Microsoft IE10 Preview 2 boasts HTML5 prowess

Microsoft seems to be upping the game and following the examples of Google and Mozilla by increasing the rapid release cycle for its browser. IE 9 has only been released for a short time and IE 10 is already up to ‘Preview 2’ and is available to download and as such Microsoft are already showing off the support for even more of HTML 5’s features, as well as a few extra tricks.

The main additions to Preview 2 is that IE10 now has support for HTML5’s web workes and more importantly drag and drop and File API. Web workers are where javascript processes are separate from the browser and so can run in the background which improves the performance and ensuring that the browser isn’t slowed down or crashed by a slow or buggy script.

Drag and drop uses the HTML5 set-up to allow page elements to be move around, much like desktop shortcuts. This makes it possible with the File API to drag files from the desktop into a web page. This is already offered by Chrome in Gmail but it is good to see IE catching up and even trying to overtake.

Microsoft have posted a number of demos on its IE test drive website to show off its new preview of IE 10. This also allows us to benchmark them against each other, although no two browsers have quite the same HTML5 support.

IE 10 won’t be fully launched for a while yet, especially as there are certainly a few bugs and tweaks to be made, there will also hopefully be some more new features yet to be added.

Microsoft is also, like Google, updating many of its services, including Hotmail and claims to have improved performance by up to 10x which means it might actually load on a normal internet connection. This is a staggered update although most Hotmail users should by now have it enabled, if not then certainly within the next day or so.

We are certainly glad to see Microsoft having to work hard to compete with Google as this really should bring out the best of the two companies.