LOS ANGELES -- Microsoft shared a few details of what users can
expect in Internet Explorer 9, which is only three weeks into
development. The company also announced the launch of a beta release of
Silverlight 4.
At the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC)
here, Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live
Division at Microsoft, gave a short update on what the company has been
doing in terms of beefing up performance for the IE browser and
enhancing standards support. Sinofsky delivered a keynote address to
the audience of developers
"We're not going to generate a hype cycle for what's not there yet," he said referring to emerging web standards such as HTML5.
However, Sinofsky said Microsoft has made some significant
improvements in it compatibility with the Acid3 test of web performance
and capabilities. Sinofsky said IE8 had a score of 20, and IE9 already
has a score of 32.
In terms of the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 3 standard, Sinofsky
said IE9 has passed 572 out of 578 of the CSS 3 tests. Acid3 is a test
page from the Web Standards Project that checks how well a web browser
follows certain selected elements from web standards, especially
relating to the Document Object Model and JavaScript.
In a blog post describing some of the movement with IE9, Dean Hachcamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer at Microsoft, said:
"Our focus is providing rich capabilities – the ones that most
developers want to use – in an interoperable way. Developers want more
capabilities in the browser to build great apps and experiences; they
want them to work in an interoperable way so they don’t have to
re-write and re-test their sites again and again. The standards process
offers a good means to that end."
"One of the things we'll do in IE is we'll make sure you pick up the
performance gains you get in modern hardware for hardware accelerated
rendering."
Meanwhile, following Sinofsky in the Nov. 18 keynote, Scott Guthrie,
corporate vice president of the .Net Developer Platform, discussed
Silverlight 4, the upcoming next version of Microsoft's Silverlight
rich Internet application (RIA) platform, describing new features to
better support media and the Web, business applications and more.
Guthrie announced that a beta of Silverlight 4 is now available, and it
will feature a host of new capabilities, along with Visual Studio 2010
and Microsoft's Expression design tools.
The Silverlight 4 beta comes just four months after the delivery of
Silverlight 3. "We've been on a fast cadence for Silverlight releases,"
Guthrie said
The Silverlight 4 download can be found at http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta.
Regarding media, Microsoft is enabling webcam and microphone support
in Silverlight 4, multicast streaming, full output protection and
offline DRM support, Guthrie said.
Silverlight 4 will feature application development improvements such as drag and drop support, HTML hosting and more.
"With Silverlight 4 and .NET 4 it's possible to compile an assembly once and run it in both places," Guthrie said.
In addition, Microsoft has improved its capability to take
Silverlight beyond the browser. "With Silverlight 4 we have even more
capability for running outside the browser in a sandboxed mode,"
Guthrie said. "And we have a new capability to build trusted apps that
run outside the sandbox." This runs on Windows and the Mac, he said.
Describing some of the new features, the Microsoft Silverlight Team Blog said top features include:
· Enhancements to
Silverlight out-of-browser capabilities which enable high quality
application experiences on the desktop;
· Advancements in
business application development, including access to other Microsoft
products like SharePoint 2010, Office, and Internet Information
Services (IIS);
· The most amazing
HD-quality video experiences on the Web with native multicast and
offline DRM support.
Microsoft also has extended support for Google's Chrome browser with
Silverlight 4. For a more complete view on the new features in
Silverlight 4 look here.
Moreover, in addition to discussing IE9 and Silverlight 4, Microsoft
also announced that each attendee at the PDC would receive a laptop
computer that Microsoft designed as the prototype of a baseline PC for
running Windows 7. Sinofsky announced the PC giveaway to thunderous
applause from the audience of developers.
Application Development News & Reviews 
