Interoperable HTML5 Quirks Mode in IE10

The fourth IE10 platform preview includes enhanced HTML5 support by using an interoperable quirks mode based on the behavior defined in HTML5. This HTML5-based quirks mode is the default quirks mode in IE10.
Users and Web developers want sites to just work across browsers. A key part of this is making HTML, CSS, and JavaScript work in the same way across implementations. HTML5 facilitates cross-browser consistency by defining parts of the Web platform previously left unspecified. This largely involves the HTML5 parsing rules, but also includes parts about how browsers should behave in quirks mode.
IE10’s HTML5 quirks mode is used for pages without a DOCTYPE or with a legacy DOCTYPE as defined in HTML5. Like HTML5 and other browsers, the behavior of IE10’s quirks mode is the same as standards mode with select quirks applied. This means features like ,
Developers can quickly identify which mode a page uses via the F12 developer tools. The latest HTML5 standards and quirks modes are now listed as Standards and Quirks. Legacy modes are still listed by the version of IE that introduced them. IE's legacy quirks mode is now referred to as Internet Explorer 5 quirks.

F12 Developer Tools’ Document Mode menu

IE10 continues to use Internet Explorer 5 quirks in Compatibility View for pages without a DOCTYPE, and for pages that opt-in via X-UA-Compatible.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=5">

Call to Action

HTML5 defines quirks mode for compatibility and interoperability, but you should continue to author new sites for standards mode by using at the top of your pages. Please help ensure IE10's HTML5 quirks mode works correctly by reporting issues via Connect.

IE 9.0.4 Available via Windows Update

The December 2011 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer is now available via Windows Update. This security update resolves three privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user visits a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run a malicious application on the affected system. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less affected than users who operate with administrative user rights.
This security update is rated Important for Internet Explorer on Windows clients and Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 2008 R2; and Low for Internet Explorer on Windows servers. For more information, see the full bulletin.
Most customers have enabled automatic updating and do not need to take any action. We recommend that customers, who have not enabled automatic updating, enable it (Start Menu, type “Windows Update”). We recommend that administrators, enterprise installations, and end users who want to install this security update manually, apply the update immediately using update management software or by checking for updates using the Microsoft Update service.

Let It Snow... Faster!

In the spirit of the holiday season, we offer a new HTML5 experience that makes the most of your PC hardware and the new touch capabilities in Windows 8.
Check out Let It Snow and get ready for a GPU-powered snow storm. This experience brings together hardware-accelerated HTML5 canvas, SVG, CSS, and more. On Windows Developer Preview with support for multi-touch in IE10, you can reach out and brush the snow off the sign and reveal a holiday message -or just use your mouse. If you think your browser can keep up, kick it up to 1000 snowflakes. If it's more of a flurry than a blizzard, try it with IE9 (or IE10) using the hardware acceleration built into the browser.

Click the image to Let It Snow

Earlier this year we showed the first look at IE10, which offers more and more of the site ready HTML5 developers are asking for, so they can build beautiful and interactive Web experiences. With the Windows Developer Preview, we introduced more hardware-accelerated HTML5 for building touch friendly applications on the Web. We’re delighted and amazed by what developers are building on HTML5 and excited to be part of it.

Thank you!

Your participation and feedback is an important part of how we build IE. Today we want to say thank you to everyone who browses the Web with IE9, downloads the IE10 previews, runs the test drives, and reports issues on Connect. We also want to thank the people and groups who make the standards process work, the broad community of Web developers, and enthusiastic consumers who work to move the Web forward.
From the entire IE team, we wish you a Happy Hardware-accelerated Holiday Season, and we look forward to another exciting year on the Web in 2012.

Improving Same Markup for HTML5

We continue to contribute to the test suites under development at the HTML5 standards bodies, submitting 118 new tests to them, to further the goal of interoperability and same markup. You can view them at the IE Test Center as well. We strongly encourage all developers to write for HTML5 standards first by always using the HTML5 doc type in your pages.
IE10 Preview 4 introduces an updated quirks mode that is more consistent and interoperable with the way quirks modes works in other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. This updated quirks mode supports quirks for page layout, while allowing use of more up-to-date standards features like HTML5 elements for audio, video, canvas, and more.
You can find a full list of new functionality available to developers in the IE10 developer guide here. Download the Windows 8 developer preview to try this update to IE10. We look forward to continued engagement with the developer community and your feedback on Connect.

Building HTML5 Applications

This IE10 preview supports CORS (cross origin resource sharing) to allow developers to use XMLHttpRequest to safely request, share, and move data across applications on different domains. This is a common pattern developers use to bring data and services together from different applications. In this test drive demo, you can see how CORS is used along with XMLHttpRequest, the File API, and HTML5 progress control to deliver a smooth experience for uploading multiple files to a service on another domain.

Click here to see CORS used with XMLHttpRequest to upload files across domains.
Having the ability to work with binary data and files enables developers to build new kinds of applications and experiences on the Web. This IE10 preview supports blobBuilder from File API: Writer for working with large binary objects (blobs) and JavaScript typed arrays. In this test drive demo, you can see how different file types, including file types which are not natively supported in the browser like PCX files can be read, rendered, and even have their internal contents displayed.

Click here to see how JavaScript typed arrays used with File APIs to read and view binary files.
As developers build more sophisticated applications on the Web, they have more need for precise control over how end-users select parts of the page. With CSS user select support in IE10, developers can specify which elements in their page can be selected by the consumer when using their applications. In this this test drive demo, you can see how selection control is applied in a sample blog application using the user-select property in a CSS rule.

Click here to try CSS user-select to control end-user Web page selection.

HTML5 for Applications: The Fourth IE10 Platform Preview

An updated platform preview of IE10 for the Windows Developer Preview is now available for download. This IE10 preview adds even more support for HTML5 technologies, enabling richer Web applications with significantly improved performance. IE10’s hardware acceleration of technologies like SVG, CSS3 transforms and animations delivers faster rendering than other browsers

With this fourth Platform Preview, developers can start working with more site-ready HTML5 technologies. You can read the full list here in the IE10 developer guide. Here are a few highlights:

• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for safe use of XMLHttpRequest across domains.
• File API Writer support for blobBuilder allowing manipulation of large binary objects in script in the browser.
• Support for JavaScript typed arrays for efficient storage and manipulation of typed data.
• CSS user-select property to control how end-users select elements in a Web page or application.
• Support for HTML5 video text captioning, including time-code, placement, and captioning file formats.

These foundational capabilities are what developers building native applications depend on: working with binary data and files, controlling selection and hit testing in application UI, and providing accessible video content with captioning. The features in this platform preview are available to Web pages now, and will be available to Metro style applications in Windows 8.

Getting Binary Data with XHR and File API

Before we can use the Typed Arrays APIs to work with the contents of files, we need to use browser APIs to get access to the raw data. For accessing files from the server, the XMLHttpRequest API has been extended with support for various “responseType”s. The “arraybuffer” responseType provides the contents of the requested server resource to JavaScript as an ArrayBuffer object. Also supported are the “blob,” “text” and “document” response types.

function getServerFileToArrayBufffer(url, successCallback) {

// Create an XHR object

var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

xhr.onreadystatechange = function () {

if (xhr.readyState == xhr.DONE) {

if (xhr.status == 200 && xhr.response) {

// The 'response' property returns an ArrayBuffer

successCallback(xhr.response);

} else {

alert("Failed to download:" + xhr.status + " " + xhr.statusText);

}

}

}

// Open the request for the provided url

xhr.open("GET", url, true);

// Set the responseType to 'arraybuffer' for ArrayBuffer response

xhr.responseType = "arraybuffer";

xhr.send();

}

In many cases files are provided by the user, for example as an attachment to an email in a Web mail application. The File API offers Web developers tools to read the contents of files provided via an element, drag-and-drop or any other source that provides Blobs or Files. The FileReader object is used to read the contents of a file into an ArrayBuffer and, like the XHR object, is asynchronous to ensure that reading from the disk does not prevent the user interface from responding.

function readFileToArrayBuffer(file, successCallback) {

// Create a FileReader

var reader = new FileReader();

// Register for 'load' and 'error' events

reader.onload = function () {

// The 'result' property returns an ArrayBuffer for readAsArrayBuffer

var buffer = reader.result;

successCallback(buffer);

}

reader.onerror = function (evt) {

// The error code indicates the reason for failure

if (evt.target.error.code == evt.target.error.NOT_READABLE_ERR) {

alert("Failed to read file: " + file.name);

}

}

// Begin a read of the file contents into an ArrayBuffer

reader.readAsArrayBuffer(file);

}

Conclusion

Binary data is heavily used by Web browsers. With support for Typed Arrays, XHR2 and the File API in IE10, Web applications can now work directly with binary data, to manipulate byte-level data, to render additional binary data formats, and to extract data from existing media file formats. Try out the Binary File Inspector test drive demo, and take Typed Arrays for a spin in IE10.