Microsoft rules out Vista support for Internet Explorer 10

Microsoft has confirmed that Internet Explorer 10 will run only on Windows 7 platforms and above.

The company said that Windows Vista will not be supported by the latest browser during a preview of new IE10 features at the annual MIX developer conference earlier this week.

The admission follows a similar move made by Microsoft in not providing support for Windows XP on IE9.

That said, new versions of IE still supported XP for some 10 years until IE9. With the introduction of IE10, the browser will have only offered Vista users support for around half that time, given that Vista was released in 2007.

Microsoft's explanation is that Vista is not powerful enough to handle IE10, despite the fact that at the time of its launch, Vista was criticised for its high-specification hardware system requirements.

Windows Vista customers have a “great browsing experience with IE9”, the company said. 

“But, in building IE10, we are focused on continuing to drive the kind of innovation that only happens when you take advantage of the ongoing improvements in modern operating systems and modern hardware," the firm added.

At IE10’s preview earlier this week, Microsoft IE corporate vice president Dean Hachamovitch said the new browser version would “push the boundaries of what developers can do on the web even further”. 

But that would now not seem to be the case for those still running XP or Vista.

The company is talking up IE10’s adoption of new standards like HTML5, enhanced support for JavaScript and the CSS3 platform, and its growing integration with Microsoft Azure for media streaming components.

IE10 is due to ship in 2012, along with the upcoming Windows 8 OS.

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