Spartan–The New Browser for W10

Published on December 30, 2014 By DrJBHL In Personal Computing

Rumor is rife…MS abandoning the venerable IE? Untinkable? Not so much.

Mary Jo Foley…a very well respected author and reporter reported yesterday in her blog at zdnet that “big changes” are coming for IE. In fact, it appears that while the search engine itself will remain, it will be lighter, faster (as in ‘dekluged’) and be far more like Chrome and Firefox.

In fact, MS is building a new browser…called “Spartan” (good choice of name!). The brand name of IE is being ditched because of all the negatives tied to its past (IE6-8). It will still use the Chakra JavaScript engine (so there will be vulnerabilities) and MS’s Trident rendering and not WebKit.

“How it works, per our internal sources, is that if a page calls for IE to render in a compatibility mode, this will cause the older, more resource intensive Trident engine to display the page. But, if the webpage does not call for compatibility mode, then the updated IE12 Trident engine will handle all of the lifting…because of the fork, the modern component of the IE12 should be lightweight compared to what we have now in IE11, at least, that's the hope because all of the legacy base has been removed.” – Neowin

Also, there will be two varieties, apparently: One for desktops and another for mobile devices.

It’s entirely possible that W10 Technical Preview (new version to be presented 1/21/15) will come with IE11 and Spartan, according to Foley. It’s also possible that it will only be shown at the 1/21 presentation.

It’s also very possible that Spartan will be ported to Android and iOS down the line since much of MS’s software has been ported to these OSs.

Source:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-is-building-a-new-browser-as-part-of-its-windows-10-push/

http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-explorer-12-big-changes-are-coming-to-trident

Comments

benmanns

on Dec 30, 2014

Ok, I do not mind the name they could even call it something like "Smurf", marketing wise it makes sense to give it, a badass name like Spartan
As long as I will be able to choose between protocols I will be fine
Hopefully they will be right on the spot with the design choice this time and with a little luck we will be able to test it early on a CP.

WOM

on Dec 30, 2014

HUM, as in anything else, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

neone6

on Dec 30, 2014

benmanns

reply 1

Hopefully they will be right on the spot with the design choice this time

Ya think ??

BlackSmokeDMax

on Dec 30, 2014

benmanns

reply 1

Ok, I do not mind the name they could even call it something like "Smurf", marketing wise it makes sense to give it, a badass name like Spartan

I'm guessing they were going for less of the badass and more of the "stripped down, plain, utilitarian" meaning.

benmanns

on Dec 30, 2014

neone6

reply 3

Quoting benmanns,

reply 1

Hopefully they will be right on the spot with the design choice this time

Ya think ??

Actually my hopes are high on this, since they played with open cards from the very start.
Just think about it they released the insider program to the public, everyone was able to register and test drive what could possibly be "10" and help to make it better with critic.
So I think there is enough people (1.5 million) this time to tell them that a design like IE11 is fugly.
What I meant by spot on was "pushed into the right direction" hehe THIS IS SPARTA

BlackSmokeDMax

reply 4

I'm guessing they were going for less of the badass and more of the "stripped down, plain, utilitarian" meaning.

You could be correct, however i think if the browser is named SPARTAN (which is still open btw.) then the targeted group is still must be a bit younger and the adaptation has the reason to be competitive just like shown in history the Greek city was dominant and that would also go very well with the movies put out.
So overall a badass image.

starkers

on Dec 30, 2014

I really don't care what MS ends up calling it, providing it works better than past iterations of MS browsers. I've never felt comfortable using IE. That's why I switched to Firefox and pretty much stuck with it over the years. Despite trying a few others [Opera, etc] I always gravitated back to Firefox, which I do feel comfortable using.... despite various ones saying that Chrome is faster, more secure, etc.

I have various reasons for not liking Chrome... one of them being it uses many more CPU cycles to achieve that so-called 'extra speed'. True modern, high end CPUs can probably afford this without too big a dent, and I have one of those, but I'd rather give up my CPU cycles to editing images or video [watching pr0n ] than a browser I don't like and likely phones home.

Anyway, I got sidetracked, as is often the case, and got off topic again. So, this new browser MS is working on, well I do hope it is an improvement on IE and works as advertised. If so, I may find myself using it... at the risk of being called a MS fanboi by one certain individual. The fact that I've used non-MS browsers, email clients and messengers over the years would suggest I'm not, but never mind. This is a whole new era and maybe MS will get it right this time... well as close to right as it can get with Spartan.

AceMatrix

on Dec 30, 2014

I started using Chrome because I was tired of the Internet Explorer random crashes & vulnerabilities. In the article, it states that "Spartan" will still be vulnerable. Hmmm... I guess I'm confused. How is this "better". If I am to forsake Chrome , I want to know that not only will this new browser be a better performer, but will also be safer. Isn't that what we all want ? I'm going to try to reign in my excitement over this latest development. I'm cheering for Microsoft to get it right this time, but they have been disappointing me so much of late that I can't help but feel a little gun shy.

Jafo

on Dec 30, 2014

Yep...just when I finally resolved the conflict between both IE 10 and IE 11 with FSX [at last got out of 9] .... they come up with a new one....probably will break [CTD] FSX yet again....

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