HTML 5 Update

Here is some recent news I happened to come across that I wanted to share with you all


Microsoft came under fire from some of its rivals for its decision not to offer Internet Explorer 9 -- and hence support for the upcoming HTML 5 standard -- to users of its older Windows XP operating system.

Microsoft said at its MIX developer conference in March that IE 9 won't be offered for XP. The reason, technical evangelist Giorgio Sardo said at the Web 2.0 Expo on Wednesday, is that IE 9 is a "modern browser," and getting the benefits of the hardware acceleration and other performance gains that it will offer requires a "modern OS."


"I reckon this is a problem," agreed Doug Crockford, a senior JavaScript architect at Yahoo. "I recommend all users of XP migrate to another browser that's not IE."
At issue is the adoption of HTML 5, an upcoming revamp of the Web's markup language that will add significant new capabilities, including standard ways to implement video, animation, audio and offline storage, that are not included in the current HTML standard.

It's important partly because it should help to reduce fragmentation on the Web, which forces developers to build and test applications for multiple browsers or use proprietary technologies such as Flash and Silverlight.
But if IE 9, which will be Microsoft's first browser to fully support HTML 5, isn't available for XP, then those users will be outside of that HTML 5 compatibility sphere. And IE 6 still has more users than the Opera, Chrome and Safari browsers combined, according to Crockford. In some countries it accounts for as much as 40 percent of browser usage, he said