With the recent flurry of information and buzz coming from Redmond about Internet Explorer 9, you may wondering what the new browser means for you as a PHP Developer.Why should you be excited? Isn't the majority of the things that they did were things that other web browsers have been doing for a while?
Well, yes and no. Microsoft has some catching up to do in terms of standards compatibility, but they are also doing some good things with this browser. They are bringing some much needed web-standards compatibility, in addition to some JavaScript performance enhancements. According to their press release, IE will feature:
- Expanded HTML5 support
- jQuery enhancements
- OData Protocol support
- CSS3 spec support
- SVG Support
- XHTML parsing
- H.264/MPEG4 and MP3/AAC codecs
- GPU-enhanced HTML5
- Javascript compilation for faster performance.
Now, as you look at this list you may be wondering, “what's so special about it?”
For one thing, better adherence to web standards will (hopefully) mean spending less time trying to make things work on multiple browsers. If you look closer, however, there is something up there called OData that is pretty interesting.
OData is an open Microsoft specification that allows you to share information between web applications using a standardized interface based largely on well-established standards.
The OData specification is being released under Microsoft's “Open Specification Promise,” which is essentially a guarantee that the company will not build proprietary extensions to the protocol in an attempt to lock in users and customers. Interestingly, Microsoft is also releasing an OData SDK that can be used directly from PHP—which could finally open the door to better communication among PHP systems.
With the recent flurry of information and buzz coming from Redmond about Internet Explorer 9, you may wondering what the new browser means for you as a PHP Developer.Why should you be excited? Isn't the majority of the things that they did were things that other web browsers have been doing for a while?
Well, yes and no. Microsoft has some catching up to do in terms of standards compatibility, but they are also doing some good things with this browser. They are bringing some much needed web-standards compatibility, in addition to some JavaScript performance enhancements. According to their press release, IE will feature:
