Microsoft released a developers preview of Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7 today, which include some new and revised F12 developer tools and features. In a new post, Microsoft goes over the new tools, along with some of the new features in IE11 itself.
The blog post states that the revamped F12 tools include new UI Responsiveness and Memory Profiling tools designed to help website developers fix performance issues. Also, there are some new Live DOM Explorer and CSS inspection tools that assist developers with how a website renders a webpage, along with its layout. The JavaScript debugging tool has been improved so it starts without the need to refresh a page.
Microsoft has already launched what it calls the F12 Adventure site that is designed to work with IE to give some tutorials for developers in working with the new tools.
In addition to the new dev tools, the blog post also talks about some of the new features put into IE11 itself. Microsoft states:
IE11 is the first browser to implement the W3C Resource Priorities standard enabling developers to specify which parts of the page are important and need to be loaded first. IE11 also supports HTML5 link prefetching and pre-rendering, so developers can help the browser anticipate where you’ll go next and get those pages ready. On Windows 8.1, IE11 also supports the SPDY network protocol, the precursor to the HTTP 2.0 specification, enabling some sites to be downloaded faster.
The JavaScript engine that Microsoft uses for IE, Chakra, has also received some optimizations for IE11 for Windows 7. Microsoft says that the WebKit SunSpider shows that JavaScript performance is four percent better on IE11 in Windows 7 compared to IE10 and as much as 30 percent faster compared to Chrome 28, Firefox 22 and Opera 15.
Microsoft says it has added some new API support for IE11, while at the same time changing or removing previous APIs from the browser. Examples of the new editions include Canvas 2D enhancements, CSS border-image support, Device fixed positioning, mutation observers and others. Microsoft has also improved the built-in text editor in IE11, added support for pasting images and improved support for touch keyboards and international characters, including rich text layouts for East Asian languages.
The blog also talks about the previously announced support for WebGL in IE11, along with supporting HTML5 video without the need for a plugin. Netflix has already launched its HTML5 website with IE11 support and Microsoft has also launched its own IE11 video test drive site; Microsoft has already detailed the changes it has made to its modern.IE tools earlier today.
Source: Microsoft | Images via Microsoft
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