ie-news

Learning more about Pointer Events as the W3C publishes Last Call Working Draft

2013-03-20T09:41:00.005-07:00

On Tuesday February 19, the W3C published the Pointer Events specification as a Last Call Working Draft, a significant milestone in the path towards standardization and interoperability. Begun a little over 3 months ago, the specification aims to help developers more easily enable a new generation of Web experiences that work across input devices, such as touch, pen, and mouse. We’re pleased with the progress thus far in the W3C and wanted to share some of the latest resources available to help you build sites and applications for touch, pen, and mouse input using the APIs available in IE10 today.

Learning about touch-first Web design and Pointer Events

Pointer Events represent a new way to approach input in sites. As such, we want to help developers learn about the technology and how to build compelling experiences with it. Through our engagement withWebPlatform.org documentation, program manager Rob Dolin has added an extensive new primer that walks through Pointer Events and provides basic examples on how to get started.

Additionally, I was pleased to have the opportunity to speak at W3Conf in San Francisco, CA about touch-first design and Pointer Events. If you weren’t able to attend, the talk is available to watch online. This talk covers basic touch-first guidelines, and introduction to Pointer Events, and a walkthrough of migration from mouse events to Pointer Events.

If you’re not inspired yet to try out Pointer Events, here’s a few great Web experiences that use Pointer Events for a touch-first experience, with more to come in the future:

Using Pointer Events Today

IE10 supports Pointer Events (vendor prefixed) and enables you to take advantage of the millions of touch enabled Windows 8 devices in the market. “Same markup” continues to be our goal, and standardization is just one of the ways we’re helping make that a reality. In addition, Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. (a subsidiary of Microsoft) has been collaborating with the WebKit community to produce an open source prototype patch of Pointer Events for the WebKit project. Web developers can take this early prototype for a spin using a Chromium build with Pointer Events released by AppendTo.

To further help Web developers take advantage of Pointer Events today, David Catuhe from Microsoft France has developed a JavaScript polyfill, called HandJS, to support Pointer Events in multiple browsers. Developers can include the script library in their page and write to the Pointer Event model to get the full experience of Pointer Events in IE10 and a graceful emulation in other browsers. David also has a demo to help you get started.

We look forward to the road ahead in standardizing Pointer Events as the Working Group moves towards the next milestone, Candidate Recommendation.

— Jacob Rossi, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Flash in Windows 8

2013-03-20T09:41:00.003-07:00

Starting tomorrow, we are updating Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8 and Windows RT to enable Flash content to run by default. On Windows 8, all Flash content continues to be enabled for IE on the desktop.

As we have seen through testing over the past several months, the vast majority of sites with Flash content are now compatible with the Windows experience for touch, performance, and battery life. With this update, the curated Compatibility View (CV) list blocks Flash content in the small number of sites that are still incompatible with the Windows experience for touch or that depend on other plug-ins.

We believe having more sites “just work” in IE10 improves the experience for consumers, businesses, and developers. As a practical matter, the primary device you walk around with should give you access to all the Web content on the sites you rely on. Otherwise, the device is just a companion to a PC. Because some popular Web sites require Adobe Flash and do not offer HTML5 alternatives, Adobe and Microsoft continue to work together closely to deliver a Flash Player optimized for the Windows experience.

	Windows 8	Windows RT
Immersive IE	Enabled unless on CV list	Enabled unless on CV list
Desktop IE	Enabled for all sites	Enabled unless on CV list

This updates the immersive IE experience on Windows 8, and both the immersive and desktop IE experiences on Windows RT. The update will be made available to customers with Windows Update. The curated CV list applies to IE on the desktop for Windows RT since the most common reason to block Flash is that the site relies on other plug-ins that are not available on Windows RT.

More compatible Web experiences

Our approach to Flash in Windows is practical for Windows customers and developers. For Windows 8, we worked with Adobe to include a version of Flash that is optimized for touch, performance, security, reliability, and battery life. Adobe made substantial changes to the Flash player to align with the Windows 8 experience goals. We shipped this optimized Flash component as part of Windows 8, and we service it through Windows Update. IE10 with Flash on Windows 8 enables people to see more of the Web working with high quality, especially compared with the experience in other touch-first or tablet browsers and devices.

When we released Windows 8 and Windows RT we used the IE Compatibility View (CV) list to enable sites to run Flash content compatible with the Windows 8 experience, including touch responsiveness, performance, and battery life. In Windows 8, IE on the desktop runs all Flash content, like it does on Windows 7.

Looking at our engineering experience with Flash and Windows 8 and RT, as developers improve their Flash content, the vast majority of sites with Flash content that we have tested are now compatible with the Windows experience goals. Of the thousands of domains tested for Flash compatibility to date, we have found fewer than 4% are still incompatible, in the most part because the core site experience requires other ActiveX controls in addition to Flash. With Windows 8 in the hands of customers and developers, we listened to feedback around the experience of Web sites with Flash.

Developing compatible Flash content

For developers building sites with Flash content, this document posted on MSDN goes into more technical detail about the criteria used to place sites on the Flash CV block list, as well as steps that developers can take to test their content in immersive IE and submit their sites to be removed from the block list. The documentation also includes a best practices guide to help developers, designers, and content publishers create experiences with Flash that play well in IE for touch, responsiveness, and battery life. These best practices complement existing recommendations and tools like modern.IE for authoring touch-friendly HTML5 sites. Also, starting tomorrow, modern.IE enables testing whether or not your site is on the curated Flash CV block list.

For the development community, platform continuity and technology choice are important. Flash in IE10 on Windows 8 and Windows RT provides a bridge for existing sites to transition to HTML5 technologies where it makes sense and at a pace that is right for the experiences they want to deliver to their customers. With today’s update to Windows 8 and Windows RT, consumers can experience more of the Web by default.

-- Rob Mauceri, Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer

March 2013 Internet Explorer Updates

2013-03-20T09:41:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-021 - Critical

This security update resolves eight privately reported vulnerabilities and one publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, and Internet Explorer 10 on Windows clients and Moderate for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, and Internet Explorer 10 on Windows servers. For more information, see the full bulletin.

Recommendation. Most customers have automatic updating enabled and will not need to take any action because this security update will be downloaded and installed automatically. Customers who have not enabled automatic updating need to check for updates and install this update manually. For information about specific configuration options in automatic updating, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 294871.

For administrators and enterprise installations, or end users who want to install this security update manually, Microsoft recommends that customers apply the update immediately using update management software, or by checking for updates using the Microsoft Update service.

Microsoft Security Advisory (2755801)

Today we also released an update that addresses vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player in Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8. The details of the vulnerabilities are documented in Adobe security bulletin APSB13-09. The majority of customers have automatic updates enabled and will not need to take any action because the update will be downloaded and installed automatically. For those manually updating, we encourage you to read the advisory and apply this update as quickly as possible.

This update addresses the vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player by updating the affected Adobe Flash binaries contained within Internet Explorer 10. For more information, see the advisory.

— Tyson Storey, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Building Vyclone's Interactive Experience with HTML5

2013-03-20T09:40:00.003-07:00

uilding Vyclone's Interactive Experience with HTML5

The Web is more engaging and productive for consumers, as developers unlock the full potential of HTML5. In this guest blog post, Anton Molleda of Plain Concepts talks about his experience and learnings while developing Vcylone, a social video editing experience built on HTML5 and many of the new features in next generation browsers like Internet Explorer 10. Vcyclone builds on capabilities like pointer events, multi-touch gestures, and hardware accelerated canvas and CSS3 to make this Web site feel more like an app.

— Rob Mauceri, Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Hello everyone,

My name is Anton Molleda and I work for Plain Concepts. These last few months the team at Internet Explorer has been collaborating with the awesome crew that makes up the hot up and coming social video startup Vyclone. As a Web developer, having the opportunity to push the envelope with what the Web can do is one of my passion points. Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough to help out on this project. And today, I want to share with you some key learning we had while we worked together to create a video editor on the Web for Vyclone, using just HTML5 and JavaScript!

Vyclone is a social video platform that lets you co-create, sync and edit multiple views of a shared moment, effortlessly.

When Vyclone first started, it solely focused on mobile devices. But soon they realized that while the recording experience is great from a phone, editing that video was limited due to the screen size and power of the device. Thanks to the progress done these last few years in modern browsers, HTML5 was a viable option as the way to go to create this new tool.

The core of Vyclone’s Web editor is composed of three parts:

The video preview: Where a low quality version of the cut the user is creating can be watched (on the left)

The vidgrid: Where all the available sources are presented to the user showing a given point and time (on the right)

And the timeline: Which indicates a linear view of which source is playing over the course of the video. A source playing during a certain amount of time is called a cut (shown above the player controls)

As the user plays the video and starts adding new cuts to the timeline, the video preview switches to reflect the new source, and the vidgrid highlights the source file with triangle corners to identify to the user which video is selected.

So in building this out, we ran into a very interesting challenge with sheer amount of video manipulation, the performance we were getting back, and the user experience. Let’s dig into what we did to make this happen on the Web. So we’re using video, canvas and requestAnimationFrame (RAF). We have a video in the background that is played, and in each RAF we draw the active source into a canvas (in the video preview) or we calculate its new size and position into the vidgrid.

So far so good, but what happens when we let the user interact with it? For example, what happens when a user moves the timeline forward and back, or adds / removes video sources (cuts)? When we first started prototyping this out, we thought the standard approach would be to take care of that as soon as the event is fired - because that's the way we've been taught, right?

But what happens when those events can be fired tens of times per second, or even hundreds of times per second? And what if those handlers need to update the UI? Do we really need to force a layout refresh 130 times per second when the delta change could sometimes be less than a pixel? Talk about performance drag!

If your machine has an i7 with 8GB of RAM, you can probably afford computing power to do that. But what about people with an older rig? Or an ARM device? Those users will not have the same experience and will see the reaction time of the Web site slow way down.

Our first approach was to queue the action in the RAF but there were some problems with this approach, such as, you can RAF up the same function for the same "tick", effectively making things worse. To solve for this, our first approach was to have a variable that will tell us if the action was already queued up. Something like this:

var queued = false;
 
function myAction(){
   //your awesome code here
   queued = false;
}

function onEvent(evt){
   if(!queued){
      queued = true;
      requestAnimationFrame(myAction);
   }
}

This code is not bad but still has some problems. If you are doing something related with the event position (mouse or pointer) and a delta, you might find that you’ll struggle with this approach. The solution we used in the timeline is to accumulate the event value and process it on myAction:

var deltaX = 0,
    queued = false;
 
function myAction(){
   //your awesome code here uses deltaX
   deltaX = 0; // we reset the deltaX so it can be incremented 
               // next time onEvent is executed
   queued = false;
}
 
function onEvent(evt){
   if(!queued){
      queued = true;
      deltaX = evt.translationX; // in the case of a pointer, if you are 
                                 // using a mouse you will have to do some 
                                 // magic with pageX or similar :)
      requestAnimationFrame(myAction);
   }else{
      deltaX += evt.translationX;
   }
}

With this approach you should be pretty much ready to go. We kept adding functionality and then noticed some new problems popped up.

By handling those events when appropriate at each requestAnimationFrame we were able to achieve a higher level of responsiveness without sacrificing computing power. But since requestAnimationFrame executes the functions in the order, they are queued up so sometimes we were drawing before cleaning, or moving the timeline when we didn't have to and we had to create a lot of cumbersome code to make sure it got executed the order we wanted.

We saw that code wasn't very friendly and we were losing some cycles waiting for other actions to be performed so we decided to change again how we handled the input. It was at this moment that we thought about this as a game loop. If you’re not familiar in (simple) game architecture, the game loop is basically a continuous loop that gets executed regardless of the user interaction and splits apart when different events and actions should occur. From the Wikipedia article Game Programming, a simplified game loop in pseudo code could look like this:

while( user doesn't exit )
   check for user input
   run AI
   move enemies
   resolve collisions
   draw graphics
   play sounds
end while

That was exactly what we needed. Taking advantage of RAF we created a tick function that is executed continuously and inside this tick function we decide what we have to do depending on previous user input or other factors.

The simplified tick for the vidgrid is something like this:

   
function tick(){

   //we clean if we've changed the size of the quadrant
   if(needsClean){
      cleanCanvas();
   }

   // if we have to change the quadrant's frame because we are 
   // the active one (or the opposite)
   if(newFrame){
      drawFrame(); // we draw just the frame in a separate canvas so it
                   // doesn't need to be calculated all the time, and it 
                   // is still faster than copying from an image
   }

   //we draw the new frame if we are playing or seeking
   if(dirty){
      draw();
      drawFrameInQuadrant();
   }

   requestAnimationFrame(tick);
}

The values of needsClean, newFrame and dirty are updated on the event handlers (when the user is seeking, video playing, etc.).

It was this shift in the way we thought about the user interactions, going to a game loop mechanic, that allowed us to improve the performance and simplify our code in the editor.

Big takeaways, if you are building something is requires high interactivity and receives a lot of user input, think about how potentially using a game loop can make your life easier! It sure did for us. And if you haven’t had a chance to check out Vyclone’s sexy new Web editor (if I don’t say so myself), get going! Click ‘Remix’ on any video on Vyclone.com and you’ll see our Web editor. It works equally well with mouse or touch input. I highly recommend giving it a go on a Surface Pro!

Enjoy! Hit me up with some comments below if you have any questions!

— Anton Molleda, Plain Concepts

Imagining a More Engaging Web: 3rd Anniversary of IE Test Drive

2013-03-20T09:40:00.001-07:00

As developers build on the full capabilities of HTML5, touch, and hardware accelerated graphics, the web today is more engaging for consumers than many imagined. The experiences developers are building today simply were not possible just a few years ago.

Saturday marked the third anniversary of the IE Test Drive site. What started as a few examples of hardware-accelerated HTML5 to help developers imagine the potential of the web, has grown to a collection of over 140 feature-packed demos. Test Drive gives you a taste of what’s possible with HTML5 and modern browsers on modern hardware: HTML5, CSS3, ECMAScript 5, touch, GPU-powered graphics, blazing performance, audio/video, mobile, games, and more.

The support you’ve shown is humbling – over the last three years the Test Drive has received over 130 million page views! That’s more than a page per second for the last three years! We’ve had a lot of fun building the demos, and thought we’d take a look back at some of our favorite demos along the way.

The IE Test Drive Site contains over 140 demos!

Demos

Audio Explosion	Touch, see, and hear IE10
CanvasPinball	The perfect work time break
Chalkboard	IE10 takes other browsers to school
FishBowl	HTML5, CSS3, Video, Audio, Canvas, Fish
FishIE	Started the fish revolution
Flying Images	Our very first Test Drive!
Galactic	Out of this world performance
Hamster Dance Revolution	Get ready to become addicted
Love is in the Air	We love you too
Minesweeper	Speed that’ll make your browser explode
Mr. Potato Gun	Actions speak louder than marketing videos
Psychedelic Browsing	Our “highest” viewed demo after 2am
Speed Reading	How fast can your browser speed read?
Touch Effects	Touch your way to a faster experience
Tracking Protection	Putting your privacy first

Looking Ahead

IE10 continues to deliver the best performance for real world Web sites on your Windows device, and the Test Drive is a great place to experience what’s possible yourself. Take the Test Drive for a spin today and let us know what you think!

We’re always excited and humbled by the amazing experiences developers are building on the web every day. Thank you for your continued feedback and for using IE10.

— Jon Aneja, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

W3C Web Performance: Continuing Performance Investments

2013-03-06T00:42:00.001-08:00

The W3C Web Performance working group recently held the W3C Workshop on Performance on Thursday, November 8, 2012. The goal was to hear current challenges and proposals for new performance ideas for the working group to consider. There were 45 attendees from 21 organizations, including most browser manufactures (Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla), hardware organizations (Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia, Motorola), network organizations (Cisco, Akamai, F5), and top Web properties (GMail, Google Search, Bing, NetFlix, LinkedIn, Zynga, and more). Details on the presentations and discussions from the workshop can be found in this report.

Providing the ability to accurately measure the performance characteristics of Web applications and create power- and CPU-efficient applications is critical to Web performance. The W3C Web Performance working group worked on achieving those goals in its recently completed second chartered period. In under two years, the working group rapidly standardized and modern HTML5-enabled Web browsers implemented these eight interfaces: Navigation Timing, Resource Timing, User Timing, Performance Timeline, Page Visibility, Timing control for script-based animations, High Resolution Time and Efficient Script Yielding. Internet Explorer 10 is the first browser to support all eight of these new APIs.

The working group has since been focused on gathering data to understand which areas to focus on in its third chartered period. In addition to the Workshop on Performance, the working group has invited performance experts to its weekly conference calls and has broadly surveyed the performance community on ideas.

Based on all the data gathered these past few months, the Web Performance working group has decided to focus on the following areas in the third chartered period:

Timing Metrics The working group will continue to improve the Timing interfaces, Navigation Timing,Resource Timing, User Timing and Performance Timeline. For example, we will consider providing Web workers support in the Timing interfaces and including information on video byte ranges in Resource Timing.
Efficient Script Yielding The working group will continue to improve on power- and CPU-efficient APIs, like the setImmediate API defined in the Efficient Script Yielding specification.
Prerender The working group will standardized the prerender feature which allows navigations to appear almost “instantly” in cases where the browser has high confidence that a user will visit an URL. The way this feature would work is that the browser will proactively navigate to a Web page in a hidden tab, when it sees the “prerender” link type or has high confidence that user will visit that link. When the user does visit that link, the browser will make the hidden tab visible, giving the perception of instant navigation.
Resource Priorities Today, browsers download resources in the priority order that they believe are most efficient in helping the page load occur quickly. However, developers may want to prioritize some resources over others. For example, downloading images above the fold may be of higher priority than those below the fold. Though, developers can give some hints to the browser on download priority, like using the “defer” and “async” attributes in markup, these concepts do not include most resources. To help the browser prioritize downloading resources, the working group is expanding the charter to include interoperable means for developers to give the browser hints on the download priority of resources.
Diagnostics Interfaces Developers are interested in learning how to make their Web applications faster and less error prone. The working group is expanding the charter to include interoperable means for developers to get browser diagnostics information on their Web applications. For example, using these interfaces a developer could understand where memory is leaking or what errors users are encountering on their Web applications.
Beacon Today, analytics scripts will block the current page from unloading by running in a loop in order to confirm that analytics data has been sent to a Web server. This behavior will delay the navigation to the next page, resulting in user perception of poor performance. To help developers avoid that pattern, the working group is expanding the charter to include an interoperable means for developers to asynchronously transfer data from the browser to a Web server, with a guarantee from the browser that the data will eventually be sent.
Display Performance Developers are interested in understanding the performance of their games and animations.
The working group is expanding the charter to include interoperable means for developers to get frame rate and throughput of the display type of information.

This working group is a great example of how quickly new ideas can become interoperable standards that developers can depend on in modern HTML5-enabled browsers. Together with industry and community leaders who participate in the working group, we hope to continue to make rapid progress on interoperable standards that will benefit developers and everyone who uses the Web.

Jatinder Mann, Internet Explorer, Program Manager

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-077 – Critical

2013-03-06T00:41:00.007-08:00

This security update resolves three privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 10 on Windows clients including the Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and Moderate for Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 10 on Windows servers. This security update has no severity rating for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8, because the known attack vectors for the vulnerability discussed in this bulletin are blocked in a default configuration. However, as a defense-in-depth measure, Microsoft recommends that customers of this software apply this security update. For more information please see the full bulletin.

Microsoft Security Advisory (2755801) Update for Vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player in Internet Explorer 10

Microsoft is also releasing an update for Adobe Flash Player in Internet Explorer 10 on all supported editions of Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and Windows RT. The update addresses the vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player by updating the affected Adobe Flash libraries contained within Internet Explorer 10. For more information please see the full advisory.

Most customers have automatic updating enabled and will not need to take any action because this security update will be downloaded and installed automatically. Customers who have not enabled automatic updating need to check for updates and install this update manually. For information about specific configuration options in automatic updating, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 294871.

— Tyson Storey, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Update to Alleged Information and Security Issue with Mouse Position Behavior

2013-03-06T00:41:00.005-08:00

Over the last few days we’ve seen reports alleging abuse of a browser behavior regarding mouse position. Microsoft is working closely with other companies to address the concern of mouse position movement. From what we know now, the underlying issue has more to do with competition between analytics companies than consumer safety or privacy.

We are actively working to adjust this behavior in IE. There are similar capabilities available in other browsers. Analytics firms can expect to do viewpoint detection in IE similarly to how they do this in other browsers. We will update this blog with more information as it is available.

Online advertisers started a shift (link) “from a ‘served’ to a ‘viewable’ impression[s].” Many different analytics companies stepped up to compete in this space. That competition has had many public results, including lawsuits (link). One of the companies involved in this space is Spider.io, which recently reported an issue in IE involving mouse pointer information. Spider.io is an advertising analytics company. Their recent blog post, “There are two ways to measure ad viewability. There is only one right way,” makes their point of view very clear. Different analytics companies use different and equivalent methods to gather consumer information across different browsers on different devices.

The only reported active use of this behavior involves competitors to Spider.io providing analytics. The theoretical use of this behavior to compromise the safety or privacy of consumers is something Microsoft’s security team has discussed with researchers across the industry. We take these risks very seriously. Getting all the pieces to line up in order to take advantage of this behavior – serving an ad to a site that asks for a logon, the user using an on screen (or virtual) keyboard, knowing how that onscreen keyboard works – is hard to imagine. From investigating the specific behavior when mouse position data is visible outside the browser window, sites can view only the mouse state; they cannot view the actual content that the user is interacting with. From our conversations with security researchers across the industry, we see very little risk to consumers at this time. As we have stated previously, there are no reported cases of any consumer having their information compromised.

—Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President, Internet Explorer

Update:
Since the time of our post – these additional security blogs provide a good and balanced overview with respect to this topic: Actionable Intelligence: The Mouse That Squeaked and Spider.io Warns of Massive IE Security Flaw; But is it Legit?

HTML 5.0 and Canvas 2D Reach Candidate Recommendation Status

2013-03-06T00:41:00.003-08:00

Today marks an important milestone for Web development, as the W3C announced the publication of the Candidate Recommendation (CR) version of the HTML 5.0 and Canvas 2D specifications. The specifications are on track for finalization by 2014. We want to congratulate the W3C on this achievement and bringing these specifications forward.

Internet Explorer 10 already offers hardware-accelerated HTML 5.0 and Canvas 2D support allowing developers to build compelling, cross-browser Web applications with good performance. We look forward to working with the Web community to finalize interoperable specifications in a timely manner. At the same time, we are actively involved in defining the scope for HTML 5.1, which includes exciting multimedia and other features that will continue to advance Web experiences.

You can read more about the progress to-date with HTML 5.0 and Canvas 2.0 specification, the next steps toward reaching Final Recommendation status, and progress toward defining HTML 5.1.

-- Sandeep Singhal, Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Penguin Mark: Blazing Fast Holiday Fun

2013-03-06T00:41:00.001-08:00

We don’t want the holiday season to pass without sharing another new HTML5 experience that makes the most of your PC hardware and the new touch capabilities in Windows 8.

Check out Penguin Mark and enjoy some GPU-powered holiday fun. This experience brings together hardware-accelerated HTML5 capabilities like canvas, CSS3 animations and transitions, audio, WOFF, power and performance APIs, and more. Be sure to turn your volume up for maximum entertainment. The faster your browser, the higher your Penguin Mark score goes.

Click to test your browser’s holiday spirit with Penguin Mark

With Windows 8, we delivered a whole new browserthat’s fast and fluid, and built for touch browsing. IE10 adds support for a broad range of developer capabilities, including new touch APIs, performance, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and more. We continue to be amazed and delighted by what developers are building on HTML5 and excited to be part of it.

Thank you!

Your participation and feedback is an important part of how we build IE. Today we want to say thank you to everyone who browses the Web with Windows 8, is using IE9 or IE10 preview on Windows 7, runs the test drives, and shares your feedback with the IE team. We also want to thank the people and groups who make the standards process work, the broad community of Web developers, and enthusiastic consumers who work to move the Web forward.

From the entire IE team, we wish you a Happy Hardware-accelerated Holiday Season, and we look forward to another exciting year and more progress on the Web in 2013.

—Rob Mauceri, Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-008 - Critical

2013-03-06T00:40:00.005-08:00

Today, we are releasing an out-of-band security update to fully address the issue described in Security Advisory2794220. While we have still seen only a limited number of customers affected by the issue, the potential exists that more customers could be affected in the future.

This security update resolves one publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, and 8. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 on Windows clients and Moderate for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 on Windows servers. Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 10 are not affected. For more information, see the full bulletin.

— Tyson Storey, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

IE10 Automatic Update Blocker Toolkit Available for Windows 7

2013-03-06T00:40:00.003-08:00

Business and organizations that want to manage their own update schedule can use the IE10 Automatic Update Blocker Toolkit to disable automatic delivery of Internet Explorer 10. This Blocker Toolkit—like its predecessors for IE9, IE8, and IE7—is now available on the Microsoft Download Center. While we encourage all customers to upgrade their browser to the latest version as quickly as possible, this approach lets organizations control when they are ready to deploy IE10 to their Windows 7 users. All other customers with Windows Update not using the toolkit will be automatically upgraded from IE9 to IE10.

The IE10 Automatic Update Blocker Toolkit can be used to prevent Internet Explorer 10 from being automatically installed on users’ Windows 7 machines when it is available via Automatic Update. This Toolkit has no expiration date and is configured either by running the registry file on the client machine or by deploying Group Policy in domain joined environments. The toolkit also provides an unblock procedure that allows IE10 to be installed through Automatic Update.

When IE10 Release Preview is installed on Windows 7, the IE10 Automatic Update Blocker Toolkit does not block automatic deployment of IE10. This ensures that users running IE10 Release Preview continue to receive the latest security fixes. Additionally, the toolkit does not prevent users from manually installing IE10 from the Microsoft Download Center.

There are different registry keys used to block or unblock automatic delivery of IE10 and IE9. If the IE9 Blocker Toolkit was previously used to block IE9 from being offered as an important update, use the IE10 Blocker Toolkit in addition to the IE9 Blocker Toolkit to prevent both IE9 and IE10 from being offered via Automatic Update.

Organizations that use an update management solution such as Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) orSystem Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) do not need to deploy the IE10 Automatic Update Blocker Toolkit. WSUS and SCCM allow organizations to fully manage deployment of updates released through Windows Update, including IE10.

— Kevin Luu, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

modern.IE – A new set of tools to help test web site compatibility

2013-03-06T00:40:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, we launched modern.IE, a new set of tools and resources to help developers test their sites for theover 50% of users who run various versions of Internet Explorer. modern.IE includes a wizard that scans a Web page URL for common interoperability problems and suggests some ideas for how to address those issues to improve the user experience across modern and older browsers. The site also offers 3 months of free cross-browser testing, through a partnership with BrowserStack. modern.IE provides new Chrome/Firefox add-ins and offline virtual machine images to help developers test their site regardless of what browser or platform they prefer to use. The modern.IE site, which we will update regularly, is another step forward in helping developers achieve the goal of interoperability through same markup. Through these efforts, we want developers to be able to spend more time innovating on the Web and less time testing.

Scan for common coding problems (BETA)

Let’s start with the wizard. Our goal is to help developers spend less time testing for IE, and to help the community progress towards using same markup across browsers and platforms. The BETA version of the tool detects 10 common site coding problems that we knew we could help with. These fall into three main groups – issues caused by supporting older and modern versions of IE, problems supporting multiple platforms and browsers, and a few things that developers can start considering when it comes to delivering the best experience on Windows 8.

The wizard, which is based on a scanner that we have used within Microsoft for some time, is a BETA and we plan to enhance it regularly over the coming months, based on community input. For example, modern.IE now performs a static scan of the code on a Web site. While this has numerous performance benefits, it can yield incomplete results if a developer is using conditional code or browser detection. We welcome your ideas on how we can make testing your site in IE easier.

Group 1: Fix common problems from supporting old and modern versions of IE:

Known compatibility issues – With every release of IE, we test top traffic and influential sites for compatibility problems that prevent the site from rendering in the latest versions of IE. We typically reach out to these developers and work with them to help fix compatibility issues at no charge. With this wizard, developers can now access compatibility data more easily, contact us when they need help, and reduce the time needed to search through docs on MSDN for fix recommendations.
Compatibility Mode – The Compatibility View list indicates when code created for older versions of IE is causing compatibility problems with modern versions of IE (like IE9 and IE10). Developers are not always aware where, when, and why their site is listed. This test eliminates the guesswork by confirming whether a site on the list; if so, it suggests using Compat Inspector – an automated JS tool for detecting and removing old markup, so that the site will be compatible with modern versions of IE.
Frameworks and libraries – Like browsers, older versions of these Web “building blocks” can cause compatibility problems. This test looks for jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Form, SWFObject, MooTools, Modernizr, and Prototype.js which make up the majority of common library compatibility problems we observe on top sites. Many frameworks and libraries have more recently switched to an auto-update model that is similar to what modern browsers, including Internet Explorer, now use.
Web standards docmode – This test searches for DocType markup code that tells the browser to expect modern Web standards like HTML5 and CSS3. Older docmodes force all versions of IE to render like IE8, which can impact site performance and make it more difficult for developers to write code that works in all modern browsers.

Group 2: Help your site work well on many browsers and devices:

CSS-prefixes – This test detects when CSS code should test for vendor-specific prefixes (-moz, -ms, -o, and –webkit) that could improve you code’s compatibility. Across browsers. There are specific best practices that developers can follow to avoid prefixing problems, especially in mobile platforms.
Browser plug-ins – With IE10, we outlined our vision for a plug-in free Web. However, we also recognize that this is an emerging practice and developers must provide their best experience to the user. This test determines whether a site requires plug-ins that might not be available on mobile (like on Surface or an iPad). If a plug-in is detected, the tool will suggest how to learn more about building plug-in free sites. If the site relies on Adobe Flash, the tool will explain how to add your site to the Flash CV list
Responsive Web design – An emerging best practice, this test detects whether a site is using media queries, a technology that is commonly used to detect large- and small- screen device browsing and “responsively” change the site experience to look its best on your screen. There are many ways to implement responsively designed sites so this test is primarily designed to build awareness of what’s possible on the modern Web.
Browser detection – The wizard also detects coding patterns (like navigator.useragent or $.browser) that might infer browser detection. For this release of the tool, we take a conservative approach to detection by filtering out results from scripts that are reference a domain other than the Web page (like a 3rd party analytics software). We suggest when to use feature detection instead of browser detection when supporting many browsers and platforms. Though it is not required for all sites, feature detection can make it easier to support a site without the need to manually retest each new browser version.

Group 3: Consider building with some new features in Windows 8:

Touch-browsing – This test suggests setting the default behavior when a user visits your site in a touch-enabled browser. This tells the browser what to expect when a user does common touch gestures like pinch and zoom or double-tap.
Start Screen Site tile – Finally the wizard suggests a new way developers can put their site logo onto a Windows 8 Start Screen tile. Users can “pin” their favorite site and place it right next to their Windows Store apps.

Virtual options for testing Internet Explorer

Although modern versions of Internet Explorer are automatically updated, the reality is that many users still use an older version of IE like IE8, IE7, and IE6. There are several options for setting up a test matrix including maintaining PCs with old versions of Windows and IE or managing a suite of virtualization images like the ones we have made available on the Microsoft Download Center. On modern.IE, we provide two options to help make browser testing easier, even if you are developing on another browser or another OS platform.

Hosted virtualization

Cloud-based or “hosted” virtualization services take away some of the pain associated with managing old PCs or a suite of test images. With solutions like BrowserStack, you can perform visual testing of your site directly from your browser. If your test site is not publicly accessible via IP address or DNS lookup, you can take advantage of BrowserStack’s local server testing using Java based secure tunneling. We have also made available add-ins for both Chrome and Firefox to make testing on IE from within those browsers even easier.

As an example, here’s what the IE Blog looks like in IE7 on Windows XP:

The three month offer available through modern.IE includes BrowserStack’s Windows-based services, including most versions of IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. The offer is good for a three month period once you sign up for the service on modern.IE. You can choose when to activate your three month period anytime over the next year.

Local virtualization

We have also updated our test virtual machine images to include IE and Windows OS versions from IE6 through IE10. We provide images for the following virtualization platforms:

Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2
Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012
Virtual PC
Parallels for Windows and Mac
VirtualBox for Windows, Mac, and Linux
VMWare Fusion for Mac
VMWare Player for Windows

These are just the first of many updates we’ll be providing on modern.IE. We’re very interested in your feedback on the resource so far – let us know what you like, and what we’re missing!

— Sandeep Singhal, Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Security Advisory 2755801 Updated to Address Adobe Flash Player Issues

2013-03-06T00:39:00.007-08:00

Today we released an update that addresses vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player in Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8. The majority of customers have automatic updates enabled and will not need to take any action because the update will be downloaded and installed automatically. For those manually updating, we encourage you to read the advisory and apply this update as quickly as possible.

This update addresses the vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player by updating the affected Adobe Flash binaries contained within Internet Explorer 10. For more information, see the advisory.

— Wilson Guo, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

February 2013 Internet Explorer updates

2013-03-06T00:39:00.005-08:00

Today we released two critically rated bulletins and one security advisory for Internet Explorer.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-009- Critical

This security update resolves thirteen privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-010 – Critical

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in the Microsoft implementation of Vector Markup Language (VML). The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user viewed a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, and Internet Explorer 10 on all supported releases of Microsoft Windows. For more information, see the full bulletin.

Microsoft Security Advisory (2755801)

Microsoft is also announcing the availability of an update for the Adobe Flash Player in Internet Explorer 10 on all supported editions of Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and Windows RT. The update addresses the vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player by updating the affected Adobe Flash libraries contained within Internet Explorer 10. For more information please see the full advisory.

— Tyson Storey, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Security Advisory 2755801 Updated to Address Adobe Flash Player Issues documented in APSB13-08

2013-03-06T00:39:00.003-08:00

Today we released an update that addresses vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player in Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8. The details of the vulnerabilities are documented in Adobe security bulletin APSB13-08. The majority of customers have automatic updates enabled and will not need to take any action because the update will be downloaded and installed automatically. For those manually updating, we encourage you to read the advisoryand apply this update as quickly as possible.

This update addresses the vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player by updating the affected Adobe Flash binaries contained within Internet Explorer 10. For more information, see the advisory.

— Wilson Guo, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

IE10 for Windows 7 Globally Available for Consumers and Businesses

2013-03-06T00:39:00.001-08:00

Internet Explorer 10 is available worldwide in 95 languages for download today. We will begin auto updating Windows 7 customers to IE10 in the weeks ahead, starting today with customers running the IE10 Release Preview. With this final release, IE10 brings the same leading standards support, with improved performance, security, privacy, reliability that consumers enjoy on Windows 8, to Windows 7 customers.

20% faster for real world Web sites

With IE10 we continue delivering the best performance for real world Web sites on your Windows device. As with Windows 8, IE10 on Windows 7 improves performance across the board with faster page loading, faster interactivity, and faster JavaScript performance, while reducing CPU usage and improving battery life on mobile PCs. In measurements in our performance lab, IE loads real world pages up to 20% faster in top sites for news, social, search, ecommerce, and more.

You can experience IE10’s leading performance first hand with demos on the IE Test Drive site with examples of hardware accelerated rendering, interactivity, touch, and real world site patterns. Minesweeper is a new test drive demo that is both a full featured HTML5 game and also lets you measure your browser’s performance.

Enjoy a full featured HTML5 Minesweeper experience and test your browser’s performance

Minesweeper is built on a breadth of Web platform capabilities including HTML5, CSS3, WOFF, touch, animations, transitions, audio, video, canvas, transforms, and power efficiency patterns. The game uses standards-based mark-up for interoperability across browsers, and makes the most of fully hardware accelerated browsers like IE10 on both Windows 7 and Windows 8, with consistent performance across a wide range of devices including tablets like the Surface RT. Minesweeper’s performance mode measures how long it takes the browser to solve the minesweeper board, so you can test your browser performance with different minesweeper boards with different complexity.

IE10 also improves hardware accelerated performance of SVG and HTML4 constructs. You can see improvements yourself with the Chalkboard test drive where performance improves over IE9 by 15%. Similarly, improved drawing performance enables faster rendering patterns you can experience yourself with the Speed Reading test drive where performance improves by 30% over IE9 on comparable hardware.

IE10 continues to lead on JavaScript performance with many improvements to the Chakra JavaScript engineincluding profile-based, type-specialized JIT machine code, faster floating point operations, faster object and property access, and more. All of these improvements come to IE10 on Windows 7 and are consistent across the underlying operating system and hardware. As a result, with IE10 on Windows 7, performance on the WebKit SunSpider JavaScript benchmark improves by 25% over IE9 and leads the industry and other browsers by 17%.

In addition to raw performance improvements of real world sites, IE10 includes improvements to make common browsing activities you do every day faster. IE10’s integrated spell checking and auto-correct for common spelling mistakes, makes typing text for blog posts, social updates, and tweets faster and less error prone. Similarly, we tuned the tabs bar so closing many tabs is faster and more efficient, without having to moving your mouse as each tab closes.

60% increase in supported modern Web standards

For developers, IE10 brings increased support for modern Web standards powered by hardware acceleration to enable a new class of compelling applications and fast and fluid Web browsing. IE10 adds support for over 30 new modern Web standards beyond IE9, for a 60% increase. These new supported standards in IE10 include many of the latest HTML5, CSS3, DOM, Web Performance, and Web Application specifications across important aspects of Web development including:

Create rich visual effects with CSS Text Shadow, CSS 3D Transforms, CSS3 Transitions and Animations, CSS3 Gradient, and SVG Filter Effects
More sophisticated and responsive page layouts with CSS3 for publication quality page layouts and responsive application UI (CSS3 grid, flexbox, multi-column, positioned floats, regions, and hyphenation), HTML5 Forms, input controls, and validation
Enhanced Web programming model for better offline applications through local storage with IndexedDB and the HTML5 Application Cache; Web Sockets, HTML5 History, Async scripts, HTML5 File APIs, HTML5 Drag-drop, HTML5 Sandboxing, Web workers, ES5 Strict mode support.
Beautiful and interactive Web applications with support for several new technologies like CSS3 Positioned Floats, HTML5 Drag-drop, File Reader API, Media Query Listeners, Pointer Events, and HTML5 Forms.
Improved Web application security with the same markup and support for HTML5 Sandbox for iframe isolation.

You can read more at the IE Developer Center and the updated IE10 Guide for Developers about the full set of new Web standards supported in IE10. Listed below with links to the W3C specifications.

AppCache	HTML Editing APIs
Clipboard APIs and events	HTML5 async attribute
Content Security Policy	HTML5 Parser
Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)	HTML5 Sandbox attribute
CSS3 Animations	IndexedDB
CSS3 Flexbox	Navigation Timing L2
CSS3 Grid	Page Visibility
CSS3 Image Values and Replaced Content	Performance Timeline
CSS3 Lists and Counters	Pointer Events
CSS3 Multi-column layout	Progress Events
CSS3 Text	Resource Timing
CSS3 Transforms (3D)	Streams API
CSS3 Transitions	Timing control for script-based animations
Efficient Script Yielding (setImmediate)	Tracking Preference Expression (DNT)
High Resolution Time	User Timing
	Web Workers

Furthering our commitment to privacy

In keeping with our commitment on prioritizing the privacy of our customers, the Do Not Track (DNT) signal is turned on in IE10 for Windows 7. In addition to Tracking Protection, IE continues to lead in providing increased choice and control over your privacy online. Customers can choose to turn-off the DNT signal in the options settings in Internet Explorer.

Our commitment to keeping Windows customers in control of their privacy and data sharing continues, especially in the current environment of so much user data being collected online without explicit consent or user awareness.

A better Web today and ahead

The opportunities continue for HTML5 to make both Web sites and applications better. Those opportunities are exciting for everyone on the Web. Like IE10 on Windows 8, this release brings high performance HTML5 development to Windows 7.

For developers building on HTML5, now is time to get ready for IE 10. Developers can use the recently launchedmodern.IE to test and verify your sites, using a wizard that scans a Web page URL for common interoperability problems and suggests some ideas for how to address those issues to improve the user experience across modern and older browsers.

On behalf of the individuals and companies who have worked with us to deliver this product, and the many people at Microsoft who have built it, thank you for your feedback and for using IE10.

— Rob Mauceri, Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Learning more about Pointer Events as the W3C publishes Last Call Working Draft

2013-03-06T00:38:00.001-08:00

Learning about touch-first Web design and Pointer Events

Pointer Events represent a new way to approach input in sites. As such, we want to help developers learn about the technology and how to build compelling experiences with it. Through our engagement with WebPlatform.orgdocumentation, program manager Rob Dolin has added an extensive new primer that walks through Pointer Events and provides basic examples on how to get started.

If you’re not inspired yet to try out Pointer Events, here’s a few great Web experiences that use Pointer Events for a touch-first experience, with more to come in the future:

Using Pointer Events Today

IE10 supports Pointer Events (vendor prefixed) and enables you to take advantage of the millions of touch enabled Windows 8 devices in the market. “Same markup” continues to be our goal, and standardization is just one of the ways we’re helping make that a reality. In addition, Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. (a subsidiary of Microsoft) has been collaborating with the WebKit community to produce an open source prototype patch ofPointer Events for the WebKit project. Web developers can take this early prototype for a spin using a Chromium build with Pointer Events released by AppendTo.

We look forward to the road ahead in standardizing Pointer Events as the Working Group moves towards the next milestone, Candidate Recommendation.

— Jacob Rossi, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

IEAK 10 for Windows 8 now available

2013-01-23T03:04:00.001-08:00

Internet Explorer Administration Kit 10 (IEAK 10) for Windows 8 is now available for download at http://ieak.microsoft.com. IEAK 10 simplifies the creation, deployment, and management of customized Internet Explorer 10 packages. IT Professionals can use IEAK 10 to configure the out-of-box Internet Explorer 10 experience for their users and to manage user settings after deploying Internet Explorer 10.

Kevin Luu, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

IE 9.0.11 Available via Windows Update

2013-01-23T03:03:00.005-08:00

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-071 - Critical

This security update resolves three privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 9 on Windows clients and Moderate for Internet Explorer 9 on Windows servers. For more information, see the full bulletin.

Tyson Storey, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

BUILD 2012: 50 Performance Tricks to make your HTML5 Applications and Sites faster

2013-01-23T03:03:00.003-08:00

Creating high performance Web applications is crucial for every Web developer, be it a Web site that runs on a standards based Web browser or a Windows Store App. Microsoft recently hosted the BUILD 2012 conference at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA. At this conference, I had the opportunity to share the Internet Explorer team’s favorite 50 performance tips to make HTML5 apps and sites faster. If you weren’t able to attend the conference, I recommend you check out the video.

These performance tips and tricks apply equally to Web sites that run on standards based Web browsers, and Windows Store Apps, which are also just the Web. There are six principals detailed in the talk that will help you improve the performance of your apps and sites today:

Quickly respond to network requests
Minimize bytes downloaded
Efficiently structure markup
Optimize media usage
Write fast JavaScript
Know what your application is doing

I hope you enjoy the talk.

— Jatinder Mann, Internet Explorer, Program Manager

W3C Web Performance: Continuing Performance Investments

2013-01-23T03:03:00.001-08:00

Providing the ability to accurately measure the performance characteristics of Web applications and create power- and CPU-efficient applications is critical to Web performance. The W3C Web Performance working group worked on achieving those goals in its recently completed second chartered period. In under two years, the working group rapidly standardized and modern HTML5-enabled Web browsers implemented these eight interfaces: Navigation Timing, Resource Timing, User Timing,Performance Timeline, Page Visibility, Timing control for script-based animations, High Resolution Time and Efficient Script Yielding. Internet Explorer 10 is the first browser to support all eight of these new APIs.

Based on all the data gathered these past few months, the Web Performance working group has decided to focus on the following areas in the third chartered period:

Timing Metrics The working group will continue to improve the Timing interfaces, Navigation Timing, Resource Timing,User Timing and Performance Timeline. For example, we will consider providing Web workers support in the Timing interfaces and including information on video byte ranges in Resource Timing.
Efficient Script Yielding The working group will continue to improve on power- and CPU-efficient APIs, like the setImmediate API defined in the Efficient Script Yielding specification.
Prerender The working group will standardized the prerender feature which allows navigations to appear almost “instantly” in cases where the browser has high confidence that a user will visit an URL. The way this feature would work is that the browser will proactively navigate to a Web page in a hidden tab, when it sees the “prerender” link type or has high confidence that user will visit that link. When the user does visit that link, the browser will make the hidden tab visible, giving the perception of instant navigation.
Resource Priorities Today, browsers download resources in the priority order that they believe are most efficient in helping the page load occur quickly. However, developers may want to prioritize some resources over others. For example, downloading images above the fold may be of higher priority than those below the fold. Though, developers can give some hints to the browser on download priority, like using the “defer” and “async” attributes in markup, these concepts do not include most resources. To help the browser prioritize downloading resources, the working group is expanding the charter to include interoperable means for developers to give the browser hints on the download priority of resources.
Diagnostics Interfaces Developers are interested in learning how to make their Web applications faster and less error prone. The working group is expanding the charter to include interoperable means for developers to get browser diagnostics information on their Web applications. For example, using these interfaces a developer could understand where memory is leaking or what errors users are encountering on their Web applications.
Beacon Today, analytics scripts will block the current page from unloading by running in a loop in order to confirm that analytics data has been sent to a Web server. This behavior will delay the navigation to the next page, resulting in user perception of poor performance. To help developers avoid that pattern, the working group is expanding the charter to include an interoperable means for developers to asynchronously transfer data from the browser to a Web server, with a guarantee from the browser that the data will eventually be sent.
Display Performance Developers are interested in understanding the performance of their games and animations.
The working group is expanding the charter to include interoperable means for developers to get frame rate and throughput of the display type of information.

Jatinder Mann, Internet Explorer, Program Manager

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-077 – Critical

2013-01-23T03:02:00.005-08:00

Microsoft Security Advisory (2755801) Update for Vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player in Internet Explorer 10

— Tyson Storey, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Update to Alleged Information and Security Issue with Mouse Position Behavior

2013-01-23T03:02:00.003-08:00

—Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President, Internet Explorer

Update:
Since the time of our post – these additional security blogs provide a good and balanced overview with respect to this topic:Actionable Intelligence: The Mouse That Squeaked and Spider.io Warns of Massive IE Security Flaw; But is it Legit?

HTML 5.0 and Canvas 2D Reach Candidate Recommendation Status

2013-01-23T03:02:00.001-08:00

You can read more about the progress to-date with HTML 5.0 and Canvas 2.0 specification, the next steps toward reaching Final Recommendation status, and progress toward defining HTML 5.1.

-- Sandeep Singhal, Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer