Windows 8 Secrets: Internet Explorer 10 will Ship with Adobe Flash
With tech enthusiast web sites from around the world starting to leak Windows 8 Release Preview screenshots, your intrepid “Windows 8 Secrets” co-authors offer a bit of color commentary about what you're seeing and how these features will really work.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's Windows 8 coverage had already moved from early platform plans to an IE10 feature rundown in the Consumer Preview. The Release Preview leaks add a compatibility detail with direct consequences for web content that depends on Adobe's runtime.
The story also travelled across PC World, Ars Technica, ZDNet, Engadget, CNET and other outlets, indicating that browser compatibility was a salient part of the Windows 8 release-preview narrative.
First-order effects
- Windows 8 users of IE10 retain access to Flash-based sites and media without separately sourcing a browser plug-in.
- Adobe keeps its runtime integrated with a major Windows browser release, preserving a distribution path to IE10 users.
Second-order effects
- Publishers and web developers with Flash-dependent experiences face less immediate pressure to rebuild those experiences solely for IE10 compatibility.
- Microsoft positions IE10 as a browser that can carry existing web content into Windows 8, rather than requiring sites to change before users upgrade.
Third-order effects
- Bundling a legacy web runtime into the browser makes operating-system releases a key gatekeeper for web-platform compatibility, concentrating migration pressure around browser vendors' support decisions.
The trend: Windows 8 illustrates how browser integration choices can slow or accelerate the web's shift away from proprietary runtimes by determining which installed users retain compatibility.