Just four weeks after the release of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft Corp. unveiled the first platform preview of Internet Explorer 10 at MIX11. In his keynote, Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president of Internet Explorer, outlined how the next version of Microsoft’s industry–leading Web browser builds on the performance breakthroughs and the deep native HTML5 support delivered in Internet Explorer 9. With this investment, Microsoft is leading the adoption of HTML5 with a long–term commitment to the standards process.

“The only native experience of HTML5 on the Web today is on Windows 7 with Internet Explorer 9,” Hachamovitch said. “With Internet Explorer 9, websites can take advantage of the power of modern hardware and a modern operating system and deliver experiences that were not possible a year ago. Internet Explorer 10 will push the boundaries of what developers can do on the Web even further.”

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.