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Internet Explorer 10 Final Release - Another Tale From The Future

By Codrut Nistor

Posted in Software

Since I am sure that some of you may quickly come to the conclusion that I hate Microsoft Internet Explorer or even both of them let me start this article by saying that basically I don't have anything against any of them. If I sometimes hate them I have my reasons. Well we'll get through some of the reasons that made me hate IE so far but also the ones that make me still use it from time to time in a KISS manner ending all with what I expect to see in Internet Explorer 10 - we'll just keep it short and simple - no benchmarks no inside information no other "reliable" sources than my own thoughts. Ready or not here we go...

First we'll quickly take a look at IE 8 and IE 9 the last two final releases of Microsoft's notorious Web browser. Why both of them? Well... a lot of people are still using Windows XP that's why!

Internet Explorer 8 - best Web browser for Windows XP users no doubt about it! Any problems with that? Oh wait - "best Web browser made by Microsoft for Windows XP users" sounds much better right? Good... so let's add these: I still use IE 8 because IE 9 doesn't work on Windows XP quickly opening just a page is much faster than when using most other browsers for this (including Opera and Firefox even Chrome if I think about it a little) safety is not as crappy as it was back in the IE 6/7 days some of the sites I really have to use only work properly on IE... I think that's enough about it right?

Internet Explorer 9 - a significant improvement over the previous version in all areas IE 9 also suffers from a major flaw - while all its competitors still support Windows XP it does not. Other than that I think IE 9 is a pretty solid browser fastest IE release ever yet behind all its competitors in terms of speed. It works like a charm with Windows 7 - memory management looks security features video hardware acceleration capabilities - all make it much better than any other IE so far but...

... let's take a look at what I'd like to see as Firefox 10 features (some of them are things I wouldn't like to see but I expect them to happen - or have been confirmed already):

- Memory usage improved even more. I don't think IE ever was a major memory hog at least not for the usage scenarios only including the average Joe/Jane. Windows XP is a mess when it comes to memory management while Windows 7 is not.

- Bookmarks/saved credentials syncing??? Being able to do that across multiple devices would be awesome!

- Speed will increase but still not enough to catch the others. Well I guess you can't have it all...

- ... but I can also bet that IE 10 will be optimized for Windows 8 tablets - maybe even have a version specially for this kind of gadgets. Unfortunately I can't imagine Microsoft making IE 10 available for the Android platform. On the other hand I think that would be a pretty cool thing to see! ;)

- As far as I heard so far it seems Microsoft doesn't want to see Firefox's version number speeding around so I am sure that IE 11 to 15 will all arrive in less time than it took for IE 7 to get its successor...

In case you were expecting some breaking news I am sorry if you are disappointed. In the end all I can say is that I have no doubt that Internet Explorer 10 will be better than its predecessor. If Microsoft manages to make it an interesting choice for Windows 8 tablets users that's pretty cool but to make it a really interesting product they should leave pride aside and support Android. Hey even a step back into Apple's world wouldn't be a bad idea but I think we shouldn't raise the barrier that high... ;)