Today, we’re excited to announce that Internet Explorer 11 Release Preview is now available for our customers using Windows 7! Building on IE10, Internet Explorer 11 is faster and advances the web platform on the hundreds of millions of devices running Windows 7, bringing standards like WebGL coupled with industry leading JavaScript performance.
In July, we released the IE11 Developer Preview for Windows 7. With that release, we brought IE11 to Windows 7 and encouraged developers to download the browser and test their sites. Today, we invite a broader audience of tech enthusiasts and consumers to download and experience IE11 for Windows 7. This release also signals the final preview release before general availability of IE11 for Windows 7 later this fall. IE11 for Windows 8.1 will coincide with Windows 8.1 GA (starting at 12:00am, October 18, in NZ) - making IE11 available to more than 50% of all desktops worldwide.
We are proud of the new Internet Explorer and how far the browser has come and we know that users will be impressed, too! In fact, we recently took to the streets to find out exactly what people think about Internet Explorer and found that when it comes to IE, there are still some misconceptions floating around out there. But as you’ll see, actually using IE11 and Windows 8.1 was enough to change a few minds.
In particular, people were impressed with how perfect for touch browsing IE is. With just one finger (or all five), users can reach out and touch the internet – snapping, zooming and swiping to a new page, at will. With our built-in page prediction and pre-rendering features, pages load nearly instantly with Flip Ahead or a swipe back. With Snap and press-to-call integration, users can easily resize windows and make calls from inside the browser, making the things you do every day – from browsing email and the web to calling for a reservation – easy and intuitive with IE11 on a Windows 8.1 touch device. In addition, IE11 supports up to 100 tabs per window and a favorites folder that syncs across your Windows 8.1 devices, making it easy to find your favorite websites, even from device to device.
For developers specifically, we are also releasing virtual images of the IE11 Release Preview for Windows 7 on our developer site modern.ie, this week, along with updates to the F12 developer tools. Regardless of platform, developers can now download and test the latest version of IE11 with their websites. Follow @IEDevChat to learn when the VMs are available.
I encourage all of our Windows 7 customers to download the IE11 Release Preview today. And, we look forward to bringing IE11 and Windows 8.1 to touch devices around the world in October!
Roger Capriotti
Senior Director, Internet Explorer Marketing
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