Tablets and HTML5

Nice rundown by Michael Mulany ... Microsoft Surface vs. the iPad gen 4: The HTML5 Scorecard:

This week, we've been putting both the iPad gen 4 and the Microsoft Surface tablet through their paces to see how they stack up as HTML5 platforms. HTML5 is the next generation of web technologies that is increasingly being adopted to develop applications that can be written once and run on multiple operating systems, browsers and devices. Having comprehensive, high performance HTML5 support is now a "must-have" feature for new mobile devices. For end users, both these devices should deliver solid user experiences from well-designed HTML5 apps.

In our testing, we're happy to say that both tablets are solid HTML5 platforms. The Microsoft Surface comes with Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 8 while the iPad comes with Mobile Safari and iOS 6. Internet Explorer 10 on the Surface has a broad, well implemented HTML5 feature set that mostly meets and occasionally exceeds Mobile Safari's. On the performance front, the iPad 4 leads in JavaScript, interaction and Canvas performance: the Surface has a faster vector graphics (SVG) implementation.