HTML5 for Internet Explorer and Windows 8

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cadhtml5coaMicrosoft really jumped on the HTML5 bandwagon in a big way with Internet Explorer 9 and now Windows 8, so how does this affect your sites and apps?

There are really two big Microsoft platforms where you can leverage HTML5:

  • Internet Explorer 9 & 10
  • Windows 8

Internet Explorer 9 & 10

When Internet Explorer 9 came out, many a web developer was pleased to see HTML5 support. The more browsers that support HTML5 the less we have to write different code for different browsers. Internet Explorer 10 supports even more HTML5 features than IE 9! You can check out all sorts of great examples of the HTML5 features at ietestdrive.com you will also find a few sites on there which will even help you write your CSS and HTML5 Code. As a programmer, nothing I like better than cut and paste! Start exploring HTML5 features (WOFF rocks) and use them in your code today. I know not every browser supports everything yet, so you will want some feature detection and fallback code for older browsers, but you should be preparing your sites for the newest browsers, so those who do have new browsers have the best possible experience! Here are 4 basic steps you can do right now to get your web sites ready for IE 9 and IE 10!

  1. Update your docmode for web standards
  2. Run Compat Inspector to fix common IE problems
  3. Implement feature detection to support many browsers (We recommend using Modernizr)
  4. Create a plug-in free browsing experience for Windows 8 users

Windows 8

Usually when we think of developing Windows applications we think of Visual Basic, C#, and Windows Presentation Foundation. Windows 8 still supports developing with .NET and XAML (Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation are both based on XAML) but it also provided a new option, HTML5/CSS and JavaScript. That way developers with experience developing web sites can leverage their existing skills to build cool Windows 8 apps and games without having to learn a new programming language. HTML5 isn’t a second class citizen on Windows 8 either, with the WinRT you can leverage all sorts of great APIs, the same APIs that are available to the .NET and C++ developers. The WinRT is written in C++ but when you call it from your JavaScript you can’t tell. You can check out Dev.windows.com to find out more about building Windows 8 apps with HTML5.

I have a dream…a dream where I write code once, just once, for multiple platforms and browsers … maybe we are getting a little closer.