Lately, Microsoft (News – Alert) has been working with a number of companies to optimize websites so that they will be able to support the touchscreen features of Internet Explorer 10 (IE 10) in Windows 8, the latest release of Microsoft Windows operating system (OS) for desktop PCs. Now Windows Phone (News – Alert) 8, which is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile OS, brings IE 10 to mobile devices.

In fact, IE 10 is the default browser in Windows Phone 8 and carries over key improvements found in the desktop version with much better HTML5 support. As a result, according to a report posted on technology blog Ubergizmo, the software giant has selected few HTML5-based sites to function better not only on IE10, but on Windows Phone 8 as well.

One such HTML5-based site with support for IE 10 and Windows Phone 8 is the news site Pulse (News – Alert), which was originally optimized for IE 10 for Windows 8 earlier this year. As per this blog post, Pulse has released an update to the Windows Phone app, which will work flawlessly on the Windows Phone 8 platform.

According to Microsoft, “The updated site is completely adaptive and built using responsive design best practices. As we updated the site, we also optimized for performance, so that difficult animations or transitions have been selectively disabled or swapped for mobile friendly equivalents.”

Media reports indicate that Windows Phone 8 based mobile devices will be initially launched by Nokia, Samsung, Huawei (News – Alert) and HTC. All devices will be based on system-on- chip (SoC) ICs from Qualcomm. Current Windows Phone 7.x devices will not be able to run or update to Windows Phone 8 and new applications compiled specifically for Windows Phone 8 will not be made available for Windows Phone 7.x devices, said Microsoft.