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Computerworld - Just over a year after it debuted the first preview for the just-shipped Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), Microsoft on Tuesday kicked off its next browser, IE10.

The first look at IE10, however, runs only on Windows 7.

In a keynote at Microsoft's annual MIX Web developers conference, Dean Hachamovitch, the executive who leads the IE group, demonstrated the first Platform Preview of IE10.

Microsoft also made the preview available for download Tuesday.

The quick shift to IE10 -- Hachamovitch said that engineers started work on the new browser three weeks ago, just a week after the launch of IE9 -- didn't surprise Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC.

"They don't want to be in the three- or even two-year cycle," said Hilwa, referring to the 29 months between IE7 and IE8, and the 24 months between IE8 and IE9. "They got the memo on that. It doesn't work for browsers, or for any piece of software for that matter."

Hilwa said the message he heard at MIX was that Microsoft was stepping up the release cadence of IE, and to expect IE10 much sooner than past browsers. "We'll see [IE10] around the one-year mark from now, plus or minus a few months," he said.

That would put the release of IE10 in the spring of 2012, perhaps as early as April.

"They're shooting for at least annual releases," Hilwa said.

The change would be major for Microsoft, and put it in closer competition with the faster pace of Google's Chrome, and most recently, Mozilla's Firefox. Google issues a new version of Chrome every six-to-eight weeks, while the Mozilla is shifting its Firefox browser to an eight-to-12 week schedule.

Firefox 5, for example, is scheduled to ship in late June, while Chrome 11, the next in the "stable" line of Google's browsers, should appear before the end of the month.