February, 2012

With IE10 in Windows 8, we reimagined the browser. We designed and built IE10 to be the best way to experience the Web on Windows. Consumers can now enjoy more touch-friendly and beautiful, fast and fluid Web applications with the updated IE10 engine included in the Windows Consumer Preview . This fifth Platform Preview of IE10 delivers improved performance and support for more HTML5: This video shows some of the touch-friendly HTML5 technologies in the fifth IE10 Platform Preview, included with...

This morning in the United States, the White House announced a new “ Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights ” as part of the effort to improve consumers’ online privacy. As I’ve mentioned before , Microsoft is actively participating in the industry initiative for Tracking Protection at the W3C to produce Web standards for online privacy. The Tracking Protection Working Group is chartered to work on two complementary initiatives: Tracking Preference Expression (Do Not Track) and...

When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too? We’ve discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies. Below we spell out in more detail what we’ve discovered, as well as recommendations to IE users on how to protect their privacy from...

With Windows 8, you have an unprecedented choice of devices for browsing the Web, from large desktop screens to small slates. In order to accommodate this range of devices, the browser must be able to scale and layout the Web at many different screen sizes and dimensions. We've previously blogged about some of the features in IE that support these scenarios. Sub-pixel positioning (of text and layout) is one of the core platform technologies which enable Web pages to look beautiful and consistent...

To help celebrate Valentine’s Day, we’re pleased to offer another new HTML5 experience that makes the most of your PC hardware and touch on Windows 8. Check out Love is in the Air and feel the warm embrace of hardware accelerated HTML5. This experience brings together hardware-accelerated HTML5 canvas, SVG, CSS transforms & transitions, WOFF, audio, and more. On Windows Developer Preview with support for multi-touch in IE10 , you can reach out and swipe to reveal a special message of love...

The February 2012 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer is now available via Windows Update . This security update resolves 5 privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user visits a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user...

The fourth platform of IE10 simplifies building cross-site scenarios that work consistently across browsers by supporting Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for XMLHttpRequest (XHR) . CORS for XHR makes sharing data across sites simple and flexible. In the most basic scenario CORS enables creating data sources accessible from any site, and with a few small tweaks you can choose to constrain allowed sites, support data modification, and even allow authentication. Most importantly CORS keeps existing...

Metro style apps in Windows 8 have all the performance benefits of IE10 when showing Web content. In Metro style apps, Web content is always JIT compiled and hardware-accelerated. Other platforms do not provide the same level of performance in apps. For example, Cocoa apps on iOS offer significantly worse JavaScript performance (via the UIWebView control) than the same content running in Safari. These Cocoa apps do not enjoy JIT compilation, and these apps cannot show and use Web content the same...

CSS3 features make it easier to build rich and immersive Web experiences. A recent post described how Web developers add personality to their sites with CSS3 Transitions and Animations. CSS3 3D Transforms add another dimension (literally) for developers to enhance their sites. For example, the Windows 8 Metro style Start page uses subtle 3D transforms to highlight pressed tiles, as shown below. Internet Explorer 10 tile shown not pressed (left) and pressed (right) Adding a...