Redmond, Washington — Consider this another victory for the advancement of HTML5, as software monopolist Microsoft is rolling out its new Bing for Mobile apps this week that are built on HTML5 and blend the best of native apps with a robust mobile web experience, but unfortunately, it is available first only to iPhone and Android users, missing out the Windows Phone users.
The latest update attempts to reduce the gap between the regular Bing mobile website and the Bing for Mobile app on all devices with the use of more HTML5 within the native app itself. Also, it may be another sign that the software maker is turning its attention away from its home-baked development platforms .Net and Silverlight and toward the industry-standard HTML5.
Microsoft wants users to have the same Bing experience regardless of whether they are using it on an iPhone or an Android device. Hence, the Bing for Mobile Hybrid Apps will allow user to get a consistent experience across all platforms, because the core Bing app is written in HTML5 and will be essentially the same across all native clients and the web.
Although a version of Bing is already incorporated with Windows Phone 7, the new Bing HTML5 app is initially available for iPhone and Android users only, with BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 versions to follow at an unspecified later date. Internet Explorer 9 with support for HTML5 is one of the features touted with Windows Phone 7.5, the Mango release.
“The functionality of the app is based on HTML5 and currently only works on iPhone and Android phones. We are working to roll out a new Bing app for Windows Phone 7 devices in the future,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.
At first, the same experience will be nearly comprehensive across various platforms and clients. If you have ever been discouraged at the version of your app being different than your friend’s, then you will enjoy these new versions. HTML5 will also make updating Bing apps much easier on Microsoft. Instead of worrying about different clients and languages, they can simply change the app and have it reflected across the board.
The latest HTML5-based app, Bing for Mobile, also delivers the Bing search engine to mobile phones. It also contains components like Maps with a List/Split view, real-time transit information, a search history and a “deals” feature. The deals feature aggregates information from coupon sites like Groupon, LivingSocial and Tippr.
In fact, Bing did made an overhaul with Windows Phone 7.5, and bundled features like voice searching, music search and camera/photo-based searching (Bing recognizes the text or the barcode). Delivering Bing as an HTML5 app offers several advantages, says Santanu Basu, Microsoft’s product manager of Bing for Mobile, in a blog post.
“Rather than tightly stitching functions into a mobile client, we want to embrace the drive towards exposing our functions via an HTML5 experience. In order for search to advance, engines need to be able to call functions that are currently ‘hiding’ in apps,” he wrote.
“Adopting HTML5, our objecting is to develop a mobile experience that leverages the unique capabilities of the different platforms including camera support and voice search, while making the functions the apps can provide consistent across the platforms and–in the future–callable by engines to help people get from searching to doing,” he added.
Furthermore, not only will updating be streamlined, but it will also enhance many features already present. Instead of relying simply on the app itself, HTML5 will allow it to gather information and conduct tasks from outside sources.
Stefan Weitz, senior director of Bing, said this of the upgrade, “We think it is an interesting model to think about how to expose the things you can do with a product or service in ways that engines like Bing can consume them, so we can do a better job”
“That is the idea, how can we begin to unlock the power of these applications so engines like Bing can use them to fulfill a request.”
Microsoft’s investment in HTML5 is a major first step towards the markup language upgrade becoming more universally accepted. If you’d like to learn more about the capabilities of HTML5, you can do so here.
Bing for Mobile Hybrid Apps is currently available for iOS and Android in the U.S. and the U.K., as well as on certain Android devices in the United States, though they plan to bring this new Bing to BlackBerry and Windows Phone devices in the near future