Internet Explorer 10 debuted on Windows 8, and until now was only available to people who bought into Microsoft's big Windows redo. That changes today, as Redmond rolls out IE 10 for Windows 7 (download).

The update brings enormous changes to the browser, and mostly for the better. Internet Explorer 10 is not only faster and more stable than the current IE for Windows 7, version 9, it's also far more standards-compliant.

"Gone are the days when developers aspire to build for the lowest common denominator. The way the Web becomes like an application is when you take advantage of the latest hardware. We've stopped the era of trying to maximize for aggregate browser share," Ryan Gavin, general manager for Internet Explorer at Microsoft, said in a phone conversation with CNET last week.

Basically, what Gavin is saying is that hardware advances have made much of the modern Web possible, but he also acknowledged the role of Web developers. "One of the things that we hear from developers is that the depth and support across IE 10 means less time testing and more time developing," he said.

So, Windows 7 gets the new IE10 Chakra and JavaScript engines; the Touch API innovations that help drive the browser on Windows 8; the security measures built into IE10 -- at least, the ones that are not dependent on Windows 8; location bar autocomplete; and an on-by-default Do Not Track header.

The standards that IE 10 adheres to are nothing to sneeze at. Microsoft claims that its labs have found the new version of the browser to be 20 percent faster on Windows 7 than IE 9, and it supports a veritable alphabet soup of HTML5 and CSS3 improvements -- 60 percent more standards-compliant than IE 9, says Microsoft. These include CSS Text Shadow; CSS 3D Transforms; CSS3 Transitions and Animations; CSS3 Gradient; SVG Filter Effects; HTML5 Forms; input controls; validation; Web sockets; HTML5 Sandboxing; Web workers; HTML5 App Cache; File Reader API; and HTML5 Drag-drop, among other backend improvements.

In short, modern HTML5 sites that run smoothly in IE 10 on Windows 8, or the latest browsers from Chrome and Firefox, will now work properly in IE 10 on Windows 7.

By: DocMemory
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