Microsoft Unveils First Internet Explorer 10 Preview

Microsoft has released the first platform preview for Internet Explorer 10, less than a month after the launch its much-hyped Internet Explorer 9 browser.

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The technology giant unveiled IE10 earlier today at its Mix11 developer conference in Las Vegas. The preview, which is now available for download, isn’t a reinvention of the browser (Microsoft’s goal with IE9), but rather a continuation of the work it did in hardware acceleration, HTML5 and CSS3.

“IE10 builds on full hardware acceleration and continues our focus on site-ready Web-standards,” said Dean Hachamovitch, IE’s corporate vice president, in an announcement. “This combination enables developers to deliver the best performance for their customers on Windows while using the same, Web-standard markup across browsers.”

Hachamovitch said that Microsoft is only three weeks into IE10′s development, but it’s already comfortable showing off what it has built so far. On stage at the Mix11 conference, he demonstrated some of its capabilities against Google’s Chrome browser and revealed that IE10 will include additional support for CSS3, including Gradients and the Flexible Box layout. Additional IE10 previews will be rolling out every eight to 12 weeks.

Microsoft released IE9 on March 14 after 40 million downloads during its beta. IE9 has been well received: At its peak, IE9 was downloaded 27 times per second. Still, Microsoft knew that it couldn’t rest on its laurels. Mozilla’s Firefox 4 browser was downloaded 5,000 times per minute during its first day of availability, and Google Chrome is already at version 11.