Microsoft 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.

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.

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Microsoft Office 15 Technical Preview

It will never be possible to simplify productivity software as complex as Microsoft Office down to a Metro UI level, which is why it has been reported that the Office team at Microsoft aren’t keen to release a metro version.  However a new leaked series of screenshots published on The Verge seem to show that some Metro visual elements have indeed made the move from Windows.

This new cleaner interface is probably what we would expect but Microsoft have long worked to make Office easier to use and to make documents and features within it easier to find.

It is actually quite difficult to improve on Microsoft Office and this is a problem the company has faced for some years now.  For many people versions such as Office XP offered every feature they needed and many more consider Office 2003 to be the definitive version.  This being the last version before the introduction of the Ribbon interface in Office 2007.

The Ribbon still exists in Office 15 and is the one interface element that could port successfully to Windows 8′s new Metro UI.  In fact this blogger has been left wondering why it isn’t there already?  This alone could make for a reasonable version of Office for Metro.

With Office 15 Microsoft’s focus has been on productivity and helping people to get things done.  This is a much better approach then working on features.  As I mentioned earlier most people only use a tiny proportion of Office features and many people are content to use the stripped-down free Office 2010 Starter that ships with new Windows PCs or even the free Office web apps.  The ARM version of Windows 8 will also come with free desktop versions of Microsoft Office, though how usable they will be remains to be seen given the history Windows 7 has on tablets.

A public beta of Office 15, which does still not have a formal name, is expected to be released in the summer with a final version due at the end of the year or early next.

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