Internet Explorer 11 continues to provide the best Web experience that is fast, fluid and perfect for touch, across the full range of Windows devices and screen sizes. The IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7 is available for download today and includes performance improvements making it 30% faster than other browsers, updates to support the latest Web standards, and developer tools improvements in response to your feedback on the IE11 Developer Preview for Windows 7.
This video shows some of the performance and developer tools enhancements in IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7
With IE11 on Windows 7, customers receive a fast, secure browser that is compatible with existing Web sites and delivers exciting new interactive Web experiences. For developers, IE11 supports the latest Web standards and technologies, making it easier to build sites that work across devices. The new F12 tools in IE11 enable developers to build high performance Web experiences, faster and more efficiently.
A Faster Web Experience
Performance matters to everyone who browses the Web. The IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7 includes additional performance tuning so that real-world sites download and display fast and are highly responsive and interactive.
You can experience IE11’s leading performance first hand with demos such as Levitation, Lawnmark, and Lite-Brite on the IE Test Drive site, showing real world Web site patterns for graphically rich, interactive, and 3D experiences. In honor of tomorrow's International Talk Like a Pirate Day, our newest test drive demo, PirateMarrrk, tests your browser’s HTML5, JavaScript, and Scalable Vector Graphics performance.
The new PirateMarrrk test drive demo tests your browser’s HTML5, JavaScript, and Scalable Vector Graphics performance.
Internet Explorer 11 advances the performance leadership of our JavaScript engine, Chakra, while ensuring compatibility, interoperability, and security. As we improve performance for real-world sites, IE11’s JavaScript performance on benchmarks like WebKit SunSpider continues to lead compared with latest version of other browsers. On Windows 7, IE11 Release Preview is 9% faster than IE10, which is a 5% improvement from the IE11 Developer Preview, and over 30% faster than the nearest competitive browser.
IE11 extends its leadership in Javascript performance, so real-world sites are faster
Even More Web Standards and Increased Compatibility with Existing Web Sites
IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7 includes updates to reflect the latest emerging Web standards. For example, now that the Pointer Events specification is a Candidate Recommendation at the W3C, IE11 supports an un-prefixed version of the emerging standard. With Pointer Events support across the full range of Windows devices (and soon to other browsers), Web sites can easily build experiences that work equally well with mouse, keyboard, pen, and touch.
IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7 adds new user controls for the Standard Delivery Profile for Closed Captioning. With the new control, accessible from the Internet Options menu, users can customize how captions appear in the browser, even overriding the default styling provided by the video source. This customization further advances IE11 as the best browser for professional-quality online video without plugins.
With IE11, users can customize the appearance of closed captions, enabling an improved online video experience
The IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7 also supports the latest Tracking Preference Expression (DNT) draft in the W3C. After installation, the IE11 Release Preview prompts the user set a default tracking preference that Internet Explorer will send to Web sites. On upgrade, IE11 Release Preview automatically preserves the user’s previous tracking preferences. .
Faster, More Efficient Developer Tools Productivity, Based on Your Feedback
IE11 includes a completely re-designed and enhanced suite of in-browser F12 developer tools. These tools help Web developers diagnose and optimize their apps quickly and efficiently. Having fast and reliable Web apps is more critical than ever.
The IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7 includes several tools enhancements to increase developer productivity and in response to the overwhelming enthusiasm and feedback we have received from developers. Here are just a few of the many improvements:
- Console: IE11 makes it easier to debug WebGL content by mapping WebGL errors to the corresponding JavaScript location. Developer productivity is improved because primitives have been added to Intellisense. With IE11, developers can debug multi-threaded Web sites with full console access while targeting Web workers.
- Debugger: An improved file picker allows faster access to files in a complex Web project.
- DOM Explorer: With IE11, developers can tune Web sites more quickly by editing CSS property values and seeing those edits in the Live DOM without having to press the enter key
- Memory: To make it easier to narrow down the source of memory leaks, the F12 tool now identifies what operations were performed on allocated data between memory snapshots.
The IE11 Memory tool identifies which memory was allocated, de-allocated, or modified between snapshots, supporting faster memory tuning and diagnosis
- Networking: A new “always refresh from server” option creates reproduceable performance results while developers rapidly iterate to tune their site performance. The tool also includes new Search Next and Search Previous functions for analyzing complex network traces.
With IE11, the “always refresh from server” option supports iterative development by producing reproducible network performance results each time you reload the page
A Better Web Today, and Ahead
IE11 provides the best Web experience across the full range of Windows devices and screen sizes with mouse, keyboard, and especially touch. Try it out for yourself with Windows 8.1 RTM from MSDN, and if you are a Windows 7 user, download the IE11 Release Preview today. Virtual Machine images of IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7 will also be available on modern.ie later this week.
Now is the time for developers to confirm that your Web sites are ready for the hundreds of millions of Windows devices and customers moving to IE11 and for business customers to verify your readiness to deploy IE11. You can find a full list of new functionality available to developers in the IE11 Developer Guide here.
We look forward to your feedback. Please share your suggestions on Connect.
Sandeep Singhal and Rob Mauceri
Group Program Managers, Internet Explorer