IE11 on Windows Phone 8.1
There are several differences between Internet Explorer 11 on Windows Phone 8.1 and on the Windows 8.1 desktop. See Web development for Windows Phone for a list of IE differences between phone and desktop across previous versions. See Diagnosing Mobile Website Issues on Windows Phone 8.1 with Visual Studio for more on debugging your site with a Windows Phone emulator or physical device.
Internet Explorer for Windows Phone 8.1 Update
To improve compatibility with existing sites on the mobile web, the following features have been introduced or changed with the Internet Explorer for Windows Phone 8.1 Update. These additions and changes are not currently included in IE11 for the desktop.
Additional features
CSS
- CSSOM View: scrollX, scrollY properties
- (Non-standard) -webkit-appearance CSS property
HTML5
- Browser interface elements: BarProp interface and locationbar, menubar, personalbar, scrollbars, statusbar, toolbar properties
- Location interface: window.location.origin property (from URLUtils interface of W3C URL specification)
Other
- Touch Events: Touch, TouchList,TouchEvent interfaces; touchstart, touchend, touchmove, touchcancel events; createTouch, createTouchList methods
- (Non-standard) WebKitPoint object and webkitConvertPointFromNodeToPage, webkitConvertPointFromPageToNode methods
- (Non-standard) readAsBinaryString method (previously defined in W3C File API specification)
Changed features
CSS
- Animations: Added support for -webkit- aliases of all properties and webkitAnimationStart, webkitAnimationEnd, and webkitAnimationIteration events.
- Backgrounds and Borders: Added support for -webkit- aliases of all properties related to background and border-image.
- Flexbox: Added support for legacy -webkit- prefix properties (refer to Flexbox layout updates in the IE Compatibility Cookbook for details).
- Fonts: Switched to (non-standard) behavior of cross-origin @font-face loading regardless of access control headers.
- Gradients: Added support for legacy -webkit- prefix properties. Requires slightly different syntax; see Using Gradients in Safari Developer Library.
- Media Queries: Added support for (non-standard) -webkit-device-pixel-ratio media feature (provides existing devicePixelRatio property behavior for use in media queries).
- Mobile Text Size Adjustment: Added support for -webkit-text-size-adjust (same behavior as -ms-text-size-adjust).
- Transitions: Added support for -webkit- aliases of all properties and webkitTransitionEnd event.
- Transforms: Added -webkit- aliases for selected properties (-webkit-backface-visibility, -webkit-transform, -webkit-transform-origin) and WebKitCSSMatrix interface.
- SVG: Added support for initial keyword value of CSS pointer-events property.
- (Non-standard) User Selection: Added support for -webkit-user-select (as alias of -ms-user-select).
- verticalAlign property: Support for middle keyword value on inline-block elements.
HTML / HTML5
- button and label elements: Now independently clickable when nested inside an a element link (non-standard behavior).
- Focus model: html and body elements are no longer eligible for focus by default (must have
tabindex
or becontenteditable
to be focusable). - Media elements: autoplay attribute is ignored and play method is only supported if initiated by user action.
- meta element:
- The
url=
token of the content attribute is now optional forhttp-equiv="refresh"
redirection (non-standard behavior). - Support for dynamically updating the (non-standard) viewport meta tag.
- The
- MIME type handling: "application/x-javascript" is now treated and rendered as "text/plain" (non-standard behavior).
Other
- Event model: Added support for dispatchEvent on elements not attached to the DOM.
- Screen Orientation API: Added (non-standard) support for window.orientation (same behavior as window.screen.msOrientation).
- User agent string updated
- Downloads: Windows Phone 8.1 introduced the ability for users to download media files in addition to directly playing them from a URL. Internet Explorer for Windows Phone 8.1 Update introduces a way to eliminate the download feature if you do not want users to directly download particular media files. To do this, set the flag OpenOnlyLink to true in the GET header and we will only allow the media (or other file) to be played directly.
Additional features on Windows Phone 8.1
The following features introduced in earlier versions of Windows Phone continue to be supported in IE11 on Windows Phone 8.1, but are not supported in IE11 for the desktop.
- CSS Mobile Text Size Adjustment (
-ms-text-size-adjust
) - Viewport meta tag
Unsupported features on Windows Phone 8.1
The contents of the IE11 Developer Guide apply to IE11 on Windows Phone 8.1, except for the following features:
- Do not track (DNT) exceptions
- Drag and drop touch support
- Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for HTML5 video
- F12 developer tools
Additionally, these features introduced in earlier versions of Internet Explorer for the desktop are not supported on Windows Phone 8.1:
- Active documents
- CSS Hyphenation (
-ms-hyphens
) - CSS Touch Views, except for
overflow: scroll
accelerated scrolling, which is supported - Extensibility through Browser Helper Objects (BHOs), toolbars, and other related items
- HTML5 Drag and drop
- Older web technology, such as binary behaviors, HTCs, HTML+TIME, and VML
- rotation and velocityAngular properties of the MSGestureEvent object
- Website-to-Windows Store app linking (with
msApplication-ID
ormsApplication-PackageFamilyName
)