14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone 8, the next flavor of Microsoft’s mobile operating system, is expected to arrive on shelves in the beginning of the next month with a new flavor of the Internet Explorer mobile browser on board, namely IE10.
According to Microsoft, IE on Windows Phone 8 was built with the same web browsing engine that powers Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8, and web developers can easily get their websites ready for the new browser.
The UA string of Internet Explorer 10 on Windows Phone 8 comes as an evolution of the IE9 on Windows Phone 7.5 UA string, while falling in line with those for the Windows 8 browser.
Regarding the new mobile application, Microsoft notes that “the Platform token is now Windows Phone instead of Windows Phone OS,” and that “the ARM and Touch tokens have been added, to align with the latest updates to the Internet Explorer 10 on Windows UA string.”
However, the company also notes that the same practices that were unveiled for Internet Explorer 9 in Windows Phone 7 apply to the new browser release.
Developers should not rely solely on UA string for browser identification purposes, but they should also look into feature and behavior detection.
Should they go with UA detection, the IEMobile token is proposed to identify Internet Explorer on Windows Phone.
“If you would like to target code that requires new Internet Explorer 10 platform features on Windows Phone, you can use a regular expression to extract the IEMobile version token, and then check to see if it is greater than or equal to 10,” Microsoft explains.
Devs can already start validating their websites for Internet Explorer 10 on Windows Phone 8, even if they are not part of the Windows Phone 8 SDK Preview program, given the fact that the same engine present in IE for Windows 8 can be found inside the mobile application as well.
In Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8, devs should bring up the IE Developer Tools (the F12 key or through hitting F12 Developer Tools in the Tools menu), and then should go to Change User Agent String and select IE10 for Windows Phone 8. They can also resize the windows from Tools > Resize > 480x800.
“If you have a WebKit-optimized site (for iOS/Android), consider using that code as the basis for Internet Explorer 10 because it has extensive standards-compliant HTML5 support. In some cases, this will require ensuring that “-webkit” prefixed properties also have standards-compliant counterparts,” the company explains.
Developers already detecting Windows Phones using UA string should make sure that detection logic works with IE10 as well. Additional info on the matter can be found in the Internet Explorer 10 Guide for Developers.