Microsoft to start auto-updating IE

It’s a Christmas miracle!

Today we are sharing our plan to automatically upgrade Windows customers to the latest version of Internet Explorer available for their PC. This is an important step in helping to move the Web forward. We will start in January for customers in Australia and Brazil who have turned on automatic updating via Windows Update. Similar to our release of IE9 earlier this year, we will take a measured approach, scaling up over time.

IE10 for Metro won’t support Flash

cnet reports:

The first big blow to Flash was Apple’s iOS. Now Adobe Systems’ browser plug-in faces another major threat to its relevance: Microsoft has banned it and all other plug-ins from the “Metro” version of Internet Explorer 10.

Metro is the modern “touch-first” interface that plays a starring role in the radically new look of Windows 8, which Microsoft plans to release in 2012. Microsoft will ship the new OS with two versions of IE10, one for Metro and one a brushed-up version of the current Windows 7 interface. While the legacy version of IE10 will accommodate plug-ins, the Metro won’t…

Amazon’s HTML5 Kindle Reader

Amazon, unhappy with Apple’s new in-app rules, did the sensible thing and just gave them a run-around via the browser:

They say revenge is a dish best served cold. But when it comes to circumventing Apple’s new in-app subscription rules, it may be best served as an HTML5 Web app.

This morning Amazon launched its Kindle Cloud Reader, a Web-based app that allows you to read your Kindle e-books from any browser on your PC or tablet, including the iPad.

I’m hoping moves like this will make more people realize that the most powerful app on the iPhone/iPad is Safari. Because, well, Henry Blodget put it best.

HTML11

An amusing parody.

Google Apps to drop IE7

Google Apps already dropped support for IE6 a while back; now they’re taking it a step further, by only supporting the “current and one previous” versions of each browser:

As of August 1st, we will discontinue support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely.

IE7′s usage has already dipped below IE6′s in some reports, so this isn’t as huge a deal as it might have been even a year ago. Still, I wish they’d extended this policy out to YouTube as well; that would really drive people to upgrade.

Windows 8 apps to use HTML5

Microsoft released some details about Windows 8 today, and mentioned that

Windows 8 apps use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using standard JavaScript and HTML to deliver new kinds of experiences. These new Windows 8 apps are full-screen and touch-optimized, and they easily integrate with the capabilities of the new Windows user interface.

I’m going to take this as a sign that, in the intra-Microsoft struggle between HTML5 and Silverlight camps, that the former won. Good.

Installing Chrome Frame no longer needs admin rights

Thank you, Google. This should really help those people trapped on IE6 by their IT departments.

Madmanimation

WOW. This animation is the coolest Web animation I’ve seen in, well, perhaps ever. No Flash, no Silverlight — just lots of CSS transitions.

In a Webkit browser, it’s breathtaking.
In a browser less capable with animation (like Firefox 4), it downgrades gracefully into a series of storyboards.
In crappy browsers, it degrades to just text describing the scene.

More details here.

IE6 Countdown

Credit to Microsoft for creating this.

How to make your shopping cart suck less

The Oatmeal’s take on what’s wrong with the shopping carts of so, so many websites is… let’s say “NSFW, very funny, and very accurate”.