Internet Explorer 11 Baked In

Microsoft announced a slew of new test cases to support the release of Internet Explorer 11 Preview on Windows 8.1. The company has updated the IE Testing Center to include new test cases for the standards supported in IE11, advancing browser interoperability. Acording to IE blog posted by Matt Gradwohl & Rajkumar Mohanram (IE Test Managers) and Dinesh Chandani (JavaScript Test Manager) “With the release of Internet Explorer 11 Preview as part of the Windows 8.1 Preview, we have updated the IE Testing Center to include new test cases for the standards supported in IE11, advancing browser interoperability. As Web developers are building for more browsers and devices, they want to be more efficient by using the same markup across their sites. Having clear tests of standards support in browsers helps drive clarity and completeness for both the Web community and browser vendors, leading to a more interoperable Web.” At its recent Build 2013 conference, Microsoft's Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president of Internet Explorer, gushed on about the new features in IE11 and how it is built for touch. He also compared the experience of IE11 on Windows 8.1 to that of other browsers on other devices. It looks like Internet Explorer 11 could be the best Internet Explorer yet by a long shot. By finally removing the evidence of past mistakes, Microsoft is ready to take a place amongst the standards-based browsers of today. Removing old features and adjusting the user-agent string to not be identified as Internet Explorer is a rather unique move to ensure that all sites that work today continue to work. If web applications are using feature detection instead of browser sniffing, then the code should just work with Internet Explorer 11. For servers that are sniffing the user-agent, users should still get a fully functional site because of Internet Explorer 11′s excellent standards support.