Microsoft releases IE11 Preview with better touch performance and faster page load times

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) Preview during its scheduled Build developer conference at San Francisco yesterday. IE11, as per a post on the IE Blog boasts of features like better touch performance, faster page load times, “completely rebuilt” F12 developer tools and a browsing experience that Microsoft claims works across all Windows devices. “We built IE to be fast, responsive, and battery efficient, especially with touch,” says Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President, Internet Explorer.

Among the IE11 features we liked is the ability to continue the browsing from one Windows device to the next with support for accessing tabs open across devices. The tabs are kept in sync through the cloud with SkyDrive. With their tabs in sync, users can move between their Windows devices knowing that their tabs, favorites, history, user names/passwords will remain up to date. The side-by-side browsing feature on IE11 is interesting too and it allows users to use their Favorite sites and Windows Store apps together.

Browsing with sites side-by-side

Hachamovitch explains that touch performance has been an area of focus in their work on IE11. In his detailed post he explains that the browser produces 'stick to your finger' touch responsiveness using the GPU to enable gestures like panning, zooming and swiping. GPU-offloaded image decoding also enhances battery life. In addition to that, the browser pre-fetches content in the background to speed up browsing.

The address bar is touch-optimised too, and Hachamovitch says that users can quickly get to sites that they go to frequently on the new browser. IE11 shows up site suggestions, including direct links to specific sections within a site, Bing search suggestions and suggested apps on the Windows Store. The browser also gives quick responses to queries on the address bar about weather and stock prices.

It is also possible to have up to 100 tabs open per window. In addition to making optimum use of memory and battery, the independent tab suspension feature lets users quickly switch tabs as per their requirement and close them when not needed. IE11 also offers full support for Favorite sites with folders and custom tile pictures. These stay in sync with the desktop and across all Windows 8.1 PCs.

In addition to these, the UI itself is touch-optimised and responds to gestures like swipe for forward and back. It also includes features like page prediction and pre-rendering. “IE11 and Windows 8.1 enables developers and consumers to have the best of both worlds – amazing next generation applications that are optimised for Windows devices, and first class experience of Web sites together with apps that is great across the full range of Windows PCs,” the post says.

The new browser can be tried only on systems running Windows 8.1 Preview.