Developers

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...

The transition to a plug-in free Web is happening today. Any site that uses plug-ins needs to understand what their customers experience when browsing plug-in free. Lots of Web browsing today happens on devices that simply don’t support plug-ins. Even browsers that do support plug-ins offer many ways to run plug-in free. Metro style IE runs plug-in free to improve battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers. Previously, we wrote about how we use IE’s Compatibility...

As Web sites transition more and more into Web applications, working with files in meaningful ways is becoming increasingly important. Starting with Platform Preview 2, IE10 includes support for the File API , enabling developers to read and slice files on the client. Platform Preview 4 adds support for BlobBuilder , a way for developers to create new files. IE10 also has two new methods that allow the user to save blobs to their computer, enabling great end-to-end experiences when working...

IndexedDB is a W3C Working Draft that enables JavaScript developers to store, search, and retrieve data on the user's local client, even when Internet connectivity is disabled . This blog post describes IDBExplorer, a tool we use internally to debug IndexedDB applications. IDBExplorer lets you view database schemas, object store content, and index details. Exploring the tool with an example IndexedDB App To illustrate, I created an application that tracks my New Year’s resolutions...

Compat Inspector is now available for IE10. Use Compat Inspector to quickly identify if Internet Explorer platform changes affect your site. Whether you're preparing for IE10 or still updating for IE9, run Compat Inspector on any page experiencing problems. Then watch for messages explaining potential issues and steps you can take to resolve them. About Compat Inspector Compat Inspector is a JavaScript-based testing tool that analyzes your site while it runs. Compat Inspector...

IE10 Platform Preview 4 includes support for a new CSS property, -ms-user-select , which makes it easier for Web developers to control exactly what text can be selected on their Web sites. If you were to watch me all day at my workstation, you would notice that as I read on the computer, I select text. I’m not the only one who reads like this; selecting text on the Internet is important in many other scenarios. Consider a typical news Web site. Most pages will include a news article...

With cross-browser support for both the CSS3 @font-face rule and the WOFF font packaging format , modern Web typography has expanded far beyond the realm of ‘ Web-safe fonts .’ Well-known magazines such as the New Yorker use Web fonts to preserve the typographic personality of their headlines, while [US] President Obama’s re-election campaign uses Web font service Typekit to host their identity font. One remaining limitation prevents Web designers from using the entire font: the...

The fourth IE10 platform preview includes enhanced HTML5 support by using an interoperable quirks mode based on the behavior defined in HTML5. This HTML5-based quirks mode is the default quirks mode in IE10. Users and Web developers want sites to just work across browsers. A key part of this is making HTML, CSS, and JavaScript work in the same way across implementations. HTML5 facilitates cross-browser consistency by defining parts of the Web platform previously left unspecified...

Last March, we released a prototype implementation of the audio portion of a working draft of the W3C Media Capture API on HTML5 Labs . This prototype publicized some proposed API enhancements described in section 6.1 of Microsoft’s HTML Speech XG Speech API Proposal . We have now updated the prototype to include the image and video capture features described in the proposal to support scenarios we’ve heard are important for Web developers, as well as incorporating your feedback on audio. As more...

Users expect to visit any site on the Internet with any browser and enjoy a similar quality experience. We first discussed Internet Explorer’s commitment to achieving the goal of consistent “same markup, same results” across browsers in a post on March 16, 2010 announcing the release of the IE9’s first platform preview. IE9 moved us a long way toward that goal and IE10’s HTML5-based Standards and Quirks modes largely completes that work. The post HTML5 Parsing in IE10...

With HTML5 comes many APIs that push the envelope on user experiences involving media and real-time communications. These features often rely on binary file formats, like MP3 audio, PNG images, or MP4 video. The use of binary file formats is important to these features to reduce bandwidth requirements, deliver expected performance, and interoperate with existing file formats. But until recently, Web developers haven’t had direct access to the contents of these binary files or any other custom binary...

An updated platform preview of IE10 for the Windows Developer Preview is now available for download . This IE10 preview adds even more support for HTML5 technologies, enabling richer Web applications with significantly improved performance. IE10’s hardware acceleration of technologies like SVG, CSS3 transforms and animations delivers faster rendering than other browsers, as highlighted in this short video. See some of the new HTML5 capabilities, performance improvements in...

For the Web and Web applications to keep making progress, the programming language of the Web must continue to improve. Today’s JavaScript standard lacks a few basic objects and library helpers that are vital for building rich, world-wide Web applications. Last week at the Ecma TC39 meeting at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, Microsoft shared reference implementations of proposals to address gaps in Math, String, and Number functionality as well as Globalization . To ensure that others in the community...

Advancements like high-performance compiled JavaScript and hardware-accelerated rendering of HTML5 and CSS3 in Internet Explorer 9 and 10 allow Web developers to create richer and richer experiences. Two related features, CSS3 Transitions and CSS3 Animations , give Web developers a declarative way to add personality to Web page interactions easily. This blog post describes these two features as implemented in IE10 in the Windows Developer Preview and Windows 8 Metro style apps written...

Building fast and functional sites is a challenge with which most Web developers are familiar. Loading a new page every time the user clicks a link is slow. Fetching all content dynamically effectively disables the back button. Working with hashes is better, but still not ideal. Internet Explorer 10 in the Windows Developer Preview eliminates the compromise by adding support for HTML5 History . The pushState , replaceState , and popstate APIs provide fine-grained control over the behavior of the...

Vendor prefixes enable Web developers to experiment with new standards before they reach the Candidate Recommendation stage. I previously wrote how these prefixes are also a mechanism browser vendors use for handling timing conflicts between implementations and specifications. In building demos of new features for our IE Test Drive site and in various presentations, many of us on the IE team deal extensively with vendor prefixes. This blog post describes a pattern we’ve used in some recent demos...

Web graphics in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format offer better quality display over a broader range of device sizes compared to bitmap-based graphics. SVG also has inherent accessibility making it the best choice for interactive graphics and those involving text. SVG usage on the Web continues to grow. Last week at SVG Open 2011 , we had the opportunity to meet with and hear from Web developers putting SVG to use in a wide variety of real-world applications. These applications include...

Windows 8 Metro style apps let developers take their Web sites’ experiences to the next level. With Metro style apps, developers can build experiences that are more immersive, beautiful, and better connected with other apps and the rest of Windows. Apps can utilize the Windows Runtime to deliver features beyond what’s possible in a browser alone such as seamless access to local files and folders, integrating with Windows 8 Charms for sharing and search, and interacting with locally-connected...

Touch interaction with Web sites and apps has the opportunity to improve their usability and ubiquity as the Web and Windows 8 Metro style apps play a key role on tomorrow’s touch-enabled devices. This post explains how Web developers can use the new IE10 pointer event model along with the iOS touch event model and the W3C mouse event model (as extended ) to create a cross-browser, common-code handler for pointer, touch, and mouse input. A little background: I’m fortunate to have a Samsung 700T Windows...

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) provides Web developers with a declarative, markup-based language for building rich, interactive content as part of their Web sites. With SVG Filter Effects, supported in IE10 in the Windows Developer Preview, developers have a collection of powerful, image-based effects that apply to all SVG elements. Like all Web page content in IE9, SVG Filter effects in IE10 are built with hardware-accelerated rendering, resulting in stunning performance and opening up new opportunities...

Internet Explorer 10 in the Windows Developer Preview introduces two new CSS features designed to make it easier for developers to create rich text-centric Web pages and apps. CSS3 Regions provides a lightweight mechanism to flow content through multiple non-contiguous areas. IE10’s support of CSS3 Hyphenation gives developers a simple mechanism to hyphenate text in a wide range of languages. These two new features complement other great CSS features we previously announced , including CSS3 Grid...

IE10 in the Windows Developer Preview introduces support for hardware-accelerated CSS3 text-shadow . Text-shadow is one of the top requested features from Web developers. It enables text effects that were previously difficult or impossible to accomplish in a standards-friendly way without resorting to inline images of text. Text-Shadow in IE10 As its name suggests, text-shadow is a CSS property that draws a shadow behind text. Example of a purple text-shadow behind text Use...

Users expect their Web sites and apps to work well even when the network isn't available. With data increasingly stored in the cloud, developers want to enable fluid experiences that allow access to data when there is no connectivity; when devices are disconnected from the network or when they encounter dead spots in coverage. In this post, we show how to create well-behaved offline sites and apps using the following HTML5 features: AppCache to store file resources locally...

The Web is more interactive, fun, and immersive when sites work well with new input devices and touch screens. The Windows Developer Preview introduces support for handling touch and pen input in your sites and apps. Developers can now ensure their sites work well with touch and build powerful new experiences that make the most of advanced input such as multi-touch and gestures. You can see this in action on the IE Test Drive site in the new and updated demos Touch Effects , Lasso Birds , and Flying...