The dust is yet to settle following the birth of Internet Explorer 9 as Microsoft announced the launch of the former’s successor, Internet Explorer 10 (IE10).
The announcement was made at Microsoft’s annual Web and phone developer conference, MIX11, on the 12th of April this year. The unveiling of IE10 platform preview was followed by IE10 platform preview 2 on the 29th of June this year.
“We built IE9 from the ground up for HTML5 and for Windows to deliver the most native HTML5 experience and the best Web experience on Windows,” Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president for IE, wrote in a blog post. He further added, “IE10 builds on full hardware acceleration and continues our focus on site-ready Web-standards. This combination enables developers to deliver the best performance for their customers on Windows while using the same, Web-standard markup across browsers.”
It must be noted that Microsoft has dropped support for Windows Vista and therefore IE10 can only be run on Windows 7 in a fashion similar to that of IE9 (when it dropped Windows XP).
What can we expect from IE10?
At this point the end user does not have much to look forward to. The IE10 preview doesn’t sport the browser’s “chrome,” or interface elements, but only an underlying Web rendering engine. As a result there are no bookmarks, history, nor a “back” button.
Presently, very few sites take advantage of the new HTML5 capabilities supported in IE10 Platform Preview: CSS3 Multi-column Layout, CSS3 Grid Layout and CSS3 Flexible Box Layout, CSS3 Gradients, and ES5 Strict Mode. This would mean that although IE10 claims to pack a punch with many benefits and technological advancements, the actual potential of IE10 may not be realized.
IE10 Platform Preview 1 is available for download now on Microsoft’s Web site. Also be sure to check out a demo version of IE10 platform preview 2 on Microsoft’s Test Drive page, which features speed demos, HTML5 demos, graphics demos and browser demos.
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