Internet Explorer 9’s preview is already available for download

Microsoft has finally released Internet Explorer 9’s preview and it is already available for download. This preview of the platform is mainly intended for web developers and designers to test the most popular browser in the world up to now.

With this preview of the new version, Microsoft wants to re-position its browser in the increasingly competitive market. After losing users worldwide, Internet Explorer 9 seeks to regain them with its new functionalities.

Internet Explorer 9’s preview is just an engine of the browser. It does not include the user interface nor the security options. As far as we can see, this new version enables us to test the improvements in the rendering engine. In Internet Explorer 9’s preview we can test the support for CSS, SVG2, HTML5 and XHTML parsing standards, video and audio tag, for speeding up audio and text.

Before downloading Internet Explorer 9’s preview, it is worth noting that it is only compatible with Vista and 7 operating systems and not with Windows XP.

The future is HTML5

These new implementations of the “same-old” HTML code now called HTML5. In this version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.

Even though it´s still in development stage, there are already a few websites such as YouTube already that include HTML5 elements forcing web browsers to incorporate this new language, that is the of the latest beta of Firefox, Opera and Safari.

As for this new language, the usage of HTML5 allows websites to add new elements or change the language structure removing or replacing unnecessary and confusing tags. This allows the users to browse websites and even save time to search engines. Some of the most important changes are:

• SECTION – A part or chapter in a book, a section in a chapter, or essentially anything that has its own heading in HTML 4
• ARTICLE – An independent entry in a blog, magazine, compendium, and so forth
• ASIDE – The aside element represents a note, a tip, a sidebar, a pullquote, a parenthetical remark, or something that’s just outside the main flow of the narrative.
• COMMAND – In HTML 5, a menu contains command elements, each of which causes an immediate action
• CANVAS – Canvas element is part of HTML5 and allows for dynamic scriptable rendering of bitmap images.
• HEADER – The page header shown on the page; not the same as the head element
• VIDEO / AUDIO – Allows you to view audio – video content without any need to install multimedia plugins for the playback.
• FOOTER – The page footer where the fine print goes; the signature in an e-mail message
• NAV – A collection of links to other pages

Apart from adding and modifying structures, this new language also removes specific tags.

• The following HTML elements are those that end up in the list of active formatting elements: a, b, big, code, em, font, i, nobr, s, small, strike, strong, tt, and u.
• Frame, frameset and noframes tags are not supported in HTML 5 because it had a negative affect to the usability of a web page.
• Acronym is not included because it has created lots of confusion. Authors are to use abbr for abbreviations.
• The applet tag has been removed, and the object tag is now the standard.
• The isindex has been removed.
• dir tags have been replaced for another element such as ul lists.

To sum up, we conclude that this new web-semantic application language, to compensate for all the useless tags from previous HTML versions. Even though it´s still in development stage, there are already a few websites that include their own HTML5 elements, forcing web browsers to incorporate this new language. We´ll how HTML continues to evolve and which changes it may bring to web site design.