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Comment by cryptoz | Hacker News Reader

I'm very interested to see how well this sells. If WP7 rocks the market, then Google and Apple will have to do incredible things to make even more awesome phones. Sounds exciting!

On the other hand, I kind of want it to fail; it takes the mobile world in a direction I don't like. Mobile sites will no longer be able to use HTML5 if they want to support WP7. And I love HTML5. Also, it looks like you can only write managed C# apps that have to be approved in an app store :(

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I got the sense from MS employees at PDC that the browser situation would be much improved within 6 months.

It would be the best for consumers and developers. Passing AcidTest + html5 support would be great.

Why would passing AcidTest be all that interesting? I get HTML5 support, but it seems like passing a test where the weights are on more obscure features would be low on my priority list.

Is there any better way to measure css support in modern browsers?

Acid2 is largely a CSS test (which IE passes just fine, AFAIK).

ACID3 is largely DOM and Javascript.Here's a good article to read about the ACID3 test, from a name you probably know: http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/03/27/acid-redux/

Thank you for article. Acid3 is not so good CSS test but we don't have better mainstream css test anyway.

Agreed, in fact they seemed to 'talk up' the future would be HTML5 so much that the Silverlight lack of mentions got a lot of (Silverlight) developers quite anxious [1].

I don't especially want it to fail, as the market is ripe for competition and it will keep pushing Apple and Google forward, but as an app developer that really just wants to stay on the 'pure web' now, it's an unwelcome extra column in the already big matrix of things to have to specially support...

[1] http://www.silverlightshow.net/news/Silverlight-and-PDC.aspx

I'm kind of confused what you wanted to say. HTML5 runs in a browser, so why it wouldn't be available on WP7? Or you mean javascript based solutions that bridge into the native API?

Also, to program native apps for WP7 you need to use Silverlight, but you can do this in any language that runs on .Net (VB, IronPython, IronRuby etc), no?

Well, The browser on WP7 is based on IE7 and 8, so there's no native HTML5 support. Of course, a user could download another browser with HTML5 support in favor of IE.

IE8 does support a few of the less sexy HTML5 APIs like cross-document messaging. But no <canvas> games or Flash-less <video>

Silverlight is only option for WP7 development now so no alternative browser in near future.

Technically you can use XNA too, and you can make a browser using that. Ofcourse that means you have to toss away all the platforms goods and libraries you have and produce that on your own as well. Not really the sexy option, no.

So not saying it's going to happen, but technically speaking it's not impossible either.

Sure it is possible theoretically but not practically. If you want alternative browser for WP7 you need to create engine from scratch. You could not create browser that can compete with current 4 engines for one or two years. Quite possibly that we've never see new independent browser engine.

Downloading another browser isn't possible – at least if you don't want to use the IE rendering engine. UI development for WP7 apps is C# and Silverlight only. This is why Mozilla isn't making Firefox for WP7, for example.

WP7 is the only modern mobile platform with bad html5 and even html and css support. All other mobile platforms use WebKit based browsers.

If you Google for "windows phone 7 html5" you'll get relevant results where Microsoft announces their intentions to specifically not support HTML5 on WP7.

This is laughable and will of course change, but it just puts them further behind the release curve.

> Google and Apple will have to do incredible things to make even more awesome phones.

I think what they already have more than covers for WinMo 7's "awesomeness"...

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