Internet Explorer 10 drops Vista support

Microsoft starts countdown to IE10 rollout with first platform preview

At its MIX conference in Las Vegas yesterday, Microsoft unveiled the first platform preview of Internet Explorer 10 (IE10), the successor to its recently launched IE9 browser.

The company said the first platform preview is downloadable at the IE test drive site.

However, IE10 will only be supported on Windows 7 operating systems, and its successor, Windows 8, not Vista.

Demonstrating the browser, Microsoft's IE corporate vice president Dean Hachamovitch showed off new features such as cascading style sheet (CSS) 3 colour gradients on background images, CSS3 flexible box additions, and its new graphics hardware acceleration capabilities.

If you download the IE10 platform preview and try to run it on Windows 7, you will need updates to support the new graphics, media and printing functionality.

The latest figures (March 2011) on global browser market share from NetMarketShare show Internet Explorer's share at 55.9 per cent, down 0.85 per cent from February.

The biggest gain was made by Google Chrome, up 0.64 per cent from February's 10.9 per cent figure to 11.6 per cent.