14 DAY TRIAL // Users who like to live on the bleeding edge of next generation software can already download a small piece of Windows 8, Microsoft’s upcoming Windows client, although no actual bits of the operating system have been released to the public. The Redmond company confirmed for some time now that Windows 8 will include Internet Explorer 10 as the default browser, and early development previews of IE10 have been available for download for quite some time now.
Microsoft offered the first Platform Preview of IE10 in April 2011, and 11 weeks later, Platform Preview 2 Build 10.0.1008.16421 is available for download and testing.
“IE10 Platform Preview 2, the same HTML5 engine seen in the recent public “Windows 8” demos, is now available for download. With this update, IE10 continues to deliver support for site-ready HTML5 technologies as well as improving performance,” revealed Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President, Internet Explorer.
Nothing changed in the actual purpose of the latest Platform Preview, meaning that IE10 PP2 is still just the core, the platform of the next iteration of IE designed for developers to test the under-the-hood evolution of Internet Explorer.
IE10 PP2 is not intended for end users’ everyday browsing needs, and should be deployed into testing environments rather than into production. In fact, users will find it very hard to use IE10 PP2 in its current state, especially since the Build lacks even the most basic elements of the UI that would qualify it as usable.
But this should not stop developers from testing IE10 PP2’s enhancements, especially around new support for features such as HTML5 Parser, HTML5 Sandbox, Web Workers, HTML5 Forms, Media Query Listerners etc.
“With the second Platform Preview, developers can start working with several site-ready HTML5 technologies for building beautiful, interactive Web applications with great performance and security,” Hachamovitch added.
Here is the gist of IE10 PP2’s evolution as highlighted by IE’s boss:
“• Beautiful and interactive Web applications are easier to deliver with support for several new technologies like CSS3 Positioned Floats, HTML5 Drag-drop, File Reader API, Media Query Listeners and initial support for HTML5 Forms.
“• HTML5 Application performance improves across the board, as well as the ability to deliver better performance with more efficient use of battery life with new technologies like Web Workers with Channel Messaging, Async script support, and others.
“• Web application security improves using the same markup with support for HTML5 Sandbox for iframe isolation.”
Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) Platform Preview 2 (PP2) Build 10.0.1008.16421 is available for download here.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1 is available for download here.