Now you can om nom nom--er, Cut the Rope--directly in IE9
Steve Ballmer showed off the now-available HTML5 version of the popular game Cut the Rope during his final CES keynote.
LAS VEGAS--The final Microsoft keynote at CES features a choir that belted out soulful tweets, a veritable hugfest on-stage, and Ryan Seacrest palling around with Steve Ballmer in front of several thousand people. And crammed onto the end of the Windows 8 announcements in the middle of the event, Microsoft's chief marketing officer for Windows Tami Reller took a moment to play a quick round of Cut the Rope in Internet Explorer.
While Google has been getting the lion's share of press for porting popular mobile game apps to HTML5, most notably with Angry Birds, they're not the only company pushing the limits of the future-Web tech. To play the game, simply go to CutTheRope.ie. It ought to work in any browser that supports HTML5, although apparently in Firefox Microsoft has shifted the audio components to Flash.
The Internet Explorer developers noted on their behind-the-scenes site that some Google Chrome bugs, as well as Firefox, prevented full HTML5 implementation. Interestingly, I encountered no problems playing the game in Firefox 11 Aurora. This isn't surprising, as HTML5 standards have yet to be finalized and the five major modern browsers are quickly adding support.
The game was ported with support from ZeptoLab and Pixel Lab, the makers of Cut the Rope, as part of Microsoft's Beauty of the Web initiative, which showcases their changes to Internet Explorer to make it modern and competitive.
Using the site pinning feature in Internet Explorer 9, you can unlock an extra seven levels to bring the total to 25 that you can nom your way through.