New for Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 Update

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Here is what's new and updated for Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 8.1 Update. See Internet Explorer for Windows Phone 8.1 Update for a list of updates specific to Windows Phone 8.1 devices.

F12 developer tools

We continue to improve the F12 developer tools so that you can make your websites faster, as well as debug and test them more effectively. For Windows 8.1 Update, we've made these changes:

  • In the DOM Explorer, we've removed Trace, added a toggle to restyle an element if a pseudo class is active, and added a Changes tab that lists all changes you’ve made to the DOM structure and CSS styles in a given session with the DOM Explorer.
  • In the Console tool, you can select your execution target and run commands solely within the scope of an iframe. Additionally, developers can record messages in the Console at all times instead of only when the Console is open.
  • New in the Debugger tool is support for source maps, which map compiled JavaScript back to the original code it was written in. Also, you no longer have to set breakpoints every time you open the browser to debug a webpage. And Just my code lets you tell the debugger to ignore third-party code and instead debug only the code you write.
  • With our improvements to the UI Responsiveness tool, you can configure events displayed on the timeline button and filter to an event. Additionally, when a change is made to a style object using JavaScript, which requires the DOM to be updated, the individual changes and their times show as descendants of the scripting event that caused them.
  • Memory tool improvements, including the removal of color coding and the Operation column and the addition of the Scope menu. There's also support for ECMAScript 6 containers, which make it easier to inspect the details of memory use.
  • Enterprise Mode is added to IE11.
  • A more communicative Emulation panel to help you better understand why you're in the mode you're in.
  • There's also new keyboard shortcuts to help you get around more easily.

Internet Explorer WebGL renderer

For IE11, the Internet Explorer WebGL renderer will be updated to version 0.93, and includes support for:

  • More GLSL conformance (structs, inout, more constructors)
  • Standards derivatives extension
  • Floating point textures and compressed textures
  • GLSL point sizes
  • Non-float vertices

For the Windows 8.1 Update, we have updated documentation in these areas:

Enterprise Mode Internet Explorer

IT professionals can now use Group Policy settings to turn on Enterprise Mode for specific domains or webpages. Enterprise Mode provides Windows Internet Explorer 8 compatibility for webpages designed for Internet Explorer 8.

For more info about Enterprise Mode, see What is Enterprise Mode? on TechNet.

Also in this release