Last week I posted a chart that listed support for CSS3 features in IE9. This post will consider the extent of IE9 support for HTML5 and related technologies.
The chart is divided into two sections. The first covers the new HTML5 markup elements, and the second covers the APIs and other stuff. My personal assessment is that IE9 is doing much better with CSS3 support than it is in HTML5, so don’t expect to be happy with the overall results shown in these charts. And as one commenter on the previous post pointed out, IE9 is still in Beta, so no need to get too distressed about anything not supported.
As usual, let me know in the comments if any of this is incorrect or if anything’s missing. The info for the charts was compiled from this page on MSDN, the super-useful When Can I Use…app, and this layout engine comparison of HTML5 features on Wikipedia.
HTML5 Elements…
| <section> |  | None |
| <nav> | | None |
| <article> | | None |
| <aside> | | None |
| <header> | | None |
| <hgroup> | | None |
| <footer> | | None |
| <time> |  | — |
| <mark> | | None |
| <ruby> | | 6-8 |
| <figure> | | None |
| <figcaption> | | None |
| <embed> | | — |
| <video> | | None |
| <audio> | | None |
| <source> | | None |
| <canvas> | | None |
| <details> | | — |
| <summary> | | — |
| <command> | | — |
| <menu> | | — |
| New Form Elements/Attributes* | | — |
* Evidently, the only new form enhancement supported by IE9 Beta is the autocompleteattribute, supported since IE7.
…and Related Technologies
Below is a list of technologies, APIs and other goodies that may or may not be part of the HTML5 spec, but have been placed under the HTML5 umbrella as “related technologies”. The list doesn’t include every new technology or enhancement, because some of it is still fairly obscure. Everything that IE9 supports is, to the best of my knowledge, listed here. The rest of unsupported technologies are summarized in the final entry in the table.
| MathML | | None |
| Inline SVG | | None |
| contenteditable | | 5.5-8 |
| Data URIs | | 8 |
| Cross-Document Messaging | | 8 |
| application/xhtml+xml | | None |
| Selectors API | | 8 |
| getElementsByClassName | | None |
| application/xhtml+xml | | None |
| SVG | | None |
| Canvas APIs | | None |
| SVG in CSS Backgrounds | | None |
| Web Storage | | 8 |
| WAI-ARIA | | 8 |
| Offline Web Apps | | — |
| Drag and Drop |  | 5-8 |
| Web Workers | | — |
| Web Sockets | | — |
| Ajax History Traversal | | 8 |
| Text Selection API | | None |
| pushState() / replaceState() | | — |
| Geolocation API | | None |
| A Bunch of other stuff… | | — |