14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s commitment to pushing the web forward runs deeper than what’s available with Internet Explorer 9 Beta today, or with IR9 RTW in 2011. The company has just announced the release of HTML5 Labs, a project designed to offer prototypes of experimental or unstable web standard specifications.
Developers can expect technologies developed under the umbrella of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) but also from additional standards bodies.
The two first prototypes are already live on the site and available for web developers: IndexedDB and WebSockets.
“WebSockets is a technology designed to simplify much of the complexity around bi-directional, full-duplex communications channels, over a single Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) socket. It can be implemented in web browsers, web servers as well as used by any client or server application,” revealed Jean Paoli, General Manager of Interoperability Strategy at Microsoft.
“For its part, IndexedDB is a developing W3C Web standard for the storage of large amounts of structured data in the browser, as well as for high performance searches on this data using indexes.
“IndexedDB can be used for browser implemented functions like bookmarks, as well as for web applications like email. IndexedDB also enables offline scenarios where the browser might be disconnected from the Internet or server,” he added.
In the Redmond company’s perspective neither IndexedDB nor WebSockets are ready for integration into Internet Explorer 9 at this point in time.
However, the software giant sees both specifications as having a future, although they are currently unstable enough to qualify as not site-ready.
If it’s not already obvious, HTML5 Labs is an effort from Microsoft to engage the developer community and make sure that devs have something to say in terms of the evolution of these two HTML5 specifications, with others to follow.
“So please experiment with these prototypes and tell us and other working group participants whether the APIs are usable. We are making them available to help improve the final specifications,” Paoli said.
“Other implementers can use these prototypes to determine whether we have interpreted the specifications in the same way, and a larger audience can get a better sense of what potential will be unlocked when these specifications have stabilized into interoperable implemented standards.”
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Beta is available for download here.
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 7 (PP7) is available for download here.