First Look of New Released Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview

Microsoft caught us entirely by surprise when it released the first platform preview of IE10 yesterday at MIX11. Let’s take a close first look at Microsoft’s new browser.

I recently speculated quite a bit what Microsoft might or might not do about Google and Mozilla’s upgrade pace. It has been no secret that fast updates, whether they deliver new features or not, translate into more market share. Microsoft repeatedly mentioned that it has no intentions to follow Google, as frequent updates do not necessarily deliver more value. That, of course, is only true in a legacy scenario, as those quick updates for have delivered more new browser features last year than Microsoft delivered over the past 10 years.

IE10 This & That

IE10 PP1 (download) arrives four weeks after the final release of IE9, or about 1 year after IE9 PP1. Also, Microsoft said that it will update the previews every 8 – 12 weeks, which is slower than Google and Mozilla – as Google delivers full new versions every 6 weeks and Mozilla delivers full new versions every 18 weeks. The IE10 release notes mention that there will be at least four platform previews. If our math is correct, then we will see IE10 PP4 in 32 weeks In November 2011 at the earliest and January 2012 at the latest. Add a beta and release candidate to the plan and you get a March 2012 release date of the final, if there will be just four PPs. This seems to be a reasonable assumption, as Microsoft appears to have cut its release schedule of 2 years for IE8 and IE9 in half .

The release notes of IE10 PP1, which, by the way, announces itself as version 9.0.6, also state that the software requires Windows 7 and it does not run with Vista. PP4 will even require an update for Windows 7 and we could speculate what update that may be. Our guess is as good as yours at this point, so we’ll stay away from that. But we do expect IE10 to be released in the time frame of Windows 8 to coincide with the launch of the Windows App Store, which is likely to target the hardware acceleration features of IE10.

If you want to try IE10 on Windows 7, please remember that this is a PP version and does not support many basic features of a browser – and does not include an URL bar. Microsoft also noted plenty of issues if the browser is run next to IE8. It may crash IE8 and show error messages. Expect this browser not to work in several scenarios and do not use it for critical tasks. From the perspective of Browserscope, IE10 PP1 has less features and less general support than IE9. It is a preview and should be treated as such.

New Features

The main changes are under the hood. This preview includes support for CSS3 flexbox, CSS3 grid alignment, CSS3 multi-column, CSS3 gradients on background-images and ECMAScript5 Strict Mode. If we were picky, we could say that the changes aren’t enough to justify a new version of IE10 and reflect exactly the criticism of Microsoft that those quick browser updates aren’t meaningful enough.

There are a bunch of new demonstrations on the IEtestdrive website that are designed to showcase the hardware acceleration capabilities in IE10 as well as the CSS3 features that only work in IE10 and not IE9. There is a good chance that you will be underwhelmed, even if Microsoft considers the changes as progress and “not just activity.”

We have looked quickly at some performance-relevant websites, but could not determine any meaningful differences to IE9. There is not a lot  to see. It is very much work in progress and we would expect to see more substantial feature updates later this year. For now, it is just an update.

Of course, our concern is Microsoft’s decision to drop Windows Vista support. here is a quote from the release blog post: “Browsers that compromise (by spreading across too many OSes and OS versions) face challenges. For example, building a new browser for the ten-year old version of Windows that came with IE6 didn’t make sense to us because of the limitations of its graphics and security architectures. Others have dropped support on Windows XP for functionality that we think is fundamental to performance. As Windows 7 usage exceeds Windows XP’s in more and more countries (link), the sense in building for the future of the Web rather than the past is clear.”

Our thought is that IE10 will deeply integrate with Windows 8 and attach to the Windows App store. If it does not, Microsoft will have to think about a bunch of other features to keep the development pace of IE9 going. By March 2012, we are expecting a totally different Chrome 20 and Firefox 8. the cloud computing race will largely be decided by the dominant browser maker and Microsoft needs a flexible and innovative browser to keep up with its rivals. A few CSS3 features just don’t cut it.

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