Microsoft offers first preview of Internet Explorer 10

Microsoft is offering users and developers an early look at the upcoming Internet Explorer 10 browser.

The company used its annual MIX developer conference to unveil a video demonstration of the IE10 preview, showing selected features of what Microsoft said is an early development phase for the new browser.

Microsoft said that IE10 will expand on early efforts to adopt new standards such as HTML5.

"With IE9 web sites can take advantage of the power of modern hardware and a modern operating system and deliver experiences that were not possible a year ago," said Microsoft IE corporate vice president Dean Hachamovitch.

"IE10 will push the boundaries of what developers can do on the web even further."

IE10 will also bring support for the CSS3 platform. The demonstration showed CSS3 features such as gradient displays for background images and the ability to deliver flexible multi-column layouts for web pages.

The preview comes just weeks after Microsoft delivered the general release of IE9. The browser has been received by industry pundits as a major update which can challenge competing browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox on newer operating systems.

Developers can obtain the IE10 Platform Preview release through Microsoft's Internet Explorer test drive site.

Additionally, Microsoft said that it will extend its Azure platform to include new media streaming components, and allow developers to connect with profile information from sites such as Google and Facebook.