Microsoft Sneaks Windows on ARM into IE10 Demo

Posted 04/12/2011 at 2:19pm | by Ryan Whitwam

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Have you gotten around to installing Internet Explorer 9 yet? Well, you might want to get on that before it's already obsolete. Microsoft showed off the first platform preview of Internet Explorer 10 and the MIX developer conference today. If you fancy a look at the future of the browser, the preview can be downloaded from Microsoft's Test Drive site. But the real surprise came at the end, when the curtain dropped to reveal the Windows box was running on ARM.

The IE10 build was extremely early, but the focus at this stage appears to be on web standards. IE10 will support CSS Gradients and CSS3 Flexible Box Layout. There will also be enhanced HTML5 and JavaScript support. Microsoft took the opportunity to rag on Firefox 4 for not supporting the web demos they had working on IE10. Although, we would question the worth of such a comparison. 

At the end of the demo, Microsoft dropped a bombshell. The IE10 preview, and the entire Windows system they were using, was running on a 1GHz ARM CPU. Devious. This is the first we've heard about Windows on ARM since the CES announcement a few months back. Admittedly, the demo looked very smooth. It looks like Redmond is forging ahead faster than expected.