On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer (IE) 11 Release Preview is now available for customers using Windows 7. Building on IE10, Internet Explorer 11 is faster and advances the Web platform on the hundreds of millions of devices running Windows 7, bringing standards like WebGL coupled with industry-leading JavaScript performance.
The release also signals the final preview release before general availability of IE11 for Windows 7 later this fall. IE11 for Windows 8.1, on the other hand, will coincide with Windows 8.1 general availability on Oct. 18 – making IE11 available to more than 50 percent of all desktops worldwide.
“We are proud of the new Internet Explorer and how far the browser has come and we know that users will be impressed, too,” writes Roger Capriotti in an Exploring IE blog post. “In fact, we recently took to the streets to find out exactly what people think about Internet Explorer and found that when it comes to IE, there are still some misconceptions floating around out there. But as you’ll see [in the video above], actually using IE11 and Windows 8.1 was enough to change a few minds.”
In particular, people were impressed with how perfect for touch browsing IE11 is. With just one finger (or all five), users can reach out and touch the Internet – snapping, zooming and swiping to new pages at will.
“With our built-in page prediction and pre-rendering features, pages load nearly instantly with Flip Ahead or a swipe back,” Capriotti writes. “With Snap and press-to-call integration, users can easily resize windows and make calls from inside the browser, making the things you do every day – from browsing email and the Web to calling for a reservation – easy and intuitive with IE11 on a Windows 8.1 touch device.”
If you’re a developer, note that Microsoft is also releasing virtual images of the IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7 on the developer site modern.ie this week, along with updates to the F12 developer tools. Regardless of platform, developers can now download and test the latest version of IE11 with their websites. Follow @IEDevChat to learn when the virtual images are available.
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Steve Clarke
Microsoft News Center Staff