Microsoft offers holiday-themed HTML5 demos

InfoWorld - Microsoft is offering Christmas-themed HTML5 "experiences" for users to run in their browser, focused on hardware-accelerated HTML5. Demonstrations are entitled Santa Workshop and HTML5 Blizzard.

[ Microsoft this week introduced its HTML5 Labs site for prototyping HTML5 technologies.| Get your websites up to speed with HTML5 today using the techniques in InfoWorld's HTML5 Deep Dive PDF how-to report. ]

"Check out Santa's Workshop, where the speed of your browser on your PC determines how many elves help pack Santa's bag for the big night, and how fast they work," said Rob Mauceri, Microsoft group program manager for Internet Explorer, in the company's IEBlog. "We built this experience using HTML5 technologies like integrated SVG graphics and HTML5 audio."

This demonstration, however, requires ECMAscript 5 properties API support as well as possibly a browser upgrade. Microsoft is offering downloads of the IE9 Beta and IE9 Platform Preview as possible options for viewing the demonstration. Platform Preview is intended for Web developers.

With HTML5 Blizzard, users watch snowflakes falling. "The more snowflakes you see, the faster your browser and PC. This experience combines HTML5 canvas, SVG, audio, CSS3, and Web Open Font Format fonts together to create a winter wonderland," Mauceri said.

While Microsoft's Silverlight has been viewed as a rival to standard HTML5 technologies, the company nonetheless sees a place for both Silverlight and HTML5.  

Microsoft said on Thursday it has not shared the general release date planned for IE9.

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