Microsoft has announced the release of Internet Explorer Developer Channel to give developers an early look in on the various features of Internet Explorer. The IE Developer Channel provides a version of the browser for Developer’s to explore and test upcoming features and web standards support under development. The release of this fully functioning browser is a part of Microsoft’s initiative to establish a strong and collaborative relationship with the developers.
Internet Explorer Developer Channel
The Developer Channel is available for both Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 SP1 customers running Internet Explorer 11. The channel runs independently of the user’s copy of IE, allowing programmers to test the new browser features without disrupting their current browser setup.
New features added to F12 Developer tools
The program brings many improvements to the F12 developer tools, reports Microsoft:
- An enhanced debugging experience.
- Richer analysis capabilities throughout the Memory and UI Responsiveness profilers. This also support the further reduction of noise through multi-dimensional timeline filter and increases the semantic value of the data being reported.
- An improved navigation experience that provides more keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+[ and ctrl + ]), as well as new header notifications.
The Internet Explorer Developer Channel also comes with support for the emerging WebDriver standard through which Web developers can write tests to automate Web browsers to test their sites. It’s a programmable remote control for developing complex user scenarios and running them in an automated fashion in your Web site and browser.
The Internet Explorer Developer Channel comes with support of the emerging Gamepad API standard that lets you use JavaScript to add gamepad support to your Web apps and games. Also included are Improvements in WebGL performance and additional support for instancing extension, 16-bit textures, GLSL built in variables, and triangle fans.
The release of Internet Explorer Developer Channel could be seen as Microsoft’s deliberate move to move towards a community-centric, rapid-release models which are already adopted by its browsers competitors like Google and Mozilla.
