Microsoft planning ‘major overhaul’ of Internet Explorer in next Windows Phone release

By Tom Warren, on 7th Dec 10 5:19 pm with 6 Comments

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Mobile browser team is planning a “major overhaul” for the next Windows Phone release according to a recent job posting.

In a job posting, dated November 22, the software giant is looking to recruit a team member for its Windows Phone Browser, Search & Maps team. “Our team builds the IE Mobile browser in the Windows Phone organization which is one of the most used applications on the device” reads the job posting. Microsoft also explains that the browser is the most “technically challenging” application to build for a phone.

Microsoft is seeking a strong senior engineer that will be working on building the next generation IE platform for the next Windows Phone release.:

“This will include a major overhaul of standard support and new approaches to make significant advances in performance, power consumption and bandwidth utilization. Your responsibilities include making all these modern web platform features work on the Windows Phone platform.”

Microsoft lists experience with graphics APIs, JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Windows programming as essential elements for candidates. The job listing confirms Microsoft’s commitments to the Windows Phone browser. Microsoft has been criticized for its poor track recording on Mobile Browsers and many have suggested that the company adopts WebKit for its mobile rendering engine. Microsoft’s response with Internet Explorer 9 is strong and it appears from the job listing that standards support and performance enhancements are top of the list for the next version of IE mobile.

  • Anonymous

    Next release means Windows Phone 8?

    • Tom

      no.

    • GP007

      Don’t think so, it could just be the next update. I don’t know if it’ll be this soon as in the January update but I also don’t think they mean WP8 which we probably won’t see till 2012 I bet. This depends on if MS will do smaller updates like Android does, so WP7.1 or 7.5 etc. We’ll have to wait and see, I just hope it’s sooner rather than later.

  • GP007

    The people who said they should use Webkit are dreaming, if anything IE9 shows that the trident engine can be made to work with standards as long as the need from the IE dev and MS to do so is there. It’s not like the engine was so messed up they couldn’t use it at all.

    I’d like to see MS move quick with WP7 updates, if they can bring MIE up to speed with the others that’d be another thing off of the list that detractors like to bring up.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/6G3ZZJCHOLYP3S5CRCIHQ7WDSE MVIM

    Even if the next major release is “Windows Phone 8,” I would hope Microsoft would follow in Apple’s footsteps and allow WP7 customers to move to the next major version for free (upgrading their current devices, albeit with a few features only available with the latest hardware). I think they should do this at least for the first generation or two of devices. Eventually hardware limitations will require a cutoff, but Apple kept it going, basically until the iPhone 4 came out and they cutoff iPhone “2G” customers from future updates.

  • anonymous

    Hope they also update the Zune HD browser with that major overhaul. It scores 5/100 on Acid3. That said, they should continue with Trident, it’s a good engine if MS builds the necessary standards support in it as they did with IE9.