14 DAY TRIAL // A new Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 10 is now available for download, restricting client support to Windows 8 Developer Preview and adding support for a wider array of HTML5 technologies.
The new Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4 is meant to offer developers the possibility to deliver richer Web applications that also pack increased performance capabilities.
Internet Explorer 10 already comes with hardware acceleration capabilities for a series of technologies that include SVG, CSS3 transforms and animations, which translate into faster rendering when compared to other browsers.
One thing that both end-users and developers alike should keep in mind when considering taking IE10 for a spin is that the latest Platform Preview is compatible only with the Windows 8 Developer Preview (x86 or x64) Operating System.
On computers running under Windows 7, only Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 2 can be downloaded and installed.
“Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4 is the fourth public preview of the IE10 web platform,” Microsoft explains.
“This preview release includes support for major platform features like Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), improvements to the Web Worker developer experience, File API, top level Quirks mode emulation and more.”
IE10 standard and quirk modes will lack the Internet Explorer-proprietary Vector Markup Language (VML), which means that developers should start using standards-based Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) instead.
However, VML will be kept in IE10 legacy modes 5, 7, 8, and 9, but will have inferior performance when compared to SVG.
Also, IE10’s standards and quirks mode will lack Internet Explorer-proprietary DirectX-based visual filters and transitions, and developers should consider using standard based alternatives, which will provide increased performance in legacy modes 5, 7, 8, and 9, where both will be available.
The new Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4 also enables developers to start working with additional site-ready HTML5 technologies, some of which include:
- Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for safe use of XMLHttpRequest across domains. - File API Writer support for blobBuilder allowing manipulation of large binary objects in script in the browser. - Support for JavaScript typed arrays for efficient storage and manipulation of typed data. - CSS user-select property to control how end-users select elements in a Web page or application. - Support for HTML5 video text captioning, including time-code, placement, and captioning file formats.
IE10 Preview 4 brings along updated quirks modes, meant to prove more consistent and interoperable with quirks modes in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.
One of the main features in the updated quirks mode is the support for quirks for page layout, which results in the ability to use newer standards features, including HTML5 elements for audio, video, canvas, and more.
Developers interested in learning more on what the new Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4 brings along should head over to Microsoft’s website here for that. The complete changelog for the release, including known issues, are available here.
Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4 is available for download on Softpedia here.
The Windows 8 Developer Preview is available for download here.
