14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone Mango, the new flavor of Microsoft's mobile operating system that should arrive in about two weeks, brings along a wide range of enhancements when compared to the previous version of the platform, some of which were included in the new Internet Explorer Mobile.
It is the IE9 (Internet Explorer 9) Mobile browser that Microsoft included in the new OS iteration, with features and capabilities that are available on the desktop version of the application as well.
Microsoft managed to come up with a unified code for Internet Explorer on both the desktop Windows client, as well as on the Windows Phone Mango OS, just as previously announced.
“This enabled us to make a huge leap forward in the platform, taking advantage of all of the latest and greatest work done in the Internet Explorer web platform,” Charles Morris, program manager lead, Windows Phone, notes in a blog post.
“It also means that the simplest way to answer the questions in the intro is: 'It supports what IE9 supports!'. It also means the commitment to high-quality, interoperable implementations of Web standards (aka 'same markup') carries through to Windows Phone.”
The same as Internet Explorer, the Mango web platform offers support for HTML5, CSS, DOM, ECMAScript 5, SVG 1.1 (Second Edition), XHTML5, Cross-domain request (XDR), SVG in HTML, and more
Microsoft notes that the IE9 Mobile web platform brings along a much longer list of enhancements. Those who are familiar with the latest advancements in Internet Explorer are familiar with what's new in the mobile web platform too.
Those who would like to learn more on the matter should access the following documentation: Internet Explorer 9 Guide for Developers A Quick Guide to Internet Explorer 8 Developer Features Internet Explorer Standards Support Documents
However, it should also be noted that IE9 Mobile comes with a series of mobile specific features as well. More on this can be found on the Web Development for Windows Phone topic on MSDN. IE9 Mobile features not present with the IE9 for Windows include:
- <meta name=”viewport”> support: this tag is used to set the width and other properties on the browser viewport. - -ms-text-size-adjust support: this CSS property is used to control the scaling applied to text on webpages to make it more readable.