Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7

Internet Explorer 10 for developers

This topic of the Internet Explorer 10 Guide for Developers explains the differences between Internet Explorer 10 running on Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 10 running on Windows 8. All differences involve touch and pen input APIs.

IE 10 offers support for developers to create rich visual effects with CSS Text Shadow, CSS 3D Transforms and CSS3 Gradient. It enables more sophisticated and responsive page layouts with CSS3. Its IndexedDB and HTML5 Application Cache are among the features that enable the creation of better offline applications through local storage.

The browser also supports new technologies such as CSS3 Positioned Floats, HTML5 Drag-Drop, File Reader API and HTML5 Forms, all used for building nteractive Web applications.  

IE 10 loads web pages 20 percent faster than previous versions. That performance includes pages from the most popular sites for news, social networks, search and ecommerce. The new browser also offers faster interactivity and JavaScript performance while reducing CPU usage and improving battery life on mobile PCs.

This topic contains the following sections:

• UA string changes
• DOM events
• CSS properties
• DOM properties
• Simulating hover on touch-enabled devices
• Related topics

UA string changes

While Internet Explorer 10 introduces the "Touch" UA string token to identify touch-enabled systems, it's only generated when the user's system is running Windows 8 (or later). For instance, the following UA string will be transmitted on a touch-enabled system running Windows 8:

HTML

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Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0; Touch)

Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7 will never report a UA string with the "Touch" token. This is the user-agent string for Internet Explorer 10 running on Windows 7: 

HTML

Copy

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/6.0)

DOM events

Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7 handles touch and pen input as simulated mouse input for the following Document Object Model (DOM) events:

• MSPointerCancel
• MSPointerDown
• MSPointerMove
• MSPointerOut
• MSPointerOver
• MSPointerUp

Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7 will not fire any of the following DOM events:
Gesture events:

• MSGestureChange
• MSGestureEnd
• MSGestureHold
• MSGestureStart
• MSGestureTap

Manipulation state event:

• MSManipulationStateChanged

 

CSS properties

Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7 doesn't support these Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) properties:
Scrolling properties:

• -ms-overflow-style
• -ms-scroll-chaining
• -ms-scroll-limit
• -ms-scroll-limit-x-max
• -ms-scroll-limit-x-min
• -ms-scroll-limit-y-max
• -ms-scroll-limit-y-min
• -ms-scroll-rails
• -ms-scroll-translation

Zooming properties:

• -ms-content-zoom-chaining
• -msContentZoomFactor
• -ms-content-zooming
• -ms-content-zoom-limit
• -ms-content-zoom-limit-max
• -ms-content-zoom-limit-min

Touch behavior property:

• -ms-touch-action

Scroll snap points properties:

• -ms-scroll-snap-points-x
• -ms-scroll-snap-points-y
• -ms-scroll-snap-type
• -ms-scroll-snap-x
• -ms-scroll-snap-y

Zooming snap points properties:

• -ms-content-zoom-snap
• -ms-content-zoom-snap-points
• -ms-content-zoom-snap-type

 

DOM properties

In Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7, the following DOM touch-related APIs behave differently:

• The msMaxTouchPoints property always returns a value of "0" in Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7, regardless of the device's capabilities.
• The MSGesture object is undefined.

 

Simulating hover on touch-enabled devices

In Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8, you can use the aria-haspopup DOM property to simulate mouse hover functionality in touch-based scenarios. You can read more about this behavior in Using aria-haspopup to simulate hover on touch-enabled devices.
This use for aria-haspopup is not supported in Windows 7. Adding "aria-haspopup="true"" to an element doesn't simulate mouse hover in Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7. However, the aria-haspopup property is still supported for reporting accessibility information to assistive technologies.