The W3C recently ran a comparison benchmark of HTML5 conformance among the beta's of the 5 major browser engines, and (somewhat) shockingly, Internet Explorer has managed to come out on top. Chrome 7 beta came in a pretty close second, followed by Firefox 4 beta. Opera and Safari trailed in last place. Pretty amazing to see Microsoft leading Google and Mozilla in standards compliance. It should be noted though that CSS3 functionality and compliance was not tested, nor was JavaScript, and that it's the combination of those three pieces that continue to make up the modern web. Still, nice to see Microsoft making some headway, even if it'll probably only last for a little while. via Neowin

The web is becoming a little less proprietary and we have Microsoft, of all people, to thank for it. After announcing they're moving Live Spaces to Wordpress and that Outlook 2011 would render in Webkit, they've done another 180 and now President Bob Muglia announced in an interview with Mary Jo Foley that their push for Silverlight in browsers is coming to an end.

“Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone... our strategy has shifted... HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including (Apple’s) iOS platform.”

Since when has Microsoft ever cared about what Apple was doing? Where is my cut throat it's the Microsoft way or nothing giant that I've loved and worshiped since I was 10 years old?

In all seriousness, Microsoft has really dedicated a lot of resources towards promoting HTML5 and other open technologies in Internet Explorer 9, and that's a good thing. Something seems to be changing in the culture at Redmond, which honestly is a welcomed theme. As they lose their position as the largest and most powerful technology company on the planet, it's good to see them deciding to share and play well with others, and maybe realize they don't have to be compete at everything, and just do a few things really well.

Are your feet cold? Mine are, I think it's because hell just froze over. 9to5Mac has the goods:

A little tidbit from the Microsoft gathering this evening.  While demonstrating Outlook for Mac and the HTML rendering engine, Microsoft employees revealed that instead of using the Word HTML rendering that previous versions of Mac Office used (and the PC version as well), Microsoft has moved over to Apple’s Webkit rendering engine to render HTML mails.  Outlook 2011 also uses WebKit to create HTML mail.

Coupled with the recent announcement that they were moving Windows Live Spaces to Wordpress, I think Microsoft has managed to surprise me twice in one month. The fact that Microsoft is actually using open source code in products is a great start, one can only hope they're contributing back. Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac will be released tomorrow.