Prestige brands hail arrival of IE9 and HTML5

Web design experts says new browser will allow corporates to add more class to their sites

Image-conscious corporates get better e-commerce courtesy of IE9 and HTML5

Corporate firms with prestige brands are likely to welcome Microsoft's support of the upcoming HTML5 code standard as well as the graphics hardware acceleration in version 9 of Internet Explorer.

To date, many premium brands that rely on making a high quality impression on consumers have been frustrated by the limitations of web technology.

Tom Hopkins, managing consultant at web site development company EMC Conchango, said, "HTML5 is a huge change and adds a lot more functionality that businesses and web developers need to be aware of.

"Prestige brands didn't touch the web because they felt web experiences didn't have the capability to live up to their brand," said Conchango experience director Paul Dawson.

The rich content offered by HTML5 can be replicated using plug-ins, but it's not easy to achieve high-quality results.

"If you walked up to an advertising agency and said, 'Hey, look what HTML5 can do', you'd get laughed out of the room because they've already been producing things of that quality and richness using plug-ins," said Dawson.

But Dawson pointed out that the problem with this was that although it was easy to get rich content using Flash plug-ins, "it's not brilliantly integrated, isn't very maintainable, and doesn't run across a wide variety of platforms".

To illustrate the point, Dawson showed off a preview web site for auto manufacturer BMW's car configurator, written for the IE9 beta using hand-coded web markup language.

"The opportunity for BMW isn't to do something they haven't done before, or more than they've done before, but to do it in a way that's better integrated into their e-commerce web site," said Dawson.

The first beta of IE9 was launched earlier this week.

Microsoft is touting big performance advantages for users, as well as better security and improvements in usability.

The hardware acceleration present in IE9 is a bonus for developers, and is an advantage for Microsoft in the ongoing browser wars.

"Google's Chrome browser today isn't hardware accelerated," said Microsoft's UK Web product manager Mark Quirk.

Storage giant EMC acquired Conchango in April 2008 for £42m.