As you know, the launch of the Windows 8 operating system is already in sight. For developers, this means BIG changes are coming to the way users interact with your site. To illustrate, allow me to cite a few examples from TechRadar.com:

So how can you get your site ready for IE10?

The Internet Explorer team has been giving a lot of guidance on its IE Engineering Team Blog. Everything you did for IE9 still works on IE10, even down to pinned sites on the task bar, so many of the Windows 8 features you’ll get for free. Some of these features, like jump lists, translate to the new touch IE, while others work with the Start screen – but to get the most, it’s worth investigating the new features introduced especially for Windows 8.

Creating an RT tablet and touch-friendly site

If you’re using Flash or any other plug-in platform, switch to HTML5. The new “modern” Internet Explorer won’t run plug-ins (including Microsoft’s own Silverlight). While it does have a built-in Flash player, it will only display sites that have been certified by Microsoft. If you haven’t been working with Microsoft to put together a touch-friendly version of your site, then you’re not going to be on that list. With IE10′s improved HTML5 support design tools like Flash and Silverlight aren’t necessary – and a site designed for IE10 will look the same in Chrome or Firefox.

Creating Windows 8 title icons for your site

Once you’re delivering HTML5 to your users, you can start to add Windows 8 specific features. The most obvious is to create a 32×32 pixel version of your site’s favicon. This is used when a site is pinned to the taskbar or to the start screen, with IE10 extracting the main colour from the icon to use as the colour of your site’s Start screen tile. You can use the tools at the X-icon site (http://www.xiconeditor.com/Default.aspx) to convert image assets into icons, ready for use on your site. Upload a JPEG, GIF, BMP or PNG file, then crop to a square before converting to an icon.

Read the rest >>>