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Sunday, February 3, 2013

Microsoft to developers: This is the 'modern.IE' world






As Microsoft continues to overhaul its approach to, well, everything, the Internet Explorer team offers a mea culpa and a carrot to Web developers with modern.IE.

In case you weren't sure, Microsoft wants you to really, really understand that Internet Explorer 10 isn't just any old update to the much-maligned browser. The latest example: "modern.IE," a set of tools to help Web developers that the company announced today.

"It's still too hard to test sites across the different OSes and browsers," Ryan Gavin, Internet Explorer's general manager, said in a phone interview with CNET yesterday. "On our part, we can encourage best practices. We know we can do better here, so we're providing the tools and support so that developers spend more of their time innovating and less of their time testing."

"More time innovating, less time testing" was Gavin's watch-phrase of the day, something he repeated throughout our conversation. Microsoft clearly believes that modern.IE's toolset will appeal to developers.

Some developers who have used pre-release versions of the service were impressed with modern.IE.

Rachel Andrew, managing director of Web development company Edgeofmyseat.com, said to me in an e-mail: "I'm a Mac and Linux desktop user. I have Windows laptops for testing, but haven't used Windows for anything else for many years. I feel as if Microsoft [has] recognized, with modern.IE, that this is the case for a lot of Web designers and developers. Instead of trying to persuade us to use Windows, the site gives us a whole bunch of ways to test sites from our platform of choice, to ensure that people who visit our sites using Windows and IE get a great experience."

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