Microsoft Removes Legacy Baggage From Internet Explorer 10

Microsoft has come a long way in supporting standardized web technologies in favor of proprietary technologies in its web browser.

The company just announced another step and tells web developers to stop using VML and DX filters as IE10 will not support those components anymore.

DX filters are based on DirectX and were first included in IE back in 1996 with IE4. Microsoft said that the most popular "multimedia-style" effects that are made possible via DX can now be created using CSS3 and are covered by CSS3 working drafts and standard recommendations. This change mainly affects effects such as gradients, shadows as well as opacity.

SVG is officially replacing VML (vector markup language) in Microsoft's world as well. VML was proposed to become a web standard by Autodesk, Hewlett-Packard, Macromedia, Microsoft, and Visio back in 1998. Several more proposals targeting vector graphics on the web were submitted to the W3C in the same time frame, which resulted in the creation of SVG, which is not compatible with VML. Microsoft never discarded VML officially, but there has been no active development on VML since 1998.

IE9 still supports DX filters as well as VML, but it's certainly good news for developers to see Microsoft dropping legacy baggage and moving its browser closer to the standards line.