Mozilla Official Says Internet Explorer 9 is Two Years Too Late

Delivering solid proof that open source browsers are leading innovation in the browser arena, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have carved deeply into Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser market share over the past couple of years, and now the folks behind Firefox are practically delivering a eulogy for Internet Explorer. With Mozilla's majorly updated Firefox 4 browser set to arrive in a matter of days, and Microsoft hyping its Internet Explorer 9 browser, Mozilla technical evangelist Paul Rouget has pronounced that Internet Explorer is not a "modern browser." In many ways, Rouget is right, but Microsoft is seeking to counter the notion.

You really have to look at how extensively Rouget seeks to back up his claim.  He shows off HTML5 test results, and many more types of test results. For the most part, they counter recent claims from Microsoft that the next version of Internet Explorer is ideally optimized for the next-generation web. Microsoft has been positioning IE9 as "the platform for developers" and claiming best-of-breed HTML5 support. Others have already claimed that some of the information Microsoft is publishin about HTML5 support deserves to be challenged, with Rouget summing up that IE9 is two years too late.

We'll have to wait just a little longer to put the browsers through their paces head-to-head in final versions, but Rouget sums his post up with a list of things that he claims IE9 does not support, found below:

• Application Cache (offline)
• Web Workers (threads in JavaScript)
• HTML5 Forms (validation mechanism, CSS3 selectors)
• JavaScript Strict Mode
• ForeignObject (embed external content in SVG)
• SMIL Animations (SVG animations)
• File API
• WebGL (3D)
• CSS3 Transitions (for animations)
• CSS3 Text Shadow
• CSS3 Gradients
• CSS3 Border Image
• CSS3 Flex box model
• ClassList APIs
• FormData
• HTML5 History API
• Drag'n Drop from Desktop