Microsoft (News – Alert) has released a sneak preview of Internet Explorer 11 – which includes many new features – as the company also releases a Windows 8.1 preview.

The company announced, too, how Internet Explorer 11 provides improved touch, quicker page loads, continual browsing across Windows devices, and new F12 developer tools.

Internet Explorer 11 also features “live tiles.”

“This means that ‘pinned tiles’ will now show up with live previews of the website inside,” Digital Trends said in a review. “These previews will update as the website design changes, giving you a firsthand preview of the site before you even click on it.”

The new Internet Explorer has HTML5 with a quicker and more responsive touch as well.

“We built IE to be fast, responsive, and battery efficient, especially with touch,” according to a statement from Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president at Internet Explorer.

In addition, Internet Explorer 11 provides side-by-side browsing. It lets users employ favorite sites and Windows Store apps at the same time.

Internet Explorer 11 has “Snap Mode,” too, “allowing you to snap two browser windows side by side, allowing you to perform tasks on one website or program while looking at another,” Digital Trends said.

It is also able to auto-recognize phone numbers on Web pages and users can tap to call someone.

Internet Explorer 11 can access tabs across different devices, as well.

It is noteworthy how Internet Explorer 11 has what Microsoft calls “stick to your finger” touch responsiveness.

Another plus is how image decoding extends the battery life.

The address bar is “touch optimized,” which lets users get to “most frequently used sites quickly, always fresh and up to date with the browsing you do across all your devices,” Microsoft said.

There are site suggestions, Bing search suggestions, and suggested Windows Store apps, as well.

One interesting feature is how users can have up to 100 tabs per window. “IE 11 will automatically allocate memory to each tab, and will actually pause tabs that haven’t been used in a while,” Digital Trends said. “This means you won’t have to sit and wait for 10 minutes after you’ve opened 30 tabs. This has the potential to make online shopping and surfing a much more streamlined experience.”

In addition, there is touch-optimized UI, “with swipe for forward and back gestures, with page prediction and pre-rendering, [that make going to next page and going back instant,” Microsoft said.

Also, Internet Explorer 11 lets users “edit and prioritize bookmarks directly in the browser UI,” Digital Trends said. “You will also be able to ‘highlight’ certain bookmarks, by using customized photos in order to more accurately recall them. This is especially useful if you find yourself with a massive list of bookmarked sites.”

In addition, Internet Explorer 11 offers support for HTML 5 video.

“We optimized the IE11 browsing engine for real-world sites to download and display fast, and be highly responsive to touch,” Hachamovitch said. “Developers can build next generation experiences with professional-quality Web video, and hyper-fast 2D and 3D Web technologies that make the most of the underlying hardware. IE11 supports real world standards and compatibility, and new developer tools enable developers to build high-performance Web experiences on Windows devices.”

Also, Microsoft has said that Internet Explorer 11 will support SPDY, a Google (News – Alert)-backed offering which increases the speed for downloading, TMCnet reported. Also, Microsoft announced that it will support WebGL in Internet Explorer 11. WebGL will be available on all devices running Internet Explorer 11, TMCnet adds.

Windows 8.1’s official version won’t be offered until later this year – perhaps in time for the winter holidays. A prerelease version is now available for developers and anyone else who wants it.

The changes clean up some of the problems found with Windows 8, which was released Oct. 26, but still keep many of its benefits, TMCnet said.