MIX10: Microsoft shows browser and mobile future

Technologies coming in IE9 had an airing at MIX10

Microsoft's MIX10 conference for web professionals made the news this week with the software giant disclosing more details on its new Windows Phone 7 platform, unveiling a release candidate for the Silverlight 4 web application framework, and delivering an early preview of web technologies coming in Internet Explorer 9.

During the conference keynote, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows Phone, Joe Belfiore, detailed how developers will be able to code for Windows Phone 7 handsets using Silverlight for rich applications and the XNA Framework for multimedia and games.

Among the tools announced at the event was Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, a Windows Phone 7 Series add-in to use with Visual Studio 2010, plus an emulator for application testing.

According to Belfiore, this will enable developers to quickly and easily deliver compelling applications and games.

"With the best developer tools, an established ecosystem and marketplace, and a path for developers to use their Silverlight and XNA Framework skill sets, we are delivering an application platform that is simple, powerful and inspiring," he said.

On the downside, Microsoft had further disappointments for those hoping that Windows Phone 7 would build on the strengths of earlier Windows Mobile releases while correcting some of the flaws.

Instead, it has become clear that Windows Phone 7 is a reset of Microsoft's mobile strategy, which ditches much of what came before in order to offer developers a new consumer-focused platform.

Following the news that Windows Phone 7 will not be compatible with existing Windows Mobile applications, Microsoft disclosed at MIX that the platform will not support multi-tasking, except for functions that are part of the platform itself, and the initial release will not support cut and paste, even in the Office hub applications.

This lends credence to those critics who believe Microsoft is trying too hard to mimic Apple's success with the iPhone, which had similar drawbacks in early versions of the handset and drew much flak because of this.

"It's almost like they've re-created the original iPhone," said Ovum analyst Tony Cripps.

However, he added that a rebuild from the ground up is what Microsoft needed to do if it wants to stay in the smartphone market.

"There is a lot of clunky legacy stuff in Windows Mobile and this was the only way of getting round it," Cripps said.

Meanwhile, the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview released at MIX provides developers with an early look at features coming in the next version of Internet Explorer. It can be downloaded here.

As such, this is not intended for everyday use, and is in fact little more than a basic frame encapsulating the core rendering and layout engines, according to Microsoft.

However, it demonstrates that Microsoft is looking to once again build a cutting-edge browser after neglecting this area for many years, then playing catch-up with IE8.

IE9 includes support, at least in part, for the nascent HTML5 standard, as well as boosts performance by supporting hardware acceleration for graphics and Javascript execution within the browser.

This makes sense, according to Cripps, as web sites are increasingly placing greater processing demands on systems through more complex pages and multimedia content.

The bad news is that this means IE9 is unlikely to run on Windows XP, since the hardware acceleration makes use of an API introduced in Windows 7, and back-ported to Vista.

HTML5 itself is expected to reduce the need for plug-ins such as Adobe's Flash to produce compelling interactive web sites, but the standard is still a work in progress.

As an example, HTML5 is intended to let browsers support video and audio content directly without requiring a media player plug-in, but while Microsoft is backing the H.264 codec to provide this function, other browser developers such as Mozilla have expressed concerns over patents on the technology.

IE9 also includes support for Scalable Vector Graphic and CSS3, the latest version of the cascading style sheets standard used to apply formatting to web pages. This is also still under development, however.

Microsoft said it will issue updates on the IE9 Platform Preview roughly every eight weeks. The firm did not indicate any timeframe for a beta release or when the full version will ship, but this is widely expected to come sometime next year.