If you are a fan of Internet Explorer 10 in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, you have had a busy day. A few hours ago, the official Internet Explorer developer blog posted an update on the new memory protection features in IE 10. Now the official Windows 8 developer blog has also issued a new update, and this time it"s all about the Metro web browsing experience in IE 10.
The blog post, written by Microsoft"s Rob Mauceri, goes over several aspects of the Metro user interface as it pertains to IE 10. He states:
The Metro style browser delivers on touch browsing, not just browsing on a touch device. You can feel it in the stick-to-your-finger responsiveness of the touch support for panning and zooming, swiping back and forward for page navigation, and double tapping to zoom in and out of content. Context menus and form controls are optimized for touch, and the browser responds fluidly to device orientation (scaling smoothly to landscape and portrait screen layouts) and “snapping” Windows 8 applications next to it.
Mauceri points out a number of features in the Metro version of IE 10. One is the navigation tiles that are a more graphical representation of your frequently visited web sites. The tiles can also be pinned to show the ones that have been placed on Windows 8"s Start screen in the Metro version of bookmarks. If a person searches for a web site in the search bar, the tiles are filtered to show you the best search results based on your web surfing history, web site favorites and more.
The new IE10 Metro tabs interface show up on top of the screen in Windows 8 with the last 10 tabs used and can be cleaned up fast with just one command. The IE 10 navigation bar in Metro appears on the bottom of the screen and only when a user needs it. It has the traditional commands you see in other web browsers such as back, forward, and refresh. It can also be used to pin favorite web sites on Windows 8"s Start screen.
New Metro IE 10 features include Snap, which re-sizes the web browser window in order for the user to access other apps such as email, messaging and more. The Charms user interface design is on the right side of the screen and has Windows 8"s Start button along with Search, Share, Settings and other features.
Pinning web sites to the Start screen should be one of the most used features for IE 10 owners. Mauceri states:
The tiles for pinned sites reflect the site"s color and icon. With IE10, sites can provide background notifications for new messages and other account activity on the website. The site can also program additional commands that appear in IE’s navigation bar in a touch-friendly way, the same way that sites can program jumplists for IE on the desktop.
IE 10 on Windows 8 is also supposed to be safer to use with Mauceri stating that it adds to a number of safety features that were introduced in IE 9, including SmartScreen, XSS filtering, Application Reputation, InPrivate browsing and more. He adds:
IE10 takes advantage of Windows 8 to provide “Enhanced Protected mode” for better isolation of website content in each tab. InPrivate browsing is also extended to run per-tab, so you can run some pages InPrivate, leaving no history, cookies, or cached data.
Image via Microsoft