IE10 Platform Preview 2, the same HTML5 engine seen in the recent public “Windows 8” demos, is now available for download. With this update, IE10 continues to deliver support for site-ready HTML5 technologies as well as improving performance.

With the second Platform Preview, you can start working with several site-ready HTML5 technologies for building beautiful, interactive Web applications with great performance and security. You can read the full list here in the IE10 developer guide:

• Beautiful and interactive Web applications are easier to deliver with support for several new technologies like CSS3 Positioned Floats, HTML5 Drag-drop, File Reader API, Media Query Listeners and initial support for HTML5 Forms.
• HTML5 Application performance improves across the board, as well as the ability to deliver better performance with more efficient use of battery life with new technologies like Web Workers with Channel Messaging, Async script support, and others.
• Web application security improves using the same markup with support for HTML5 Sandbox for iframe isolation.

IE10 Platform Preview 2 is now available for download at http://ietestdrive.com along with a bunch of new demos. And check out the Channel 9 videos and the engineering team's blog.

Just a small taste of what is new:

• Positioned Floats
• CSS3 Gradients (on all image types)
• CSS stylesheet limit lifted
• CSSOM Floating Point Value support
• Improved hit testing APIs
• Media Query Listeners
• HTML5: Support for async attribute on script elements
• HTML5 Drag and Drop
• HTML5 File API
• HTML5 Sandbox
• HTML5 Web Workers
• Web Performance APIs:
  • requestAnimationFrame
  • Page Visibility API
  • setImmediate

Also, be sure to check out the latest Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview Guide for Developers with all the new features from both previews of Internet Explorer 10.

Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation