Microsoft Is Building a New Browser As Part of Its Windows 10 Push

mpicpp sends word that Microsoft may be working on a new browser. "There's been talk for a while that Microsoft was going to make some big changes to Internet Explorer in the Windows 10 time frame, making IE 'Spartan' look and feel more like Chrome and Firefox. It turns out that what's actually happening is Microsoft is building a new browser, codenamed Spartan, which is not IE 12 — at least according to a couple of sources of mine. Thomas Nigro, a Microsoft Student Partner lead and developer of the modern version of VLC, mentioned on Twitter earlier this month that he heard Microsoft was building a brand-new browser. Nigro said he heard talk of this during a December episode of the LiveTile podcast. Spartan is still going to use Microsoft's Chakra JavaScript engine and Microsoft's Trident rendering engine (not WebKit), sources say. As Neowin's Brad Sams reported back in September, the coming browser will look and feel more like Chrome and Firefox and will support extensions. Sams also reported on December 29 that Microsoft has two different versions of Trident in the works, which also seemingly supports the claim that the company has two different Trident-based browsers. However, if my sources are right, Spartan is not IE 12. Instead, Spartan is a new, light-weight browser Microsoft is building. Windows 10 (at least the desktop version) will ship with both Spartan and IE 11, my sources say. IE 11 will be there for backward-compatibility's sake. Spartan will be available for both desktop and mobile (phone/tablet) versions of Windows 10, sources say."

Comments

WHY GOD WHY

[brunes69]

Just ditch Trident. Why do we need more browser engines? What is wrong with WebKit? Why waste man hours and money on this waste of time project instead of helping with the development of WebKit?

"Support Extensions" is not real

[gurps_npc]

Look Microsoft hates the very idea of Extensions - giving up control is anthem to them. They will find a way to make their extensions significantly flawed. Perhaps they will have veto power - being wielded with a very heavy hand.

Yes, they realize they need outsiders adding more power to their browser, but they don't like it and won't go in full throttle.

IE 10 is complete shit!

[aliquis]

It's slow as fuck just with a few tabs (Athlon64 X2 6400+, 8 GB RAM) and after a while stop responding completely.

Unreliable and super poor performance.

In a related note:
When I installed Windows 8.1 I assumed virtual memory worked much better in Windows than Linux because Chrome suddenly performed way better.

But then I've tried Chrome 64 bit at two different occasions and it's about as frustrating as it was in Linux.

For whatever reason Chrome 32 bit work well with say 15 GB of swap and don't load the HDD the whole time and work pretty well lastly with about 260 tabs.

The 64 bit version act like shit already at about 7 GB of swap and uses it much more / in some way which loads the HDD much more which. 80 tabs or so is pushing it when it starts to acting bad.

I could understand if the 64 bit version used more RAM but even before the RAM and swap usage has reached the same level the performance it way worse.

I assume that I got 64 bit Chrome in Linux (OpenSUSE AMD64) and that that was the reason rather than superior virtual memory management in Windows.

Firefox may start acting weird for me too. In some of my browsers they may start switching around between the windows for some time or infinity.

I do have some add-ons and of course that may affect things. On the other hand I don't really care why it act like shit. The terrible thing is it do.

32 bit chrome >>>> 64 bit chrome.

Google claim 64 bit Chrome is faster but I assume that's in computing. The RAM usage at least here is a disaster.

Performant isn't a word.

[HBI]

n/t

Re:More like Chrome?

[narcc]

Other than ineffectively complain on Slashdot, have you done anything about it?

user created dictionaries aren't dictionaries

[HBI]

n/t

fu /. filter