Re: IE8 and HTML5

Richard Heyes wrote:

From a recent IEBlog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/12/03/compatibility-view-improvements-to-come-in-ie8.aspx

...and our start on HTML5 support.

Does this mean canvas support?

Not in IE8. http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/11/19/ie8-what-s-after-beta-2.aspx#9129600 Everyone has their favorite unstandardized feature they'd love IE to support. (Personally I'd be delighted by -ms-border-radius and content:uri() support.) Experimental support for Canvas and other unstandardized features might be a good thing; I know the spec editors would welcome implementor feedback. It would be a shame, however, if we were locked into a technically poor solution thanks to the most popular browser implementing an early version of the specification, websites beginning to rely on that behaviour, and subsequent versions of the specification being forced to mandate such behaviour. I haven't used Canvas much, but it seems to me there a lot of areas of Canvas where there's room for further evolution, e.g. proper text width calculations? an accessible Canvas example? what about 3D?

Is it as a direct result of Chrome being released and MS realising (finally) they are going to have to remain competitive?

Given Chrome's poor rate of take-up and tendency to canibalize the userbases of non-MS browsers, I somewhat doubt it. http://blog.statcounter.com/2008/09/chrome-whos-losing/ Regardless of Chrome's technical merits, it seems to me that it's Firefox's growing userbase, tailed by the other popular browsers in some markets, that has long represented the market challenge to IE. http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm Could be I'm underestimating the effects of press hype about chrome on MS's strategy, but I think actually Microsoft's turn towards a stronger emphasis on standards support long preceded the release of Chrome. For example: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/03/microsoft-s-interoperability-principles-and-ie8.aspx Given that IE8 was already in beta when Chrome was released, standard support in IE8 is mostly a product of decisions taken before that time. -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis