Bing has unveiled a new search page with video backgrounds, dynamically displayed search and more using HTML5 in IE9.
The Microsoft search engine revealed the revamp at the launch of Internet Explorer 9 in San Franciso today, taking advantage of the HTML5 and hardware acceleration support in the new browser.
While Google has tended to keep its homepage stark and empty – save one short-lived attempt to copy Bing’s photo success – the Microsoft search engine is continuing to take the exact opposite tactic with a new version, set to be released in preview form next month.
“It’s a more elegant, more beautiful search experience than you can find anywhere else,” Bing manager Jeff Henshaw told PC Pro.
He started his demonstration at the Bing homepage, but instead of the usual photo behind the search box, it featured video of waves at the beach.
Henshaw also showed off how the site could use an “enormous” image as the background, with an animated zoom pulling back from one spot to see the larger picture – all with the search box remaining fully functional.
Once the search terms are entered, the box slides to the top of the page, pulling up the results underneath. If the first few results aren’t enough and the user scrolls down, headings, related searches and ads come along too, to keep everything organised.
On smaller screens, each results can be shown in a single line, and dynamically expanded out as the user scrolls by to show more detailed text.
The new feature that won the most appreciation from the audience was a solution to back button woes – such as when you click back to a form and it asks to resend the data or clears the information.
“In the past, when you had rich Ajax-based web pages and you shifted your context – entered information on a form, clicked a different tab – in IE and other browsers, it meant going back to the last URL,” Henshaw explained. “But there was a lot of state involved in pages that wasn’t necessarily associated with the URL.”
“IE9 is doing a better job of preserving the state of your previous pages,” he said. “I’m not going back to some broken half-filled web form, I’m going back how I would expect, to the last full experience I had rendered.”
“It really keeps the searching experience more coherent and better integrated than it’s ever been,” he said.
Browser changes
To make full use of the new Bing, users will need IE9 and either Windows 7 or Vista, but many of the features will work with other browsers or OSes.
“A lot of the HTML5 experiences will work well across any modern browser,” he said. “A lot of the experience will migrate seamlessly across, but there will be some things that are IE exclusive – like anything that’s so graphically high-end that it requires hardware acceleration is going to be an IE/Windows exclusive.”
A lot of the HTML5 experiences will work well across any modern browser
Bing will automatically downgrade to offer only the features which the browser can handle, and do the same for weaker broadband connections.
“You’ll always get as good as an experience as your broadband affords you,” he said.
“The page itself actually takes very, very little to load,” he said. “In fact the video-based homepage is actually a smaller net download than the still image. The reason for that is we’re using the video tag and we’re getting one low-res frame to begin with and everything else is brought in on-demand in a lazy way, so you don’t really feel any performance hit.”
The new Bing features can be seen in a Microsoft video here, and the preview will arrive mid-October.
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