Microsoft has unveiled the latest "platform preview" for Internet Explorer 9 and.. long-awaited support for the CANVAS tag has been included! This is a major step forward for IE and one that will, eventually, bring an almost full adoption of HTML 5 standards to the majority of Web users.

The CANVAS element was originally created by Apple to make it possible to build advanced graphic-driven "widgets" in OS X and has become a part of the HTML 5 standard. Safari, Chrome, Opera and Firefox all support CANVAS in their latest versions, but Internet Explorer has held out with its alternative VML system till now. Projects like explorercanvas have emulated CANVAS support in IE but, as of IE 9, should no longer be required.

TechCrunch has a post about today's IE 9 preview and its support of other HTML 5 technologies such as the VIDEO and AUDIO tags.