IE10 preview download now; beta release date September

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By Richi Jennings. April 13, 2011.

Updated: The IE10 Platform Preview is available to download now. And it looks like Microsoft's (MSFT) beta release date will be September. Yes, even though IE9 is only just rolling out to Windows users, Internet Explorer 10 is already out of the blocks. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers feel dizzy from the new release reality.

Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention Poor Polyphemus...

Paul Krill filters the news:

The browser offers CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets) capabilities and accelerated graphics. ... Company officials demonstrated the IE10 platform preview ... during a presentation Wednesday at the Mix11 conference in Las Vegas ... featuring HTML5 video, CSS3 gradients, and 3D transforms. ... [It] also boasted faster SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), CSS3 Flexible Box Layout capabilities, and ECMAscript 5 Strict language improvements.

...

Updates to the IE10 platform preview are planned for every eight to 12 weeks. ... Despite's Microsoft's emphasis on HTML5 ... a beta release of Silverlight 5 also is due to be released at the conference.  
M0RE

Gavin Clarke orbits while appearing stationary:

The company posted its IE10 Platform Preview build on Tuesday. ... It seems likely that an IE10 beta will be delivered in September. ... [That] should also sync well with Windows 8 work going on elsewhere in Sinfosky's division.

...

The fact that Microsoft is talking about the next version of IE so soon after a new release is unprecedented. ... But IE continues to lose market share. IE9 lost the 24-hour download race to Firefox 4.0. ... The fastest growing browser today is Google's Chrome. ... Meanwhile, Mozilla Corporation is speeding up delivery of Firefox.  
M0RE

Wait, we're supposed to believe that Dean Hachamovitch blogs?

The IE10 preview continues what IE9’s first preview began a year ago. ... We’re about three weeks into development of IE10, and ... we want to start engaging the development community now.

...

Many of us share the goal of a more powerful, native, and robust Web. We want actual progress ... toward that goal. ... The cadence of browser releases reflects how often technologies are updated, not how much the technologies actually advance ... to robustness. ... What matters is when consumers and businesses take delivery of robust, production-ready browsers that use the new technology.  
M0RE

Sean Hollister notices the notable:

That copy of IE10 (and by association, Windows) was running on a 1GHz ARM chip! Yes, Windows on ARM. ... NVIDIA just tweeted that the mysterious ARM chip is in fact a Tegra 2.  
M0RE

Joe Wilcox plays the game:

Hachamovitch ... demonstrated numerous live sites supporting HTML5, such as Pac-Man, to show off IE9's support for hardware acceleration. ... To make the point, Hachamovitch brought up an HTML5 paintball site to show the difference between Chrome and IE9. The latter was faster obviously.

...

Microsoft sees supporting web standards that make sites run more like native applications as the future developers should embrace.  
M0RE

Meanwhile, Jonathan Allen ponders what Microsoft means by "Native HTML":

[It's] an attempt to embrace HTML5 as a way of building native Windows applications. ... [It] will probably take them several more iterations to complete. ... One needs to start by looking at what makes a “native” application different from a web application.

...

A web enabled document editor needs ...

  • Associate file types with Web Apps 
  • Recent Items 
  • Start Menu Integration 
  • Persistent Caching of Web Apps. ...
While saving files ... is easy enough, opening them is quite painful ... the ability to associate file types with a web app is the first missing feature. ... The final item is the real challenge. ... A web app needs to be able to run without access to the server. ... With the enhanced capabilities and performance of modern JavaScript, much of [the] server-side processing can be shifted to the client. ... And the browser cache can certainly be ... enhanced to prevent “installed web apps” from being prematurely removed.  
M0RE

And Finally...

Poor Polyphemus

 
 
Don't miss out on IT Blogwatch:

Richi Jennings, your humble blogwatcher
  Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. He's also the creator and main author of Computerworld's IT Blogwatch -- for which he has won American Society of Business Publication Editors and Jesse H. Neal awards on behalf of Computerworld, plus The Long View. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itbw@richij.com.

You can also read Richi's full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

Copyright © 2011 IDG Communications, Inc.

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