As a London web designer, I have my own opinion of the IE series. As a creator of custom CMS it didn’t always do me any favours. It has many foibles, problems and interesting problems to solve. While it provided a challenge, it made things awkward sometimes, having to write specific code to work around its limitations.

However, Microsoft have implemented five changes to the upcoming release IE9 that might make things a little easier on us web designers. London is full of creative types, as I have spoken to more than a few of them. Some are exited, most are set to wait and see. All we can say now is that Microsoft are off to a good start.

The first change, and most important for web designers is the support for HTML5 and CSS3. We can’t use them much because not all the browsers support them. While IE still has around 50% of the browser market we can’t do much about it either. Even though the details have yet to be finalized HTML5 and CSS3 are good news. The fact that IE9 will support them is even better news. We had feared that MS would wait until the standards were ratified by W3C before implementing them, but it seems not.

The next change is the fact that MS has a suite of developer tools which we can play with to find bugs and make suggestions. That isn’t to say we’re going to have any input into the final product but it makes us feel wanted. It’s probably just PR, as MS historically has received a lot of criticism for being so secretive about its code and how it builds it applications.

Continuing that theme, the next new benefit is the increased transparency of IE9. Of all the web designers, London ones seem the most vocal. I got tired of hearing complaints about how IE and MS applications were so secretive. The IE9 blog is a pretty good running commentary on how the development of the browser is going, and even has mentions of their setbacks as well as successes.  This openness lets us know where they stand on issues instead of having to guess.

Providing a glimpse of what to expect is a new option too. The IE9 Platform Demo page gives us a chance to see how it works, and how things will work. While still in the early stages, it’s good to see MS working with their users instead of against them.

Lastly, is about performance. Everyone knows the IE series has never been as quick or efficient as the competition. The last couple of incarnations of IE seemed to ignore the performance issue completely. IE9 is different, and looks competitive.

IE9 is still in development, and a way off yet, but Microsoft seems to have learned lessons about how to interact with their users. Even if the browser ends up just as bad as IE6, we all appreciate a little more interaction with the computer software giant.

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