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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."
What is wrong with Trident? It's a great engine these days.
Yet another quirky browser to support. More idiots using -yetanotherbrowserspecificcsstag: 0px;
Please, not another useless Chrome clone. We already have more than enough browsers with crap UIs, thank you.
Enh. TFA seems long on speculation. I can see Microsoft doing this in an effort to (a) create a browser that is performant on portable hardware, (where their competition clearly beats them) and (b) try to (eventually) dump the millstone of decades of backwards compatibility, which is, in general, a good thing. [1] But just because it's a logical move is not proof in and of itself that Microsoft is actually doing it.
But I wonder how different, and especially how "lightweight" this hypothetical browser can be if it's using the same rendering engine? Wouldn't it just be IE with a different skin?
[1] apropos of nothing: Over Christmas break, at my daughter's request, I installed an old Windows 95 game on her Windows 7 PC, and it worked! I was deeply impressed. And a little appalled.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Not Chrome; it is based on a WebKit fork called Blink that drops a lot of the Apple specific stuff in WebKit. So it no longer acts exactly like WebKit does in all scenarios.
Yup, Blink drops a lot of the Apple stuff but also adds a lot of Google specific stuff. Swings and roundabouts really.
Right now, if I make a website or web application, I need to test it on Chrome, a couple different versions if IE, and FireFox. If I have the time, I can test it on Safari and Opera as well. I also need to test my site/application on my laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone. The latter two in both Android and iOS. After all of this, I can rest assured that my web site/application will work fine - at least until someone comes in with a weird configuration that I didn't test and it all blows up*.
Now Microsoft is going to add in "Spartan" as a new web browser for me to test on? If they are going to sunset IE and switch to Spartan, that would be one thing. Yes, IE usage would remain for awhile but it would be a constantly dwindling population until it got small enough to simply ignore due to time constraints. If they plan on running with two different browsers, though, they're just making the lives of web developers everywhere even harder.
* Anyone who says "just code to standards and your web site/application won't have problems" hasn't coded anything too complex. There are always browser quirks and what works in one browser isn't guaranteed to work in another one. Though, usually, I've found that IE is the problem-browser (especially older versions) and Chrome/Firefox/etc work nicely with, at worst, minor issues.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You mean, like how Google is heavily restricting Chrome extensions these days?
I am less concerned about the browser engine. But how well it follows the W3C Specs!
If Trident does X,Y,Z faster than WebKits X,Y,Z but WebKit is faster at P, Q, R. Then we can choose the best browser for our needs... However they ALL NEED TO RENDER THE WEB PAGE THE SAME WAY!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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?
I can't believe I'm trying to justify a rumor of what Microsoft (of which I'm not a fan) might be doing, but it's not necessarily bad to have more than one rendering engine out there. For instance, a significant security hole in the engine wouldn't take, like, the whole world down.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Sometimes I wonder if IE's biggest problem these days is marketing and the negative reputation they've built with older version of IE. I had to use IE recently here at work and it's not bad; certainly not the horrible, buggy, bloated POS it was in the 90s (comparatively speaking). I still prefer IE and Mozilla (plugins, etc), but if faced with a modern IE I wouldn't loathe it. So, IE isn't so bad anymore. But because it was so shitty for the longest time, I really don't want to go back to it. Perhaps this is what MS has realized: They're going to have to change the name so people won't associate the new browser with bad memories of the past...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
As a Gecko user, I'd hate for Webkit/Blink to become the only option. The interests of Google and Apple shareholders don't necessarily coincide with mine.
MS may still be the Great Satan but it's their time and energy being spent.
MS is the new IBM, while android is the new windows.
Source: I own an android phone.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Look Microsoft hates the very idea of Extensions - giving up control is anthem to them.
IOW, they'll do it when the fat lady sings?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
It might be a pseudo-english term invented by german speakers.
That is actually a pretty concise definition of "English."
WebKit came from KDE.
Worse than Microsoft? Off the top of my head: Oracle, Symantec, CA, SAP.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.