IE10 for Windows Phone 8 will finally be competent in HTML5
If you're a Windows Phone 7 user, there are a lot of things to like about the system, but Internet Explorer is not really one of them. The browser is relatively capable of rendering mobile websites without issue, but it has huge troubles making sense of HTML5. It's often impossible to take advantage of HTML5 functionality in IE like swipe gestures, etc, but it looks like WP8 will fix that.
If you were to check HTML5Test, IE9 would only get an overall score of 138 (out of 500), which put it just ahead of the stock browser of the Nintendo 3DS, and just behind the Android 2.3 stock browser. However, IE10 in Windows Phone 8 is changing that. IE10 has been getting a bit better since the first test results came out a couple months ago, and now the browser has earned a respectable 300 on the test. Which would put it just ahead of the stock Android 4.0 browser, and just behind Safari on iOS 5.1.
Of course, respectable is one thing, but even with a score of 300, IE10 doesn't come all that close to the reigning HTML5Test champs. At the top of that list is the new Tizen browser, which has been the first mobile browser to break 400 on the test. Even BlackBerry 10 scored 381, which put it ahead of both Opera Mobile 12, and Chrome Beta, which had been the high standard when it was first released.
Still, 300 is a respectable score, and should go a long way to having a more modern browser as part of Windows Phone.
Things that are NOT allowed: