Internet Explorer 10.0 Preview 2 (2.10.8103.0)

Internet Explorer has never been renowned for its standards support, and with good reason — the browser has always trailed far behind the competition. Today’s release of IE10 Platform Preview 2, though, showed that maybe, just maybe, things are beginning to change.

Major additions include support for web workers, an interesting technology that allows web applications to run complex JavaScripts in the background. And so lengthy tasks won’t have to leave you hanging any more: the application’s interface should still be able to respond to your clicks.

New support for iframe isolation and the HTML5 sandbox will help to harden the security of web applications, closing many security loopholes. The support for CSS3 Positioned Floats allows developers to easily create print-like layouts, where text can flow smoothly around images or other objects. And elsewhere you’ll find support for the HTML5 Parser, HTML5 Forms, channel messaging, Media Query Listeners and more.

We had no problems running it with IE9, though, and if you’re at all interested in Microsoft’s expanding web standards support then Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 2 is definitely worth a few minutes of your time. Keep in mind, though, that as with the first preview, it’s Windows 7-only (x86 or x64.)

Download: Internet Explorer 10.0 Preview 2 (2.10.8103.0)