In a recent announcement to offer Firefox with Bing, Microsoft and the Bing team are now introducing an HTML5 version of the search engine for mobile users. The Bing team promises that this update will offer mobile users with a fast and consistent experience regardless of how they chose to use the search engine on the mobile space.
In an official Bing community blog, Microsoft introduced an updated HTML5 version of the Bing search engine. With this update, the Bing team uses HTML5 web standard to offer an experience that closely resembles Bing as native mobile application across all mobile platforms, notably iPhone and Android.
“Rather than tightly binding 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 so we can better help people get done what they are trying to get done. Using HTML5, our goal is to build 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.” explains Santanu Basu, the product manager of the Bing mobile.
He also highlights some the feature that comes with this update which includes:
- Maps/List Split View: Provides a dynamic way to synchronize a list such as business listings and directions and a map in a single view making it easy to see the location of what you’re searching for. Also works for driving directions and transit.
- Deals: One-stop deal shopping and convenient mobile phone access for local deals from more than 100 deal providers across the US.
- Video Domain: launched last month on m.bing, the new video domain is now available on iPhone.
- Transit/Real-Time: the Android app now features transit routing/real-time transit and news– all features that were previously only available on m.bing.com.
The updates will first be available to the iPhone and some selected Android users. Users on these mobile platforms can already access the updated Bing version from their respective marketplace. Basu promises that the update will be then available on a broader range of Android devices. With Windows Phone strong support of HTML5 with the release of mango update, soon users of Windows Phone users as well as Blackberry users will have access to the new Bing mobile.
