Browsing in Windows 8 with IE10

Moving on from my last post on the Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview (have a read here: http://aokcompat.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/windows-8-consumer-preview-beta-is-here.html) I thought that I should comment on some of the changes included in the latest update to Internet Explorer 10.

There is a great new posting on the Building Windows 8 blog that details the recent changes in IE10. You can find out more here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/13/web-browsing-in-windows-8-consumer-preview-with-ie10.aspx

There are a large number of changes included in this preview update including;

• Full, independent composition enables responsive, fast and fluid behavior on real websites (including pages with fixed elements, nested scrolling regions, animations, and video)
• Back and forward swipe navigation with preview
• Double-tap to zoom in on content
• Fast back and forward navigation controls for mouse
• Mouse (CTRL+scroll wheel) and keyboard methods for quickly zooming in and out to mirror touch interactions
• Automatic domain suggestions for faster navigation and less typing
• Share charm support for URLs, snippets, images and selection with Mail and other apps
• Search charm with visual search suggestions
• Devices charm for printing, projecting, and playing video to external devices like TVs
• Plug-in free support: notifications for sites requiring activeX
• Background notifications for pinned sites and other tile improvements
• Jumplists for pinned sites
• InPrivate tabs that are easier to open
• Clean up tabs command, which quickly closes all but current tab

And, if you have not downloaded the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 and had a play with IE10, here is a small sample of the new "clean" UI and the embedded email feature;

If you are in a "developer" mindset you can read more about developing applications for IE10's Metro UI here:  go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=243079

And, for more general enquires about how to write applications (apps) for the new environment, the MSDN library has a great new collection of documents to reference, which can be found here: 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465413.aspx