Internet Explorer 10 is touch-friendly, loves Metro

Microsoft is continuing to show off their latest features in its upcoming Interent Explorer web browser, where they've displayed the touch-friendly Metro interface, as well as the web browsers enhanced security. The trend of Google's Chrome browser, is to reduce the browsers interface so that it takes up less and less of the screen, which frees up more space for the Web content itself, which personally, I love.

Windows 8's Metro design does the same thing, where it puts much more focus on the content itself. Metro Internet Explorer 10 is a continuation of this train of thought, where there's no visible interface at all, which leaves only the Web page itself visible. The app bar, is displayed by swiping from the top or bottom of the screen, or right-clicking the mouse, contains the tabs, address bar, and more.

The Metro-infused version of Internet Explorer, according to Ars Technica, feels "slick" and comfortable using both touch and mouse and keyboard interaction. The tile-based favorites view and tab thumbnails are both said to be good, too. Security-wise, Internet Explorer 10 will sport a new Enhanced Protected Mode. Protected Mode is the name that Microsoft gives to its sandboxing technique. It was introduced into Internet Explorer 7 on Vista, where it creates a separate, low-privilege process for running JavaScript and rendering HTML.

This low-privilege process has no write access to most of the file system, so that even if a security flaw makes its way into the browser, the attacker has no access to write malware to the actual disk. Enhanced Protected Mode goes further, by reducing the rights that each low-privilege process has, they don't have write permission to the file system, but they also lose read permission. All of this protection does have a cost: virtually all current plugins are now broken.

If Enhanced Protection Mode is enabled, then any attempt to use an incompatible plugin will result in a prompt to disable the mode for that tab, which will then let the plugin work.