Microsoft has announced that the version of Internet Explorer which runs in Windows 8 Metro will not support plug-ins. That means that, like iOS, it won’t play Flash content.
‘For the web to move forward and for consumers to get the most out of touch-first browsing, the Metro style browser in Windows 8 is as HTML5-only as possible, and plug-in free. The experience that plug-ins provide today is not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 web,’ said Dean Hachamovitch, who leads Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team, in a blog post.
Metro is the name of the touch-screen interface layer for Windows 8, designed for tablets. Hachamovitch noted that of the 97,000 sites his team examined, 62% of those that used Flash served the same content as HTML 5, allowing them to be viewed in their entirety on browsers which supported HTML 5 but not Flash.
‘Running Metro style IE plug-in free improves battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers…Providing compatibility with legacy plug-in technologies would detract from, rather than improve, the consumer experience of browsing in the Metro style UI,’ wrote Hachamovitch.
