An HTML5-powered version of Bing is on the way, and the search engine is touting new features on a preview site that include “search previews as you type” (a.k.a., Instant Search), “animations that make search come alive,” and “seamless transitions between pages.”
“The company is planning to unveil the first public preview of Bing HTML5 to coincide with the release to web of Internet Explorer 9,” according to WinRumors. It could be officially unveiled at MIX11 in April.
Although the preview site is live, seems you can’t turn on HTML5 Bing quite yet. Bing announced many new features when the IE9 beta launched in September, which we covered here.
Here’s the preview video from September showing off some of the new Bing HTML5 features:
Google introduced Instant, its type-as-you-search feature, in September — a concept first tested out by Yahoo as Livesearch on AllTheWeb in 2006.
Another interesting sidenote: Developer Long Zheng created Real Live Search, a version of “instant search” that used Bing results in August 2009 — a full year before Google Instant. Yes, Bing could’ve easily implement this long before Google Instant launched.