Will Internet Explorer 10 ever be available for Windows 7 Users?

IE 10 Metro version, not the desktop version will not have plugin support at least not out of the box. The reason is simple. Those plugins will not function on ARM processors. aka., ARM based tablets. Its like the 32bit and 64bit versions on IE now.

This seems like the most reliable current info on IE10's probable release date.

Internet Explorer 10

Anticipated release date: Between Q3 2012 and early 2013

The next version of the Microsoft Web browser is currently on its fourth platform preview version (the third platform preview was included in the Windows 8 developer preview released at BUILD). Following Microsoft's tendency to tie its browser releases with desktop OS releases, the final version of Internet Explorer 10 is expected to ship with Windows 8, sometime between the third quarter of 2012 and early 2013.

Internet Explorer 10 is designed to run on both Windows 8 and its predecessor, Windows 7. However, it appears that Windows Vista will not support it, which could be due to Windows Vista being scheduled to lose "mainstream support" this coming April.

Building on the HTML5 capabilities in Internet Explorer 9, which was released as a final version in early 2011, the latest platform preview for Internet Explorer 10 includes support for text captions in HTML5-encoded video streams, a feature Microsoft calls "track captioning." This latest version also features improved rendering speeds.

Internet Explorer 10 will be touch-enabled on Windows 8. When running on the Windows 8 classic "desktop" interface, Internet Explorer 10 will support Silverlight 5, the latest and possibly last version of the Microsoft framework for developing rich Internet applications. However, Microsoft said that Internet Explorer 10 on the new Metro interface in Windows 8 will not support browser plug-ins, including Silverlight.

The 2012 Microsoft Product Roadmap -- Redmond Channel Partner

Regarding IE10 beta release I found this via links from IE10's test drive site.
Its about the release date of Windows 8 beta
"The Windows 8 Beta along with the Windows Store for Beta will be made available late February 2012 and available to all Beta users"
Windows 8 Beta and Store Preview announcement - MSDN UK Team blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

For the most part, I cannot get excited about browser releases. To me, a browser is just a browser.

Perhaps this is because betas and alphas and dev versions have been made much more popular by Chrome, and now that Firefox has basically the same thing, anyone can try out new browser features whenever the hell they want xD

To me, updating a browser such as IE to a new major version is a reason to get excited because apart from security updates, IE doesn't really get much updates between major versions at all...
To an extent I consider it the same as purchasing a brand new version of Windows itself, lol.

Exactly.

Now you know how I feel when I use Firefox at work, on WinXP lol

flegma said:

@stve What do you mean by the last version of Silverlight? Is Microsoft abandoning this technology?

I should have put quotes around it , the paragraph was copied from the link.
A couple of links about Silverlight
Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted | ZDNet

Microsoft Releases Silverlight 5 -- Redmond Channel Partner