IE Standards Support Beyond IE9 (Internet Explorer 9)

Microsoft is currently hard at work laboring to produce the next iteration of Internet Explorer, namely IE9. At the Professional Developers Conference 2009 in Los Angeles the past year, the software giant promised that with the advent of Internet Explorer 9, it would kick up a notch standards support. However, in terms of standards support, the Redmond company is doing much more than simply building the successor of Internet Explorer 8. The Internet Explorer Conformance Documentation is now available via MSDN, but also up for grabs via the Microsoft Download Center.

The resource is designed to offer developers information about “certain final approved web standards supported by Internet Explorer,” according to Microsoft. “As part of our commitment to interoperability, we’re going to make more interoperability information available about IE and keep it up-to-date. Today we’re publishing the first pieces of documentation. These documents are drafts, and are not final. We will post more [updates] about interoperability documentation (e.g. how we engineered creating this documentation, the process for keeping the documentation up to date),” revealed Dean Hachamovitch, IE general manager.

The work done for IE9 revolves around developing a public CSS 2.1 test suite which will subsequently go to the W3C, but also recent efforts designed to embrace HTML5, and boost the browser’s interoperability. What is important to note is that Microsoft has yet to confirm to any specifics when it comes down to the actual standards that IE9 will support. For example, the company has been talking extensively about contributing to the evolution of Vector Graphics (SVG). However, Microsoft has yet to commit to offering SVG support with IE9, much to the frustration of developers. Still, it is possible that additional details on IE9 web standards support will come next month at MIX10.

“The essence of interoperability (…) is that the same web page markup works the same way across different browsers. There are many challenges in getting to this goal. Even with the best intentions, as an industry we are still learning and working through how to do this well. You can look at how different tests run even today in modern browsers. You can look at how standards evolve, like how quickly CSS2 became CSS 2.1, or the process to finish CSS 2.1 and make it a final Recommendation, or what happened between XHTML and HTML5. You can look at the challenge of delivering interoperable products while specifications are under construction (as in the case of 802.11 wireless). There are many challenges, and the web standards process, primarily at the W3C and similar organizations, is an important means to get the different communities involved to a consensus agreement,” Hachamovitch stated.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RTW is available for download here (for 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008).