Use Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview Engine Within Internet Explorer 9’s Interface [How-To]

Shortly after Internet Explorer 9 was released back in March, Microsoft began releasing Platform Previews of Internet Explorer 10. These “previews” don’t include a user interface beyond a menu bar with a few essential options and therefore can’t be used as a standard browser, yet there’s a way to bring the engine from the Internet Explorer 10 developer previews to Internet Explorer 9’s user interface.

IE9

This method isn’t risky and can be reversed at any time, since it doesn’t actually require any system files to be modified. Yet, you’re advised to have some experience at customizing software before you proceed. In order to follow these steps, you’ll simply need to have Internet Explorer 9 (get it here) and Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview (get it here).

Before you begin, please make sure no Internet Explorer-related processes are running by terminating all iexplore.exe instances from the Task Manager. Once you’ve made sure you’ve got both of those installed, just follow the steps below.

Step 1: Create a folder on your desktop, or wherever you’d like to place the modified Internet Explorer 9, and name it IE10_PP2.

Step 2: Navigate to the folder where Internet Explorer is installed: if you’re using a 64-bit version of Windows, said directory should be \Program Files\Internet Explorer\; on 32-bit systems head to \Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\. Once you’re there, copy iexplore.exe to the folder you created in Step 1.

Warning: make sure you copy the file, not move it, otherwise you’ll render Internet Explorer unusable!

Step 3: from \Program Files\ or \Program Files (x86), depending on your version of Windows, navigate over to Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview and copy the whole iepreview.exe.local subfolder to the IE10_PP2 folder you created earlier, and then rename it to iexplore.exe.local. Make sure you copy it as a whole folder, not just its contents. If you’ve done everything right, the folder you’ve created should look something like this:

You should be ready to try it out now, but first make once again sure that there are no instances of Internet Explorer running, otherwise this won’t work: in doubt, just restart your system. Once you’re ready, just launch iexplore.exe from the folder you created in the steps above. Remember that this tweak simply updated Internet Explorer’s engine. The browser you’re running is still Internet Explorer 9,  yet it now processes pages just like the latest Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview.

(via TheNextWeb)

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