IE10: Fast, Fluid, Perfect for Touch, and Available Now for Windows 7
In Windows 8, we reimagined the browser with IE10. We designed and built IE10 to be the best way to experience the Web on Windows. With the IE10 Release Preview for Windows 7 consumers can now enjoy a fast and fluid Web with the updated IE10 engine on their Windows 7 devices. The release preview of IE10 on Windows 7 is available for download today.
IE10 on Windows 8 brings an entirely new browsing experience and set of capabilities to the Web, such as a new touch first browsing experience and full screen UI for your sites, security improvements that offer the best protection against the most common threats on the Web, improved performance, and support for the HTML5 and CSS3 standards developers need.
With this release preview, Windows 7 customers receive all of the performance, security, and under-hood changes that enable a stellar Web experience. IE10 Release Preview also sends the "Do Not Track" signal to Web sites by default to help consumers protect their privacy.
Fast and Fluid
Browser performance is critical for running today’s modern Web sites and applications. IE10 is all around fast, bringing improved hardware acceleration and Chakra JavaScript engine to Windows 7. We continue to focus on improving real world site performance and third party recognition of IE's leadership in this area has been consistent.
You can experience IE10’s leading performance first hand with new demos on the IE Test Drive site with examples of hardware accelerated rendering in the Aston Martin 3D visualization for high frame rates, and interactivity, touch, and media with Audio Explosion.
The Mandelbrot test drive is another example of how IE10 runs real world sites fast, particularly sites with computationally intensive JavaScript and graphics. In this demo you can drill into detailed views of the Mandelbrot set and see how long it takes to calculate the view and how many iterations are calculated per second.
This image shows one of the presets calculated using the Mandelbrot Explorer test drive demo.
The chart below shows the result of Mandelbrot calculations for 21 presets run in IE10, Chrome 23, and Firefox 16, showing IE10 on average is over twice as fast as Chrome and about 20% faster than Firefox. Each calculation was run on identical hardware, a single Samsung Series 9 laptop with an Intel® Core™ i5-2537M CPU @ 1.40 Ghz with 4GB of memory running 64-bit Windows 7. You can see the full data results from this comparison here.
This chart shows the results of 21 Mandelbrot preset calculations run in IE10, Chrome 23, and Firefox 16 on Samsung Series 9 laptop with an Intel® Core™ i5-2537M CPU @ 1.40 Ghz with 4GB of memory running 64-bit Windows 7
More Interoperable HTML5 Support
IE10 shines on Windows 8, and with this release preview, IE10 brings the same powerful HTML5 engine to Windows 7 customers:
Rich Visual Effects: CSS Text Shadow, CSS 3D Transforms, CSS3 Transitions and Animations, CSS3 Gradient, SVG Filter Effects
Sophisticated Page Layouts: CSS3 for publication quality page layouts and application UI (CSS3 grid, flexbox, multi-column, positioned floats, regions, and hyphenation), HTML5 Forms, input controls, and validation
Enhanced Web Programming Model: Better offline applications through local storage with IndexedDB and the HTML5 Application Cache; Web Sockets, HTML5 History, Async scripts, HTML5 File APIs, HTML5 Drag-drop, HTML5 Sandboxing, Web workers, ES5 Strict mode support.
Developers building on these capabilities in Windows 8 can run the same markup with the same performance and capabilities on Windows 7. You can find a full list of new functionality available to developers in the IE10 developer guide here.
Commitment to Privacy with "Do Not Track" on By Default
IE10 continues our focus on helping consumers protect their privacy, which started in IE9 with features such as Tracking Protection. In Windows 8, "Do Not Track" (DNT) is "on" in the Express Settings at time of set-up, and IE10 in Windows 7 also sends a "Do Not Track" signal to Web sites by default. Microsoft's customers have been clear that they want more control over how their personal information is used online. While "Do Not Track" is a technology solution that’s still in its formative stages, it holds the promise of giving people greater choice and control of their privacy as they browse the Web. IE10 Windows 7 customers are notified of the "Do Not Track" setting via IE10's first run welcome page, including instructions for how they can turn off "Do Not Track" should they wish.
We believe that meeting customer expectations by putting people first is the best way to grow online commerce and the Internet economy. Our commitment is to provide Windows customers an experience that is "private by default" in an era when so much user data is collected online. IE10 is the first browser to send a "Do Not Track" (DNT) signal by default.
A Better Web Today, and Ahead
The opportunities continue for HTML5 to make both Web sites and applications better. Those opportunities are exciting for everyone on the Web.
IE10 is an entirely new IE. It's fast, fluid and perfect for touch. Try it out for yourself on a Windows 8 device or, if you are a Windows 7 user, download the preview today. We look forward to continued engagement with the developer community and your feedback on Connect.
-- Rob Mauceri, Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer