those of you who think that IE9 is functioning properly because it displays the 4 quadrants of the ICC profile test page image as a matched set:  Yes, it is color managing, but only partially.  It is correctly *aligning* the various profiles.  Unfortunately it is aligning them to sRGB rather than your monitor's profile, so it is color managing incorrectly.  All 4 quadrants will be matchingly different than the appearance that would occur if correctly displaying via your monitor's profile.

     

    For those with wide gamut monitors, it will be jarringly oversaturated - you'd have a better chance of an image looking the way it's intended if there was no color management at all.  At least then images in Adobe RGB color space would look fairly close, whereas with IE9 *no* image will look remotely accurate, but every tagged color space image will be off in a consistent manner.  Not so bad if your monitor is close to sRGB, but still not as accurate as it could/should be.

     

    For those who think the extra pop on those wide gamut monitors is an attractive plus - it's a nightmare for online retailers, photographers, artists, etc. who rely on a reasonably accurate representation.  It's hard to believe it's still being botched so badly after all this time, especially when MS had previously done it right with their Windows Photo Viewer app.

     

    Also the original Windows 7 OS specs were designed to color manage more completely than the final release, but that was deferred to a future Windows version when it was decided it couldn't be properly implemented in time - hence those wide gamut monitors will show a garishly oversaturated desktop, along with Explorer image previews and thumbnails that display similarly poorly.  Maybe some day, sigh...

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 21, 2011 8:02 AM   in reply to RChaz

    Then if you open a file from IE9 in Photoshop, given a calibrated, profiled monitor, it will look different than on the screen in IE9....

     

    Tried it and it opens as an untagged image. So, I gather I'll have to send out an image to a site viewable on the web and compare, correct? Also, If I send out an untagged image, IE9 tags it sRGB?

     

    Seems strange that saving an image from IE9 removes the tag. Bunch of crap if you ask me. I am about to launch a website running restoration work, and people are gonna see what? The saving grace is that the before and after will at least be consistent, consistently wrong!

     

    WTF!

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 21, 2011 8:06 AM   in reply to Noel Carboni

    It's the color management tab in the Windows dialog, not an IE dialog. I was looking there for it.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 21, 2011 9:56 AM   in reply to Noel Carboni

    Just an FYI regarding the Windows Color Management applet, Advanced tab.

     

    With the "Windows Color System Defaults" portion it's a bit difficult to determine just how these settings are used, but here it is:

     

    They are used to supply defaults for missing profiles required during WCS color transform in color managed apps.

     

    1) Device profile:  If a device has no profile specified anywhere else, this setting would be used as the fallback default. (eg, leave as sRGB.  Be careful NOT to set this to a "virtual device model profile" - which are also listed in the "All Profiles" tab as WCS Device Profiles - confusing!, as these can have serious negative impact on system performance, such as CPU spikes for Windows Gadgets.)

     

    2) Viewing conditions profile: This one tells the system about your viewing environment. (sRGB version for D65, ICC version for D50)

     

    ---------------

    Per a MS program manager:

     

    The Windows Photo Gallery/Windows Live Photo Gallery, and Windows Photo Viewer are the only Windows components that color manage to the display profile.  Most MS Office apps, (and now IE9), will honor embedded source profiles in images, but then convert to sRGB and throw that at the display.

     

    A technology dubbed High Color was built into the Windows 7 plumbing.  Color conversion would be to an extended range color space.  Wide gamut color data can be converted into this space without any loss. Compliant displays (and display cards) would be required to be able to convert internally from the extended space to their native color space.  Any wide gamut image content would be properly mapped to take advantage of a display's wide gamut, and sRGB data wouldn't over-saturate by being treated as though it were already in the display's native wide gamut space.  (Un-color-managed RGB would be treated as sRGB.)   Unfortunately the Desktop Window Manager was unable to implement the High Color support in time for switching this plumbing on for the Windows 7 release.

    ---------------

     

    Not sure if existing Display hardware already supports this High Color system once/if it's actually implemented, or whether it will also integrate an up to date Display profile into the equation or merely utilize the "factory specs" (EDID) and allow color managed apps to refine accuracy further using profiles.  But the stated approach would at least neutralize the wide gamut display issue without requiring users to participate (profile their monitors) in achieving "acceptable" color.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 21, 2011 9:58 AM   in reply to RChaz

    RChaz wrote:

     

    .... All 4 quadrants will be matchingly different than the appearance that would occur if correctly displaying via your monitor's profile...

    I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories but given the fact that this is not a technical challenge at all but a matter of decision, I can't help it thinking if the brains at Microsoft decided  instead of creating practically useful solution,  it will be much more impressive when ignorant users check this http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/graphics/colorprofiles/default.html and say "wow, Internet Explorer 9 is the only browser with such advanced color managed supporting ICC version 4".

     

    ICC version 4 requires all profiles participating in the color management chain to be version 4. If one is not, the chain breaks.

    Although there are some possible workarounds as suggested in this thread  http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=50249.msg41533 7#msg415337, for the time being v 4 for most users is practically useless because some of the major color profiles like AdobeRGB and ProPhoto RGB are not  ICC version 4 yet. For this reason users do not create v4 color profiles of their monitors but still stick to version 2.

     

    I also find it funny how Microsoft is demonstrating the ICC version 4 capabilities of IE9. They basically took and modified the page from the ICC consortium site http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter . But note how the consortium objectively titled it as "Is your system ICC Version 4 ready?" which implies correctly that more than a browser is required to get accurate colors. They also explained what this test means (pay attention to the last two paragraphs) http://www.color.org/version4ready.xalter . Microsoft on the other hand, titled its page "Color Management" starting with the sentence "Does your browser display the colors in these images correctly?" which is totally misleading. The question is "are they misleading deliberately or they are simply stupid?" In both cases it is loose loose situation for Microsoft in the eyes of the savvy users. LOL.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 21, 2011 10:36 AM   in reply to emil emil

    I'm pretty sure the project team at MS that implemented this "color management" into IE9 are not stupid, and realize their approach is flawed.  I believe they took this approach to be consistent with their Office apps approach or maybe for some other longer term reason.  To foist that web page on users claiming "look at us, we're properly color managed!", with that awareness of flaws takes a lot of chutzpa, is hilarious\discouraging to people with color management knowledge, and extremely misleading to those without.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 21, 2011 10:39 AM   in reply to emil emil

    I'm getting confused about "users creating any color profiles of their montors" in compliance with any color space. What I do and assume others using pucks do is to generate a profile of the montor which informs CM of what I am actually seeing with respect to the actual color numbers such that WYSIWYG. The color space choice then, is utterly separate, and makes no assumptions as to the accuracy or inaccuracies of the viewing conditions of the monitor.

     

    This is the only thing that ever makes sense, and if an individual user chooses to go a different route, that's their decision and hopefully, WYSIWYG still is valid.

     

    I want to stick to the two pronged approach: Calibrate then profile the viewing device, then pick your poison...err, color space.

     

    But then, I am still centered on printing correctly, and from what I can see, this is becoming passe'. Few print any more as the ultimate output. Bill Gates saw this many years ago when he envisioned homes equipped with extremely thin panels hanging from the wall displaying all manner of art in faithful colors. That's one of the big reasons he started Corbis, or at least I was told that when I went up to Redmond years ago to look into Corbis. That being so, the Internet access has to be color managed from source to display device. Perhaps manufacturers will be able to match the dE tolerance of the best printers on the market today, which do extremely well with canned profiles from the paper folks. Then pucks go by-by as well.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 21, 2011 11:10 AM   in reply to Noel Carboni

    Maybe that is my confusion...the implication that a user is to create a monitor profile in compliance with a document profile. That not being so, confusion cleared up! 

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 21, 2011 12:03 PM   in reply to Noel Carboni

    Yup!


     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 21, 2011 5:53 PM   in reply to Noel Carboni

    Hi gener7,

     

    Don't be so certain.  Please read the information starting in post #2 in this thread.

     

    IE9 is actually NOT properly color-managing the images it displays, in that it completely ignores your monitor profile!

     

    Therefore, for anyone who has profiled their monitor - especially those models that display a gamut differing significantly from that of the standard sRGB profile, such as modern wide-gamut LCDs - the colors will now actually always be wrong

    in IE9!

     

    Hi Noel

     

    I did indeed go over post 2 and not having a wide gamut monitor I would have thought that IE9 would somehow pick up the monitor profile set in Color Management (in the Control Panel.) My mistake.

     

    Ditto for Hudechrome. Maybe it will be fixed by the time I can afford a wide gamut monitor

     

    Gene

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 23, 2011 10:22 AM   in reply to gener7

    FF4 is now available.

     

    It is NOT v4 compatible!

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 23, 2011 11:08 PM   in reply to Noel Carboni

    FF 4 is also sucky. For instance, the Google Search doesn't work correctly. The drop down list won't load...a real bummer.

     

    I rolled back to 3.16.

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    Mar 24, 2011 10:03 AM   in reply to Noel Carboni

    I don't believe it is a Google problem because if you start FF in safe mode, it works. However, shutting down everything which is indicated in safe, then restarting FF, it still doesn't work.

     

    I would expect this to be a catch-22 situation for Google and their clients.

     
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