Internet Explorer 10 Release Date – Sooner Than Expected?

[javajolt]

Now that Internet Explorer 9 Final is out in the wild, we can start looking forward to the next version, Internet Explorer 10. How soon can we expect the new browser? Some release date speculations.

Update: Microsoft officially confirmed that Internet Explorer 10 will be released in 2012

Internet Explorer 10 Release Date Speculations

Current release cyle: Approx. 2 years
New release cycle: Possibly 1 year?*

Internet Explorer 8 Release Date: March 19, 2009
Internet Explorer 9 Release Date: March 14, 2011
Internet Explorer 10 Release Date: March 14, 2012 ?? (Speculation)

IE10 Release Date Sooner Than Later

*Microsoft previously confirmed that they want to significantly shorten the release cycle of their flagship browser Internet Explorer, which means that we should expect a new release within 24-36 months.

Microsoft heavily relies on their enterprise clients and can’t release any update without thorough testing. Nontheless, to survive in this highly competitve browser market, I am certain that they already have very concrete plans for Internet Explorer 10.

Here are some things we might be able to see in Internet Explorer 10.

Internet Explorer 10 – HTML6 + SVG + CSS4

The Internet Explorer 9 finally fully supports SVG (Scalable_Vector_Graphics). The next iteration of HTML, HTML6 should give developers new guidelines for using SVG in combination with CSS and HTML.

Patrick Dengler, Microsoft, Member of W3C SVG Working Group and SVG-CSS Task Force released a paper on this, which you can read here.

Internet Explorer 10 – WebGL Or DirectGL?

Programers at http://www.i-programmer.info/ are complaining that Internet Explorer 9 does not support WebGL yet. As web applications and web games become more and more important, Microsoft has to make sure there’s a web engine that is capable of delivering. It is possible that we might see a step into a certain direction in IE10, either towards WebGL or a Microsoft engine. Internet Explorer 10 could also rely on browser plugins like SilverLight for advanced web engines.

We will keep you posted if there are any concrete release date infos or announcements by Microsoft about the next Internet Explorer.

[Jake]

If Microsoft is smart about this they'll go with WebGL or their own solution that is used in the exact same way (but works better with DirectX.  And what's this about HTML6?  HTML5 isn't even done (or in high use) yet; clearly some priorities need to be shifted a bit.  Once all of HTML5 is finished and implemented (and a 64bit Internet Explorer is on par with the 32bit version), then there should be talk of going further.  IE9 has made excellent strides in progress, let's not get overzealous here though.

One little idea for IE10:

Let there be a panel buried somewhere in options that lets us pick and choose what comes up in the right-click menu.  This is a really small thing but I'd love to cut down the massive menu to just the few options I actually use.