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Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

The fact that Windows Phone 7 doesn't support HTML5 may not be intentionally strategic, but it affects Windows Phone 7's strategic future nonetheless.

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Won't everyone just end up using Opera Mobile/Mini or whatever other mobile browsers become available for Windows Phone 7 instead of the default if it doesn't meet expectations? None of the serious users of the current types of Windows Mobile phones I know use the crippled versions of IE they contain. I know this is supposedly an entirely new idea, I still see this happening.. especially when customers will expect browsers as nice as iOS, Android, WebOS, Maemo, and even newer Blackberries...

Does it however strategically affect WP7's strategic future?

Look, the way I see it, WP7 is barely months (weeks?) old. To expect HTML5 support when 'HTML5' is in still flux is silly. MS are still working on their desktop support for goodness sake.

Lack of copy-and-paste demonstrates clearly that MS couldn't get everything in to v1.0. And to impute strategic motives is reaching.

The fact that Microsoft is still working on desktop HTML5 doesn't mean a thing to a smartphone customer when every other popular smartphone has it already.

For the same reason, it's hard to convince myself that I'm being "silly" for having an expectation as a web developer that a new mobile OS platform in 2010 would have decent HTML5 support. What a step backwards for the mobile web.

> To expect HTML5 support when 'HTML5' is in still flux is silly.

Er… their competitors’ phones support a lot more HTML5, CSS3, and related APIs than they do. Who’s silly, exactly?

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