Slashdot Mirror
Windows 10 IE With Spartan Engine Performance Vs. Chrome and Firefox
MojoKid writes: In Microsoft's latest Windows 10 preview build released last week, Cortana made an entrance, but the much-anticipated Spartan browser did not. However, little did we realize that some of Spartan made the cut, in the form of an experimental rendering engine hidden under IE's hood. Microsoft has separated its Trident rendering engine into two separate versions: one is for Spartan, called EdgeHTML, while the other remains under its legacy naming with Internet Explorer. The reason Microsoft doesn't simply forego the older version is due to compatibility concerns. If you're running the Windows 10 9926 build, chances are good that you're automatically taking advantage of the new EdgeHTML engine in IE. To check, you can type 'about:flags' into the address bar. "Automatic" means that the non-Spartan Trident engine will be called-upon only if needed. In all other cases, you'll be taking advantage of the future Spartan web rendering engine. Performance-wise, the results with IE are like night and day in certain spots. Some of the improvements are significant. IE's Sunspider result already outperforms the competition, but it has been further improved. And with Kraken, the latency with the Spartan-powered Trident engine dropped 40%. Similar results are seen with a boost in the Octane web browser test as well.
I am sure Chrome and Firefox are well ahead on "new versions per month" stats
Still I wouldn't touch IE with the proverbial 3 metre citizen of Warsaw
To play games, yes.
To do work in most office settings, yes.
The last time I thought my browser "felt" slow was probably in the 90s.
The areas of web browsing I care more about are the rendering of web pages as designed preferably without artefacts, usability such as the "right" popups at the right, being able to browse without being assaulted by unwanted content (*), having the ability to perform my important tasks like internet banking, having the ability to play movies without flash.
Browsers that have the ability to do such things (probably most of them now) are what I'm looking for..
* Not just blocking advertisements but also content that gets shoved in my face like Kim Kardashian "news" bits that get shoved in my face. I'd almost pay for a plugin that would do that!
Is Windows really relevant anymore?
Of course Windows is still relevent, it remains the authoritative source of Windows reboot sounds.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Windows is unfortunately relevant. The question is whether the built in browser is relevant. I'm going to install firefox and/or chrome and use those exclusively anyway because i've been burnt too many times with MS's attempts to "add value" with IE to ever trust their browsers again.
Sure, Windows isn't all over mobile, but most people still have PCs. Including the one I am typing on right now. It is still quite relevant. Until you end the PC, somehow, it will continue to be, if nothing else changes.
It is still by far, the best OS for business workstation use. And I say this as a UNIX admin who has been waiting for a Linux desktop worth using for the last decade. And its not half bad for personal use either.
Windows has come a long way, although not without its share of missteps. I'm actually okay with it now. I might not switch to a Mac even if someone gave me one. Although that says more about what I think of Macs these days than it does of Windows. And mind you, my first three computers were Macs.
I seriously felt that way until just a couple days ago, too. Wired had this piece about Satya Nadella and what's going on in Microsoft, specifically about the HoloLens project. It was the first time in a long time that I read something about Microsoft and thought "Oh wow, that is really cool," instead of "LOL."
Then today I decided to check out the Windows 10 Technical Preview and I have to say I was impressed. It is very solid.
I'm not a Microsoft person, either. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro and I've been running Slackware on my desktop for 10+ years. Disclaimer: I use Win7 extensively for Steam but for little else.
I can't stand Chrome and IE, and Spartan seems to have the same problem: they all have non-standard interfaces, and that's infuriating.
Compare these pictures: GOOD versus SHIT. See the difference? One has proper title and menu bars. It follows the system's standards. It has good usability. It looks like all programs are supposed to look. The other uses its own blue alien interface that doesn't match anything else in the system.
Fuck Chrome, fuck IE, fuck Spartan, and fuck every developer who doesn't obey the system's HIG.
Circumcision is child abuse.
It is receiving significant rewrites including a huge amount of code being flat out dropped, including all the compatibility\legacy layers for ie5.5,6,7,8,9,10.
But hey don't believe me listen one of the engineers responsible.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/26/inside-microsofts-new-rendering-engine-project-spartan/
"...In the coming months, swathes of IE legacy were deleted from the new engine. Gone were document modes. Removed was the subsystem responsible for emulating IE8 layout quirks. VBScript eliminated. Remnants like attachEvent, X-UA-Compatible, currentStyle were all purged from the new engine. The codebase looks little like Trident anymore.
What remained was a clean slate. A modern web platform built with interoperability and standards at its core. From there, we began a major investment in interoperability with other modern browsers to ensure that developers don’t have to deal with cross-browser inconsistencies. To date, we’ve fixed over 3000 interoperability issues (some dating back to code written in the 90’s) on top of the over 40 new web standards we’re working on. For example, longstanding innerHTML issues are now fixed. Even recent standards, like Flexbox, are getting renewed love so that the new engine matches the latest spec (this will show up in a future Windows 10 preview build)."
More speed is great, I'm sure users will be happy.
The dual rendering engine, less so. I know backwards compatibility is pretty important to Microsoft, but now they have twice as much web-facing code to maintain - all the legacy IE MSHTML stuff as well as the new EdgeHTML code - and thus twice the zero-days to cope with. Perhaps this is the lesser of two evils, but it's certainly not ideal.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
TFA is saying that the new 'spartan' has improved IE's performance, to the point that now its performances match and/or exceed that of FF and Chrome
But, if we look at the whole thing from another angle we would know that it isn't that the 'spartan' improves IE, rather, indicating a SERIOUS REGRESSION of both FF and Chrome
I still remember how fast and light FF was when it came out. I was among one of the first who dare to fire up FF when everyone was still sticking with IE, and FF now ? [shaking head and sigh]
Chrome is also the same. When it came out it was so fresh, so responsive, so light
No more
My fervent hope is the new 'spartan' engine will spur both FF and Chrome to start taking performances seriously. Users are really tired of bloatwares, and FF / Chrome have become bloatwares
A year or so ago I would have been shocked if you told me MS would release Office on Android. Now that they've gone that far and seem to realize that they're a Software company first, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they made Spartan builds for ios/android/chrome etc.
I think the hate toward microsoft JUST BECAUSE its microsoft is completely unjustified and misguided at this point.
Companies like Google have been FAR WORSE yet are still praised (but probably wont in 10 years from now).
Windows is actually a freaking good and productive OS, when you become expert with Linux, MacOSX and Windows - arguably the top 3 - you'll find that Windows is damn good at being productive on the desktop/as a workstation. Of course, very few have such proficiency, so I'll give an example. Heard of GrSecurity? the lead developer, develops for Linux on Windows, because he want stuff that works, is quick, and is flexible.
IE is not a bad browser anymore either. They caught up and fixed it. It's not my favorite but it works perfectly well. Spartan Engine is damn good. Sure - I'd rather use Firefox (which by the way beats the pants of Chrome in many of these benchmarks) because it follows my ideals more closely. But from a technical point of view, IE's fine. Spartan makes it finer.
Yes, but that's just a dodge. There are 1.5B people running Windows. Tablets are great (I like mine) but it now seems clear that they aren't going to replace PCs on a grand scale any time soon. So PCs are still relevant, including yours. Since that's a fact it follows that the most popular PC OS would also be relevant.
People scoff at Win8 and call it a failure but that's only compared to Win7 and WinXP. It's been more successful than either OSX or Linux as far as PC OSs go.
And Win10 looks pretty nice already with about a year of dev time to go. Anyone who says it doesn't mater is just whistling past the graveyard.
It is receiving significant rewrites.
Agreed. Thanks to virtualization I can still run Linux or FreeBSD as a VM.
I tend to use turnkey Linux these days as these are appliances I just turn on and I have a modified HOST file with the IP addresses of my VMs from VMware Workstation.
Windows as a host is stable, has office, Visual Studio, adobe photoshop, and of course my video games and cloud storage tools.
http://saveie6.com/
The funny part is, I bet HTML5Test doesn't measure what you thinks it measures...
If you're a fan of any current computing tech, either mobile or on the desktop, you really don't want to be bringing up Sherman Act violations.
I can't think of a single major manufacturer of PCs, mobiles, or commercial operating systems for PCs or mobiles that isn't guilty of anti-trust violations.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nah, MS is off the hook for that. The OEMs can fight back now by refusing to go along (WinRT) or threaten to ship more chrombooks. That's enough competition to keep the feds happy, plus tablets really are computers so it's not the same situation at all. And the EU seems to have its sights on Google lately anyway.
Point is, Win10 is going to be solid. It may take a while to overtake Win7 since that was such a good OS but it will take off better than Win8 for sure and that didn't really do that bad compared to non-MS OSs.
Because it was a dumb question, Asking if the dominant market leader with over 90% of desktop market share (much much higher in enterprises) as well as very high server market share and you expect to get marked as something other than troll or flamebait? get real.
Spartan! Kraken! ... Gotta love those codenames. You get a pretty good impression of what kind of movies the crew at microsoft has been watching lately. :-)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You mean the "exclusionary" agreements that don't allow companies like Dell and HP to sell hardware running Android and ChromeOS? Have you been to either of their websites lately?
One of the advantages of Chrome and Firefox is that the experience is close on any platform (mobile, linux, windows) plus the syncing allows you to carry your data (bookmarks, logins, etc) over to each device.
I doubt that Microsoft will be porting their new browser to Android and we know they won't be porting it to linux.
Is Windows really relevant anymore?
Of course Windows is still relevent, it remains the authoritative source of Windows reboot sounds.
Without Windows, Linux desktop development would stagnate. Yes, MS is development and so will W10, when it is released.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada