14 DAY TRIAL // Be honest, what would you rather have? Superior battery life, security, reliability and privacy or Adobe Flash and additional plug-pins, but an inferior overall user experience?
If you can’t answer, know that a move from Microsoft is designed to help you make a choice.
Internet Explorer 10, Windows 8’s default browser, comes in two flavors. Leveraging the same browsing engine, IE10 delivers both an application for the traditional Windows desktop and a new app for the new Metro experience in Windows 8.
And it appears that the Metro IE10 has no love for Flash, or any other plug-ins for that matter. Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president, Internet Explorer was a little shy of pointing the finger at Adobe and say that Flash is holding the web back.
“For the web to move forward and for consumers to get the most out of touch-first browsing, the Metro style browser in Windows 8 is as HTML5-only as possible, and plug-in free. The experience that plug-ins provide today is not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 web,” Hachamovitch explained.
Of course, at the same time the software giant is not putting all its IE eggs in the HTML5 basket, especially since the desktop version of IE10 will continue to play nice with Flash.
Those users that can’t do without IE and Flash will have the option to run both in tandem. And those Windows 8 customers preferring the new Metro experience will need to make do with swapping Flash for HTML5.
As far as I’m concerned, I doubt the fact that they’ll feel the difference or actually care. And, according to the IE boss, there are a range of advantages to a plug-in-less browsing experience that cannot be ignored.
“Running Metro style IE plug-in free improves battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers. Plug-ins were important early on in the web’s history. But the web has come a long way since then with HTML5. Providing compatibility with legacy plug-in technologies would detract from, rather than improve, the consumer experience of browsing in the Metro style UI,” Hachamovitch added.
Early adopters testing the Samsung Windows 8 Developer Preview PC have already been able to get a taste of the plug-in-less Metro IE10.
Users around the world can do the same by downloading and installing Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3).
From my point of view, dumping Flash is a move long overdue. I don’t expect this transition to be either smooth or easy, however. In fact, I’d say that Microsoft has quite a fight ahead of it, and that both developer and users will tend to resist change. It’s human nature after all.
Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) is available for download here.