Graphics

With Internet Explorer 11, you get a robust graphics stack with foundational WebGL support, high DPI advancements, significant performance improvements, and additional Canvas capabilities.

Canvas enhancements

IE11 further rounds out support for Canvas with new features from the W3C Canvas 2D Context Level 2 specification, including image smoothing, the even-odd fill rule, and dashed lines.

For more info, see "Canvas enhancements".

Effects Batching and Stroke Improvements

IE11 and Windows Store apps using JavaScript for Windows 8.1 take advantage of Direct2D advancements in Windows 8.1 to improve graphics effects and stroke performance.

Because they use multiple intermediate textures, Canvas effects like shadows and composite operations, SVGfilter effects, and CSS box shadows and text shadows are heavily resource-intensive. IE11 and leverage changes made to the DirectImage batching behavior in Windows 8.1 to more effectively coalesce Direct3D Draw calls and minimize device state changes. This change improves performance for Canvas, SVG, and CSS effects, and improves memory by reducing the number of intermediates used.

Strokes are a common pattern used in games and apps to draw thin lines or outlines. IE11 and Windows Store apps using JavaScript use a new stroke algorithm to dramatically improve stroke performance in Canvas and SVG.

Important  This feature is not supported in IE11 on Windows 7.

High DPI support

IE11 introduces multi-monitor support, a unified optical zooming model, a wider selection of default scale factors, and support for the devicePixelRatio property to ensure the consistency of your site’s text, touch targets, and layout across Windows 8.1 devices.

See "High DPI support" for details.

WebGL

IE11 introduces foundational support for WebGL, a set of APIs exposed through the canvas element for rendering interactive 3-D and 2-D graphics.

For more info, see "WebGL".