
IE10 for Windows 7 Globally Available - robin_reala
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/02/26/ie10-for-windows-7-globally-available-for-consumers-and-businesses.aspx
======
rrreese
One of the nicest things about Windows 8 is that each copy shipped is a
guaranteed person who is not using I.E 7/8/9.

Hopefully the companies just now upgrading to Windows 7 from XP will also
deploy I.E 10, but I'm not holding my breath. On the other hand maybe Windows
7 install media will come with I.E 10 incorporated into it. A man can dream.

~~~
vellum
Have web developers stopped supporting IE 7 yet? I remember a bunch of stories
about Apple/Google/etc. dropping IE 6 support a while ago.

~~~
bradleyjg
Google doesn't support officially support IE8 anymore, much less 7
([http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=3...](http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33864)).

For my company that's just not practical. We sell to schools and many of them
are still running XP.

~~~
EnderMB
It's important to note that Google's apps do not support legacy browsers any
more. Last time I checked on my VM, the main Google search engine works
perfectly fine in IE6.

------
AshleysBrain
Uhh... has anyone else been through that Minesweeper demo source code? There's
some weird stuff in there. See
[http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/Minesweeper/De...](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/Minesweeper/Demo.js)
\- in solve():

    
    
         //run some webkit sunspider code before solving a square
        webkitPartialBaseBenchmark();
    

In solvenextsquare():

    
    
        // run some webkit sunspider code a few times before continuing
        ...
         //not done solving, run more webkit sunspider, we hear that's what users want
    

It looks like the "benchmark" is to run bits of sunspider while running a
minesweeper game. I think this is kind of misleading, since it makes IE10 look
good at graphics and game rendering, when really it's running unrelated code.

~~~
Narkov
Are you sure this isn't just to introduce some artificial delay to make it
seem like it is "processing"? Imagine a slot machine that gave you a result in
10ms as opposed to rolling around for effect.

~~~
ChrisDDavis
Looks like they're just causing computation and JIT'ing in Chakra and V8
before moving to the next square. SunSpider is a terrible metric and they're
just poking fun. Pretty funny when you think about it.

------
mgkimsal
From <http://windows.microsoft.com/ie>

“Internet Explorer 10 takes the lead in browser privacy” —Geek.com

"Greatly enhanced and is simply delightful" —Gizmodo

“Flip ahead feature in Internet Explorer 10 is slick” —Tweet

Sources for the first two might actually be findable. "Tweet" as a front-page
endorsement? I'm not sure if they're trying to be funny or serious. That looks
more like something theonion.com would use.

~~~
psbp
I'd take a random tweet a lot more seriously than Gizmodo.

~~~
typicalrunt
A random tweet possibly made by a person working at Microsoft? Or maybe the
tweet doesn't actually exist.

I've seen companies (gaming companies, mostly) that display tweets as
endorsements for a game and then, when I try to find the tweet in Twitter,
that user mysteriously doesn't exist.

~~~
masklinn
> A random tweet possibly made by a person working at Microsoft? Or maybe the
> tweet doesn't actually exist.

Yes.

------
columbo
I wish IE would move away from big waterfall-esque versions-numbers and just
go to frequent bite sized automatic updates.

I understand the corporate need for browser version locking but that should be
the exception (Active Directory overriding) not the norm.

As an aside the latest versions of IE seem just fine. I no longer have any
skin in that game like I did in 2006-2010 where every computer I happened
across would instantly have FF installed and IE hidden.

~~~
geuis
IE 10 does automatic updates now independent from the OS update cycle.

~~~
mokash
Wow, that's actually pretty great. One of the biggest reasons why people are
still stuck on old versions of IE is because they don't want to run OS
upgrades. Making the upgrades independent of everything else is quite
sensible.

------
mgkimsal
" We will begin auto updating Windows 7 customers to IE10 in the weeks ahead,
starting today with customers running the IE10 Release Preview. "

Does this mean they'll try to update everyone on Windows 7 to IE10? I'm hoping
so, but don't know enough about the policies around MS updates to grok what
the impact will be in the coming weeks.

~~~
ygra
This has been the case for the previous few IE versions too. There is a tool
to block automatic deployment, mostly meant for corporate environments where
you probably first need to test all your intranet apps.

It won't reach those who don't update their Windows, though. And that's
probably a large part of users who are still on older IE versions.

------
ckarmann
Wait a minute. They are demonstrating the performance capabilities of IE with
a _minesweeper_ ?

~~~
kevingadd
The benchmark actually has a pretty reasonable workload: rendering, playing
sound effects, doing some basic flood-fill searching, etc. And it's much
faster in IE10 than Firefox for me, so...

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
With graphics-intensive things, I tend to find that IE9 and IE10 always come
out on top, followed by Chrome and Safari. Firefox is usually horribly slow.

~~~
skeletonjelly
Probably hardware acceleration

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/04/07/a-closer-
look-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/04/07/a-closer-look-at-
internet-explorer-9-hardware-acceleration-through-flying-images.aspx)

------
marijn
As an aside, does anyone know of a way to install this _alongside_ IE9 on a
testing machine? I should have started testing in IE10 months ago, but I'm
loath to set up a separate VM for every IE version.

~~~
crazygringo
Sorry, separate VM's are the only way.

But I use VirtualBox and take advantage of "snapshots" -- this way I have a
virtual hard drive with "XP" and separate snapshots with IE6, 7, and 8
installed. And I have a separate virtual hard drive with Windows 8 installed,
with separate snapshots for IE8, 9, and now 10.

This way you can save a LOT of disk space. And as a side benefit, once you set
your snapshot point, every time you switch between snapshots, you lose the VM
history since the snapshot, so you can start testing sites with a "clean"
version of IE everytime, uncluttered with cache, history, etc.

~~~
meaty
+1 for this. We just set up 20 of our people with this set up. With Hyper-V
built into Windows 8, it's actually quite pleasant (compared to dealing with
VMware).

------
Drakim
The newest versions of Chrome and Firefox has been working on Windows 7 for
quite some time already.

This is my major objection when people insist that "Internet Explorer has
caught up". It's true that the latest IE isn't light-years behind it's rivals
anymore, but it doesn't matter if people are forced to use older versions of
the browser because they don't constantly change their OS.

My family's laptop runs Windows 7. What's the point of talking about all the
advantages IE10 offers if they couldn't even use it?

------
Ingaz
I'm looking now side by side Chrome, IE10, Firefox.

IE10 is doing something weird with fonts: everything is bolded and blurred.

When I switch to Compatibility view - it looks better less blurred but strange
anyway.

~~~
mimiflynn
ClearType?

------
ecaron
I'm anxious to know if <http://www.crashie.com/> brings it down, it doesn't in
Win8 but I suspect Win7 is still vulnerable...

~~~
robododo
Doh! That site is blocked by the msft corp firewall. And here I was going to
test it for you.

~~~
ecaron
You can try my original version of the site - crashie8.com

------
Fletch137
Best thing about IE10? "Automatically install updates" is an option, checked
by default.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Man, what's up with Microsoft. Their button text isn't even vertically
centered, looks horrid.

<http://cl.ly/image/2F1k2E1F0e47>

------
mtgx
It took Microsoft 6 months to port one version of IE to another version of
Windows, while Chrome and Firefox are available not only on all versions of
Windows (XP included, which is 40% of the market), but also on Linux and Mac
OS. I thought Microsoft wanted to be taken seriously in the browser market?

~~~
ineedtosleep
Honestly, how is this a fair argument at all?

And also, to make it more complete let's add in Safari. Released (as a beta)
in 2003, with its first Windows version in 2007. The Windows version's last
(read: no more releases after this) release was Safari 5.[1]

Are we to take Apple seriously since they only support iOS and OSX?

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser)>

~~~
white_devil
Chrome, Firefox and Opera provide more than enough credibility to the
argument, even if Safari no longer works on Windows.

Besides, OS X has moved towards multi-touch gestures, for example, which
Safari supports. It makes sense that they'd have to give up on Windows.

~~~
dangrossman
Why? Most Windows devices being sold have touchscreens. Most Macs do not.

~~~
jrajav
I think you'd have trouble buying a Mac that doesn't have multitouch support
today, considering that Macbooks come with multitouch trackpads and iMacs come
with Magic Mouses (with desktop trackpads advertised alongside them).

~~~
dangrossman
If the trackpad counts, then virtually every Windows device supports
multitouch too. So why is this a reason for Apple to stop supporting Safari on
Windows? I don't think it has anything to do with gestures.

~~~
glasshead969
I think it has to do with webkit2 which safari uses. I think they haven't
ported webkit2 to work on windows.

------
daninfpj
One day they'll realize it wasn't worth it, like Opera did recently.

They should focus on perfect support of web standards already, instead of
trying to invent the next big thing.

------
jclos
IE10 just asked me to reboot my computer in order to complete my install. Did
we just go back in time and nobody told me?

~~~
SchizoDuckie
Hah, last time I tried to install IE10 it asked me to install a new operating
system. This is the future man!

------
melling
How long before IE10 hits the update channel for Windows 7 users? This should
be enough to send IE9 to low single digit and IE10 to double-digit market
share.

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-
monthly-201201...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-
monthly-201201-201301)

~~~
mbrubeck
IE9 auto-updates have been enabled for over a year, and IE8 has yet to fall to
a single-digit percentage of page views... (Of course, IE8 share is kept high
by the large number of users still on Windows XP, which won't be the case for
IE9.)

[http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Internet-Explorer-
Windows-U...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Internet-Explorer-Windows-
Update-Google-Chrome-Cloud-Print,14308.html)

~~~
melling
As you stated, it's because XP has almost 40% Windows market share so IE8 will
persist for quite some time.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)

It doesn't mean that most consumers won't take the IE10 upgrade. IE10 will be
double-digit by this time next year.

------
cseelus
Does anyone here know if and if yes, when the 'Internet Explorer Application
Compatibility VPC Images' ([http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=1157...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=11575)) will be updated?

~~~
btgeekboy
They've been newly posted on modern.ie: <http://www.modern.ie/en-
us/virtualization-tools> \- one for each version of IE from 6 to 10.

------
anoopmadhavn
The original link doesn't work. This does [http://windows.microsoft.com/en-
us/internet-explorer/downloa...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-
explorer/downloads/ie-10/worldwide-languages)

------
barredo
> the Do Not Track (DNT) signal is turned on in IE10 for Windows 7

Nice. But getting this flag on by default in most browsers will give the
advertisers the excuse to keep doing the same old practices even with DNT on.

~~~
lucian1900
That's simply not the point of DNT. It's entirely voluntary server side, so it
will never be useful if it's opt-out.

It should be opt-in, as the spec says. Microsoft made DNT useless on IE to get
some good PR.

------
apaprocki
It would be more useful to see Kraken / Octane scores[1] side-by-side with FF
and Chrome than touting SunSpider.

[1] <http://arewefastyet.com/>

~~~
ferongr
I did a single Octane run on each for my own amusement. Totally unscientific
methodology but the results are good enough for me. Chromium is v. 27.0.1424.0
rev 184630 (probably the latest build) from a zipfile (Google makes it
practically impossible to download zips of anything else).

IE still has to do a lot to catch up and the Windows 7 desktop version's GUI
is same old IE9 without any changes.

<http://ompldr.org/vaGxnZQ/browsers.png>

------
meaty
Still can't place an order with pizzahut.co.uk with IE10.

I raised this with them 4 months ago: both Pizza Hut and Microsoft and neither
give a shit about their customers.

~~~
nivla
Just tried after your seeing your comment. It throws out a useless generic
error "We are experiencing problems with our site...". I think it has
something to do with Cookie/ViewState validation to prevent automated attacks.

Fix: Clicked on the "Compatibility View" icon at the top on the browser and
the order went through fine.

~~~
meaty
Good call. For some reason I didn't get the compatibility view button for this
site. I noticed I don't get it for any sites. After some digging, it appears
something has turned it off on this box. I've turned it back on and it works
in compat view.

------
jpd750
Its about time MS woke up and smelled the web standards coffee. You're now
about 2 years behind - good job

------
Mahn
Now if only we could get every single IE user to upgrade, including IE7/8
users, that'd be perfect.

------
medikoo
Still with no support of __proto__ which means it's unusable for sophisticated
stuff.

------
chris_wot
Interesting... IE compatibility error occurs when logging into gmail.

------
dominic_cocch
I don't believe the download link for that is working just yet.

~~~
degobah
This works: <http://g.msn.com/1me10IE10ENUS/WOL_Win7_64Full>

~~~
brg1007
A link to a 32 bit version is possible ?

~~~
theklub
<http://g.msn.com/1me10IE10ENUS/WOL_Win7_32Full>

~~~
brg1007
I appreciate it! It seems it requires SP1 .

------
nasir
Lets employ new experts to fix the new layout problems.

------
barelon
In the meantime, IE6 is still used by 6% of users :-(

~~~
mscrivo
Only because of China, and to a lesser extent, India. Everywhere else, the
numbers are negligible.

~~~
EnderMB
It depends on your site. One of my clients in the legal sector in the UK and
Europe still gets 4-5% of its visitors visiting from IE6.

You are largely correct in the bigger picture, but it's still surprising how
popular it is in some areas.

------
fuzzythinker
No love for the poor Vista people?

------
ck2
Is there an easy way to run IE9 and IE10 without IEtester?

IEtester has started to crash on me lately.

~~~
mokash
I used BrowserStack on a trial basis and I absolutely loved it. Would pay for
access but my usage doesn't justify the cost.

------
OGinparadise
From their site:

 _“Incredibly fast” —Tweet_

OK, who sent that tweet ;) ?

It sneakily wanted me to make Bing and MSN defaults so I'll wait.

------
dschiptsov
What for?)

