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In Addition To Project Spartan, Windows 10 Will Include Internet Explorer

Posted by timothy on from the ultra-backwards-compatible dept.

An anonymous reader writes After unveiling its new Project Spartan browser for Windows 10, Microsoft is now offering more details. The company confirmed that Windows 10 will also include Internet Explorer for enterprise sites, though it didn't say how exactly this will work. Spartan comes with a new rendering engine, which doesn't rely on the versioned document modes the company has historically used. It also provides compatibility with the millions of existing enterprise websites specifically designed for Internet Explorer by loading the IE11 engine when needed. In this way, the browser uses the new rendering engine for modern websites and the old one for legacy purposes.

16 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Internet Explorer by Iamthecheese · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Tying whole corporate environments to a particular web browser is the greatest shit show of our time. I get that you don't want to have to support more than one browser but it's not hard to stick to highly standardized i/o that any browser can use. And if your web app is that fragile it says a lot of bad things about whoever designed it.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    1. Re:Internet Explorer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      ActiveX controls make SharePoint a pleasure to use. Yes, we're stuck on IE 6, and thus XP, at work, but it is a lot better than the alternatives. Also, our version of OWA (Outlook Web Access) doesn't work with newer than IE 6, but again, it's a nice product. Compared to Squirrel Mail that our competitor uses, OWA is great. That doesn't mean it is fragile. It's just built for a certain version of a certain browser. You're wrong.

    2. Re:Internet Explorer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Requires you to use a 15-year-old OS that no longer gets security updates" is either the very definition of fragile, or something equally bad.

    3. Re:Internet Explorer by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

      Corporations still use IE 5 quirks mode and ancient security TLS 1.0 which have problems in modern browsers as they are too secure.

      Funny if it were not true as these insecure settings process HIPPA and credit card info. But IT is just a cost center right?

      At work we disable all security for IE with no sandbox and put in ancient versions of Java with +100 security exploits. Our clients demand this as their cost accountants do not see a need to upgrade.

      As a result even without MS specific CSS work arounds they still can't run.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    4. Re:Internet Explorer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      SquirrelMail manages to survive in tiny nooks, but it anything but "rocks". It's simply the lowest of low end web interfaces that people will still tolerate in some places.

    5. Re:Internet Explorer by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Informative

      Kinda. It wasn't impossible to write cross platform browser stuff in the late 1990s, when most corporations started this whole "We'll standardize on browser X" policy making, but it required a discipline that had most developers throwing their hands up in the air in disgust.

      Unfortunately the situation in the late 1990s was:

      - The major browsers were incompatible.
      - IE4+ was the most standard. Yes, really. Those versions had a relatively complete implementation of CSS.
      - IE came preinstalled with the standard operating system of that time.

      That was it. That was why corporations went with it. It's why they adopted the monoculture in the first place. If Netscape had been a little quicker with Mozilla, or been more enthusiastic about CSS in Netscape 4.x, and if CSS had been a little more complete, things might have been different.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    6. Re:Internet Explorer by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 2

      As much as I've been bashing Microsoft lately for their major screwups, I've tested IE11 in the Windows 10 tech preview, and it seems even more standards compliant than the webkit/blink web browsers as far as the Acid3 test goes. Chrome for example has three distinct pauses on the acid3 test, whereas IE11 on Windows 10 has only one much shorter pause. For comparison, IE11 on Windows 7/8 fails the test at 92/100.

    7. Re: Internet Explorer by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Informative

      Chrome uses Webkit specific css and not W3C. It claims it supports more standards but like IE 6 it is not standardized.

      It is like IE 4 in many ways as websites need to use Webkit specific hacks.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    8. Re:Internet Explorer by germansausage · · Score: 3

      Thats right, dredged. First in buttermilk, then in flour, then one more time in the buttermilk, then in panko crumbs. Dredged.

    9. Re:Internet Explorer by Bogtha · · Score: 2

      It wasn't impossible to write cross platform browser stuff in the late 1990s, when most corporations started this whole "We'll standardize on browser X" policy making, but it required a discipline that had most developers throwing their hands up in the air in disgust.

      I had these arguments many times back then. It was laziness more than anything else. We were writing cross-platform web applications without problems at that time. We were trying to convince other developers to follow the same route, but their attitude was mainly "IE has 90%+ market share, why bother?" They didn't believe a time would come when proprietary IE code wouldn't work - even if other browsers caught on, they were expecting them to copy the IEisms. They certainly didn't believe that even later versions of Internet Explorer wouldn't support their crappy code.

      - IE4+ was the most standard. Yes, really. Those versions had a relatively complete implementation of CSS.

      Let's not overstate things. Netscape bet on JSSS and when the W3C selected CSS as the standard instead, they scrambled to fix Netscape 4 to convert from CSS to JSSS on the fly. So Netscape 4 was exceptionally bad at CSS. Internet Explorer 4 was merely very bad at CSS. Opera was ahead at that time. I don't think you can call IE4 "relatively complete" unless you only compare it to Netscape 4, which was unusually bad.

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
    10. Re:Internet Explorer by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That was it. That was why corporations went with it.

      That's a big part of it, but you do have to factor in activeX. While it was always a bit of a boondoggle on the consumer internet; it did provide some much needed glue that those old browsers didn't have.

      Wanted your cool new enterprise intranet application to be able to print to the receipt printer? Or upload local files with an elegant interface? Or (and a long list of other stuff.) There simply was no cross-platform way to do it. Netscape Plugsins OR ActiveX... and if the enterprise had the luxury of controlling what people were using so it could pick just one... and IE in addition to everything else you said ALSO was easy to manage via AD group policy etc. So it just made sense to use it.

      And once they'd gone down the activeX road, and became dependent on it... well the whole planet has suffered for that mistake. :)

    11. Re:Internet Explorer by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 2

      Oh yay, let's all compare a 13 year old bit of software to an unknown version of SquirrelMail (but I'm sure it won't be a comparably old version...)

      SquirrelMail has changed in the last 13 years?

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
  2. Re:So MS do you _finally_ support WebGL now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Firefox still is the add-on king.

    Chrome addons still don't allow certain modifications of the user interface. Tree Style Tabs is fabulous, especially now we're all using widescreen resolutions:

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/

    Chrome still can't match this. They try, but it's clearly trying to work around the limitations Google has put into their product:

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-style-tabs/biiammgklaefagjclmnlialkmaemifgo

  3. Re:What about the destruction of Firefox? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I hate to break it to you but despite a few failures its still a better browser than Chrome, IE, and Opera. The part that was bad was Firefox copied Chrome and Microsoft in various ways in regards to the UI. However you can't solve that by switching to other browsers that are just as bad or worse. Firefox still has several privacy and security advantages over the other browsers and whatever crashing / memory leaks were eventually solved. Plus there were measures put in place to make crashing less irritating. You might argue IE has some security features Firefox is/was missing, but once you factor in the lack of source code and an open development model its a mute point. Particularly when these features have or will be added at some point- or are really OS specific anyway and its up to the OS developers to implement those features.

  4. Re:All very confusing by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

    MS forked Trident with different .dlls.

    Problem is the rendering engine goes through a crap ton of if/else statements for specific workarounds and compatibility even without the legacy modes. It is crusty. Remove it for better performance and websites which detect IE and feed ancient code break and corporations freaks out.

    So Spartan is like Firefox. It removes crap from Netscape/Mozilla. So if a site is in trusted zone like an intranet page it loads the older trident .dlls for compatibility. Other than that the newer versions focuses on standards on a much cleaner and fresher slate.

    IE is a terrible brand. It was an awesome brand in the 1990s but MS really screwed up last decade with IE 6 and letting it rot for many many many years. Now the standards are so radically different it needs modes and workarounds to keep intranet apps and modern websites happy. Meanwhile Chrome doesn't have this problem but I have notice it slow down and take more ram recently.

    Ms wants this to be like its firefox/chrome. A new slate to build upon which is fast and lean. Also rumor has it MS will use Chrome's pepper APIs for extensions and will have add-ons. Another thing IE has been missing for a decade now.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  5. Excellent! by jargonburn · · Score: 2

    by loading the IE11 engine when needed

    Does this mean I may be able to exploit the new browser using vulnerabilities found in IE11 by calling the old engine via whatever method they'll use? After all, I'm guessing it doesn't use a white-list, at least by default. Maybe that will be an option, though.

    And no, I didn't RTFA this time.