Just a few weeks ago Windows 8.1 preview was launched with its new version of Internet Explorer. Today Microsoft released a Developer Preview variation of IE 11 for Windows 7 computers. What has been changed?
First and foremost, Microsoft's browser is supposed to be faster and more efficient. GPU acceleration will be employed to enable quick JPEG decoding, WebGL support, and text rendering. Chakra - which is JavaScript's engine in IE - has been optimized, and to bring you even faster browsing HTML5 is now prefetched and prerendered.
Some of the modifications are doubtful; for example, you can now watch movies full-screen thanks to the HTML Full Screen API implemented in the browser, but you need to have Windows 8.1 to completely enjoy watching, since Media Source Extensions are not available in this version. Without MSE, the browser will not optimize video bitrates to your Internet connection to bring smoother playback.
There are also some small, but welcome changes. IE 11 allows you to download a video onto your hard drive without creating caches on the disk. Seems tiny? Yes, but such an amendment is useful to laptop users (saving some battery life), especially those using SSDs (limiting the number of writings).
Other modifications include better support for CSS and HTML5 properties to ensure improved display along with amended and redesigned developer's tools.
You can try this browser in a VirtualBox or other virtual machine. This version is only available for Windows 7 and Windows 2008, so if you have Windows 8 you need to upgrade it to 8.1 first.
