IE Gets on With The Program, Releases Dev Channel

Doguhan Uluca

Web developers, rejoice! As of today Internet Explorer has a shiny new Developer Channel. This might just be the catalyst for developers around the DC metro area to get excited about IE again.

At a whopping 146 MB download, the developer channel allows Windows 7 and 8.1 users to use the latest and greatest version of IE side-by-side with their existing IE 8 installation. IT departments usually have trouble upgrading to the latest versions of IE, because internal applications that were developed along the years contain hacks to work around bugs that existed in earlier versions of IE.

This is a sad state of affairs that we are all too familiar with in the Washington DC Metro area. The cost of testing a new IE version with all internal applications is too great. When developers are forced to keep an ancient install of IE, they also tend to ignore it as a viable development platform.

Being able to install a modern version of IE side-by-side with an existing installation of IE might be the catalyst to get developers excited about IE again.

The new release has some worthwhile updates:

  • Support for WebDriver
  • Support for the Gamepad API
  • Updates to WebGL
  • Enhancements to the F12 Developer Tools

I highly recommend giving the new F12 developer tools a spin. It is not as anywhere near as fast as Chrome Dev Tools, but it has better features and this rapid iteration development cycle should resolve issues quickly over time.

Source: MSDN Blog