IE10 in the Windows 8 Release Preview supports the W3C Candidate Recommendation for CSS Gradients in their unprefixed form. IE10 also supports the older CSS Gradients syntax from the W3C Working Draft of 17 February 2011 behind the vendor prefix -ms- . This blog post describes the differences between the old and new syntax and behavior and provides some insight into the change. Key Changes Should you choose to simplify your CSS by making the move from vendor-prefixed CSS3 Gradients...

The Windows 8 Release Preview includes a new power-optimized, touch-friendly Adobe Flash Player. Adobe Flash content on compatible Web sites will now play in Metro style IE10. Metro style IE10 with Flash on Windows 8 enables people to see more of the Web working with high quality, especially compared with the experience in other touch-first or tablet experiences. On Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10 on the desktop and Metro style IE use the same integrated Adobe Flash Player with no need to download...

Based on your feedback, we’ve improved how sites can build advanced touch experiences using gesture events in IE10 on the Windows 8 Release Preview . Earlier we wrote about first steps Web developers should take to make sure their sites are touch-friendly and how to build new experiences that work well across input devices, including multi-touch, using hardware agnostic pointer events. This post covers IE10’s gesture events . An example of gesture events is the Browser Surface Test Drive...

IE10 in the Windows 8 Release Preview supports the width and height properties of the W3C Working Draft CSS Device Adaptation . This gives Web developers a simple tool to control automatic content scaling across various window dimensions. In particular, it enables Web sites to easily adapt to Windows 8 Metro style browser in the snapped view and portrait orientation. Auto-Scaling and When It Is Used Most websites have prioritized optimization for a 1024 pixel wide window. This ensures...

In an earlier post we discussed JavaScript performance improvements introduced in IE10. Today we published Bubbles , originally inspired by Alex Gavriolov’s simulation BubbleMark , to explore some of these advances. The current version has been greatly expanded to take advantage of the new features of the Web platform and includes characteristics common to HTML5 games. In this post we peek under the hood to see how the demo is constructed and examine the main factors that affect its performance...

Thursday, May 31, 2012, we delivered the Windows 8 Release Preview and the Sixth IE10 Platform Preview . Windows 8 includes one HTML5 browsing engine that powers both browsing experiences (Metro style and desktop) as well as Metro style applications that use HTML5 and JavaScript. The release preview represents a major revision of the same modern JavaScript engine, Chakra, which first debuted with IE9. With each platform preview we make progress against our goals to create an engine that delivers...

The June 2012 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer is now available via Windows Update . This security update resolves one publicly disclosed and twelve privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are...

Pinned Sites in Windows 8 describes how site developers can provide a site icon (favicon) for their sites’ pinned site tiles on the Windows 8 Start screen. Many of you shared feedback that you’d like to provide higher-resolution visuals to better depict your site brand on your users’ pinned site tiles. In Windows 8 Release Preview , you can to do that: we’ve added the ability for you to provide a PNG tile image and specify the tile’s background color. Example Below...

As part of Windows 8 Release Preview planning, we reviewed all the W3C draft standards supported by IE10. In particular, we looked for those specifications that: Are stable, that is, there were no recent additions or changes and no renaming or major changes are expected; Are supported by at least two browsers other than IE10; Are interoperable across all these browsers for the features’ core use cases; Are already used on the Web, including in their unprefixed form; and Reached...

Internet Explorer’s commitment to achieving the goal of consistent “same markup, same results” across browsers is evidenced, in part, by IE9’s and IE10’s addition of CSS3 features that enable Web sites to move to standards-based features for their graphical effects. Earlier we wrote that Internet Explorer’s legacy visual filters and transitions , first introduced in IE4, are not supported in IE10’s Standards and Quirks modes and noted their inferior performance compared to their standards...

With IE10 in Windows 8, we reimagined the browser. We designed and built IE10 to be the best way to experience the full Web on Windows. Consumers can now enjoy more touch-friendly, fast and fluid Web applications with the updated IE10 engine included in the Windows Release Preview . This sixth Platform Preview of IE10 delivers improved performance and support for touch-first HTML5, as well as a new power-optimized, touch-friendly Adobe Flash Player that enables content on compatible Web sites to...

Sharing a link to a Web page is a common activity on the PC, and it gets better with IE10 on Windows 8. One of the new features on Windows 8 is the Share charm, which allows you to seamlessly send content between apps on your PC. Previously, if you wanted to share an interesting article with your friend, or post a funny picture on your blog, you’d copy the link from the address bar, switch to a different site or app, and then paste it. Now, with the Windows 8 Share charm, you can share directly...

IE10 in Windows 8 Consumer Preview includes support for Error.stack , which enables Web developers to diagnose and correct bugs faster, especially those that are difficult to reproduce. Developers can build amazing apps with the capabilities of Web platforms that power today’s modern browsers. In Windows 8, we expose that power through both Internet Explorer 10 and Metro style apps in JavaScript . The increasing power and complexity of these apps means developers need better tools like Error.stack...

We've talked about how the transition to a plug-in free Web is happening today. Lots of Web browsing happens on devices that simply don’t support plug-ins. Web sites that use plug-ins need to understand what their customers experience when browsing plug-in free . In case you missed it, check out Rey Bango’s blog post where he lays out clear guidance for developers on building cross-browser plugin-free experiences and addressing issues like cross-browser CSS, media playback, and touch. -- John...

In Windows 8 Consumer Preview , IE10 enables fast and fluid multi-touch experiences on the Web. Most sites work fine with touch in IE10 with no changes to the site. This post provides four simple guidelines to ensure your customers who use touch can most effectively use your site. We’ve written before about how new input devices and touch screens make the Web more fun, interactive, and immersive. We’ve also talked about the importance of ensuring a no compromise browsing experience...

The April 2012 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer is now available via Windows Update . This security update resolves five privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user visits a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user...

The Windows 8 Start screen is the best place to find and stay connected to all your favorite apps and content. App tiles are alive with activity and show you fresh and tailored content so you know what’s new in your world. We’ve written about Internet Explorer 10’s Metro style browsing experience on Windows 8. This post describes in detail IE10’s pinned sites and their availability on the Windows 8 Start screen—complete with site-centric visuals and badge notifications...

IE10 is a new browsing experience built in lockstep with Windows 8 to give you all the advantages that Metro style applications offer. We built that experience by extending IE’s underlying architecture to provide a fast, fully hardware accelerated browsing engine with strong security and support for HTML5 and other Web standards. IE10 also includes a desktop experience for when you are using desktop tools and wish to continue using them in your existing workflows. Following last September...

This week begins face to face meetings at the IETF on how to approach HTTP 2.0 and improve the Internet. How the industry moves forward together on the next version of HTTP – how every application and service on the Web communicates today – can have a positive impact on user experience, operational and environmental costs, and even the battery life of the devices you carry around. As part of this discussion of HTTP 2.0, Microsoft will submit to the IETF a proposal for “HTTP Speed...

The Internet Explorer team along with the broader Web community has continued to make improvements to the IndexedDB specification. IndexedDB is a W3C Working Draft that enables you to store, search, and retrieve data on the user's device, even when Internet connectivity is disabled .  IndexedDB is a feature of the Web platform shared by IE10 and Metro style apps in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. This blog post describes changes we made in Internet Explorer 10 Consumer preview to implement the...

In Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Server Beta, IE10 and all other Microsoft WebSocket client and server features now support the final version of the IETF WebSocket Protocol . In addition, IE10 implements the W3C WebSocket API Candidate Recommendation. WebSockets are stable and ready for developers to start creating innovative applications and services. This post provides a simple introduction to the W3C WebSocket API and its underlying WebSocket protocol . The updated Flipbook demo uses the latest...

Today we updated on HTML5 Labs the previously released Media Capture prototype to better align it to the latest W3C editor draft . The HTML Media Capture working draft continues to evolve alongside related discussions in the Web RTC workgroup, and we have blogged previously about why this feature is important and how our Media Capture prototype implemented it in the past. Because the API surface for this feature is far from final, we are supporting a simple capture...

Another holiday brings us another opportunity to celebrate it with you. We’re pleased to mark the transition into spring as well as St. Patrick’s Day with Irish Spring , a new hardware-accelerated HTML5 experience that shows the benefits of Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 Consumer Preview . Irish Spring incorporates HTML5 canvas and CSS gradients, opacity, transforms, and animation along with HTML5 audio. With the Windows Consumer Preview and IE10’s support for multi-touch...

Every release of Internet Explorer includes new security enhancements to help keep you safe as you browse the Internet. The new Enhanced Protected Mode in Internet Explorer 10 helps keep your data safe even if an attacker has exploited a vulnerability in the browser or one of its add-ons. There is no single thing that can keep you secure by itself, so we pursue multiple strategies, including: Protection from socially-engineered attacks There are a variety of miscreants that want to steal...

Internet Explorer 10 introduces significant improvements in memory protections to help make vulnerabilities harder to exploit, helping to keep users safe on the sometimes-hostile Web. These improvements will increase the difficulty and development cost of exploits, making life harder for the bad guys. While socially-engineered malware is the primary way that bad guys get their code onto victims’ computers, that is largely because browser vulnerabilities have become less common and harder...