And I mean much faster. A few weeks ago, I posted about plotting all 48 continental U.S. states onto a Virtual Earth map. Due to some unfortunate performance issues with rendering complex shapes using the VE map control IE 7, it was necessary for me to simplify them using one of the new SQL 2008 methods for geography data types. By doing this, I was able to to get acceptable looking shapes in just under 10 seconds. Not bad.
I’m happy to report that exact same query now renders the same shapes in about two seconds. Clearly a major improvement! In fact, take a look at any PerformnacePoint dashboard with IE 8 and I think you’ll immediately notice the difference.
Now….I guess IE 8 does lag behind other browsers when trying to load 21 sites simultaneously, but in terms of performance for web-based applications (that’s what browsers are for, right?), this is a major step forward.
