Microsoft announced four new features that will debut in its upcoming version of Internet Explorer and said it is also further opening up the data on development work on the browser as the company appears to stir IE development towards an open sourced model.
A while back, Microsoft sought to create a “deeper partnership” with web developers when it launched the beta site status.modern.ie, which provided data on features in development for the next version of IE.
“Today, after some of our team members host the Microsoft Astronaut’s Welcome Reception at JSConf 2014, we are happy to announce that we are removing the beta tag from status.modern.ie,” according to the IEBlog.”…Starting today, the entire site (including data that backs it) is available on GitHub under the Apache V2 license.”
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Microsoft also exposed the IE support data as a service under the Creative Commons Attribution v2 Licence.
The latest set of features that are now in development for IE, include:
- Web Audio API – A JavaScript API for processing and synthesizing audio in the Web
- Media Capture – This feature provides access to a user’s local audio and video input and output devices
- ES6 Promises – The next version of JavaScript. This helps developers write cleaner asynchronous code
- HTTP/2 – A next planned version of the HTTP network protocol which is meant to cut wait times on the Internet when loading Web pages
The data in status.modern.IE is useful for many developers who are interested in contributing to the project and Microsoft shared its vision for the IE platform saying “the Web should just work for everyone – users, developers and business.”
“For example, if a Web standard demands one behavior but other browsers and Web sites expect a different behavior then we implement the interoperable design so the sites ‘just work’ for our users.” The company said. “We then engage with the standards working groups to update the standard to the interoperable behavior. Most of all this goal encourages pragmatism rather than always standing on a narrow principle.”
Top priorities for IE are:
- Get users current – Microsoft will continue to build features (like Enterprise Mode IE) and partner with teams internal and external to Microsoft to enable users and businesses to confidently move to the latest version of IE
- Security – Microsoft will continue to invest deeply in security features that provide broad mitigations to potential vulnerabilities
- Interoperability and compatibility. Everyone wants sites written a decade ago to just keep working, but everyone also wants the latest HTML5 features for great experiences on the modern Web. Microsoft said it will ensure it does “a great job at both”, providing improved backwards capability and interoperability with the latest HTML5 features across modern browsers