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Comment by alexro | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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

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.

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