Early Impressions of IE9 for Windows Phone 7
The last few weeks I have been building mobile web sites against the current Windows Phone 7 browser, with the knowledge it will receive an upgrade later this summer. IE9 will be included with the Windows Phone 7 Mango update, which I have heard will be shipped in the August/September timeframe. This is a very significant update considering the current browser is IE7. Today at MIX Microsoft demonstrated the upcoming Internet Explorer Mobile browser so I wanted to share my initial impressions.
HTML5 & CSS3
The new IE Mobile is the same code base as desktop IE9, with a few enhancements for mobile. This means you can pretty much count on the HTML5/CSS 3 features supported on the desktop now being available on Windows Phone 7. This is great and means we can really start building some much richer mobile experiences.
Multimedia
In particular you should now be able to include media using the HTML5 Video and Audio tags. I personally think this is a big score because I am personally seeing a rapid uptake in video demand on mobile devices. In fact the iPad usage I personally observe is primarily watching movies and TV shows. I also see folks using their smart phones for entertainment and I don’t think users will be any different with WP7 or any upcoming Microsoft Tablet offerings.
If you watched the on stage keynote demo you saw the ability to run multimedia in the browser, leave the browser and perform other phone tasks. The audio kept playing and you had volume and play control from the phone’s hardware buttons.
Canvas & SVG
Again another big addition. Personally I have done nothing of significance with either feature. But my personal belief is Internet Explorer 9 is going to prove out to be a great online gaming platform. Optimized use of the GPU gives the IE family a big advantage here. But beyond gaming good support of these features really open up a world of possibilities to web developers. The biggest problem is going to be getting developers to reduce their self imposed creative limits and create web sites using this super awesome sauce.
JavaScript
Chakra for the Win! So far I have been impressed with the IE9 JavaScript engine and now it is on the phone. Again a big win when it comes to build the rich experiences consumers are demanding today. One thing I found out is scripts will not be pre-compiled on the phone like the desktop counterpart. Not sure just how much of a real performance hit this will be, but I am sure it will be noticeable in some sites. Most notably gaming sites.
Touch
OUCH!!!! At this point the the team DOES NOT plan on including support for the Touch Events specification. This is a big loss for the platform. The choice to not support touch events on a touch enabled platform is just suicide these days. Despite the many other wins the new browser brings to the table, no touch really limits the types of applications designers and developers can architect. I and many other developers I talked to are just in shock at this choice.
Device APIs
Again a big fat NO! Another big loss. The competition has been supporting standards such as the Media Capture API for a couple of years. I knew this would be a hopeful stretch for the upcoming IE9 mobile release, so it was no surprise they were not including it. I will be writing more about these APIs in the coming weeks. As these drafts and specifications reach final maturity you can expect IE9 Mobile to start implementing them.
Summary
Despite the lack of some very key features the upcoming IE9 mobile release will really help the Windows Phone 7 get closer to the competition. They are still in 3rd place, but now they have a chance to possibly close the gap. One thing I did pick up is they plan on regularly updating the browser as phone updates are released. I know there is not another major WP7 update planned after the Mango release this year. But hopefully we will see something updated soon after the holiday season that we can all touch 
. I am anxiously looking forward to the Mango release, not just for IE9 but for the other great features shown this morning.