Microsoft Is Killing Off the Internet Explorer Brand

An anonymous reader writes: The Verge reports that Internet Explorer as we know it will be taking a back seat to Microsoft's new browser, Project Spartan, in Windows 10 and future projects. IE will still exist, and stick around for compatibility issues, but Project Spartan will be the default way users interact with the internet. Microsoft wants to distance itself with the negative connotations Internet Explorer has acquired through the years. They still haven't decided on an official name for Project Spartan, but it will probably have the company name in it.

Comments

A turd by any other name

[Anonymous Coward]

is still a turd.

Re:A turd by any other name

[Anonymous Coward]

Project Microsoft Spartan, anyone?
Great name and shows Microsoft ownership.
PMS for short.
Works!

Re:A turd by any other name

[OakDragon]

Should have been called "Project Trojan..."

Re:A turd by any other name

[DarkOx]

Hey my browser is actually named.

"Firefox57 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1) Like Opera and Google Chrome" you insensitive clod. Its hell to escape starting from the CLI.

Re:A turd by any other name

[UnknownSoldier]

What do you expect when they renamed Spyglass Mosaic to IE? :-)

In typical MS fashion it didn't get good until 3 versions later, IE4, before getting proprietary vendor lockin with that piece of shit IE6.

Their stupidity of not being able to down-grade IE or simultaneously install different versions so web developers could test ALL the various versions, forcing people to rely on hacks like SandBoxie, was absolutely retarded.

IE was so bad at security that at one point that us geeks called it "Internet Exploder"

Microsoft writing the browser from scratch, is too little, too late.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:A turd by any other name

[armanox]

My string shows what I'm using anyway....

"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; IRIX64 IP30; en-US; rv:1.8.1.25pre) Gecko/20121112 Firefox/2.0.0.22pre"

Re:A turd by any other name

[amicusNYCL]

Microsoft writing the browser from scratch, is too little, too late.

No, not really. If this causes a further decline in the usage of buggy versions of IE then yes, do that. I doubt the new software will be completely bug-free, but hopefully it actually is from scratch (including the general design) and they don't carry over some of the same bugs.

Re:A turd by any other name

[theArtificial]

But you can roll it in glitter!

Re:A turd by any other name

[ColdWetDog]

That would just be a cover up.

Re:A turd by any other name

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

It's not too little, too late if you consider that the alternative is to rely on either Apple for WebKit, Mozilla for Gecko, or Google for Blink, etc.

If this new browser's point is to have a browser that you can use when you turn the machine on and have everywhere no matter what machine you're using, then it's not too little, too late.

Too little, too late would be Mac, Linux and Android ports of IE10.

This isn't Ballmer or Gates' Microsoft. It's Satya Nadella's and I think he gets it more than they did.

Re:A turd by any other name

[shutdown -p now]

It was already said that the engine is not from scratch. But rebranding it allows the team to throw out crapload of legacy code (ActiveX, VBScript, all the various quirks rendering modes etc), and generally change things to behave according to the standards even where it breaks someone relying on old behavior, since, as a distinct product, this has no obligation to be backwards compatible with IE.

Re: A turd by any other name

[jd2112]

It won't be good until Spartan 3.00, at which time it will be able to fight off an entire army of Persian malware.

Re:A turd by any other name

[theArtificial]

In typical MS fashion it didn't get good until 3 versions later, IE4, before getting proprietary vendor lockin with that piece of shit IE6.

If IE6 was such a piece of shit, as you put it, that implies that the other browsers at the time were much worse than that. You've inadvertently made a profound statement about the browser landscape of the day. IE6 rightfully earned infamy in its unnaturally long life even more repugnant is rampant revisionism. IE introduced a feature that is the foundation of today's web, some of you might be aware of the XMLHttpRequest object, for the non-developers it's like the force now, all around us. JavaScript support and performance, CSS support. Unfortunately this period had to occur, and it will occur again once these lessons are forgotten; Without the stranglehold IE6 eventually obtained, and more importantly stagnated the web with, the choices we have today wouldn't exist.

Their stupidity of not being able to down-grade IE or simultaneously install different versions so web developers could test ALL the various versions, forcing people to rely on hacks like SandBoxie, was absolutely retarded.

As much as it pains me to say Microsoft wasn't unique in this regard, as an aside, try installing multiple versions of Safari. Even the easy mode package managers don't support multiple versions of browsers out of the box (not to say it's difficult). Internet Explorer 6 released in 2001 following the launch of Windows XP. For those unfamiliar with their history, Web Development of that era revolved around IE and Netscape. With IE being the Chrome of its day (as in "works here, onward!") since the browser market was 90%+ IE and IE6 was supported on Windows 98, NT, and 2k. Low usage for potential targets results in a chicken and the egg problem. Low single digits just aren't a priority for many shops, see Opera.

Sandboxie came out in 2004ish and has its uses, especially on 32bit machines. However, for web development involving IE it's much easier to use MultiIE which has been around since 2006. IETester is worth another mention. Not to mention there are alternatives due to the ever growing number of devices and variants released year after year, requiring a different approach such as farms that show screenshots from targeted browsers. Regarding the hassle of Sandboxie, limiting yourself to one tool is pretty silly.

This is a little off topic. Since this criticism is being framed as a Microsoft issue you might be shocked to discover how apps and to a lesser extent websites, are developed and tested in 2015 on devices manufactured and supported by multiple vendors. This process requires physical devices, in many cases multiple to support the popular OS versions on them (there are other OS, but they're less than 8%). Think it's a hack to wrangle Sandboxes or multiple installations, try wrangling devices that let you only upgrade! But what about device simulators, one might ask? Oh yes, they do exist and they're improving but there isn't a substitute for deploying and testing on device. IE variants are a dwindling piece of the very large fragmentation pie.

Microsoft writing the browser from scratch, is too little, too late.

Too late for whom? W

Re:A turd by any other name

[UnknownSoldier]

> If IE6 was such a piece of shit, as you put it, that implies that the other browsers at the time were much worse than that.

No, that doesn't follow at all. Firefox was a significantly better browser at the time, before they jumped the shark after version 4.

> Regarding the hassle of Sandboxie, limiting yourself to one tool is pretty silly.

I never claimed there was only _one_ tool. You sure love to jump to conclusions about things I never said. There was another utility I used to use back in the day too, it might have been MultIE. I've deleted / removed almost everything related to IE.

> try wrangling devices that let you only upgrade!

You're missing the point. Microsoft popularized that crap. Just because other vendors are doing it doesn't give MS a free pass.

Re:A turd by any other name

[rtb61]

It is all about advertising dollars. They simply want to build the browser into the operating system, so that not matter what you do it will create an internet hit to Bing, so that, 'Bing' another cent can be claimed for advertising, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. So losing the internet 'browser, search, portal' war, no problem, fake it via the operating system. Of course when the fake claims about customer eyeballs reflects in very bad advertising outcomes, the customers will then just avoid M$ because it simply doesn't work, regardless of the internet hit numbers, at least as far as M$ is concerned. So no matter what they do in the future, no matter what, everyone will just avoid them.

Much like the crazy bullshit idea of sticking a phone GUI on a desktop because people will get used to it and like idiot sheep automagically buy the phones with the same system. Of course in reality, what really happened is that touch screen phone GUI wont really work well on that desktop and that is of course what the customer will remember. A lesson reinforced each and every time they touch the desktop and are frustrated by the experience. (OH FUCK, might need to do a free upgrade to stop the damage being done ;D ). M$ is just totally infested with crazy bean counter logic and magic numbers in spread sheets and pays no attention at all to more realistic customer empathic logical outcomes.

Re:A turd by any other name

[theArtificial]

No, that doesn't follow at all. Firefox was a significantly better browser at the time, before they jumped the shark after version 4.

Your disagreement seems to be looking from now backwards instead of from the beginning. Since Firefox was named specifically, it's a browser that wasn't released until 3 years after (4 excluding the technology previews) the competition.

Better is such a subjective word, better how? Stability? That eliminates technology previews bumping the "better" browser back another year. I sincerely hope something developed years after its competition was released would improve upon established norms. Out of the gate it was feature incomplete by their own version numbers. Steve Jobs is one who can make that a compelling argument. Firefox also featured some really cool fundamental concepts, like the now ubiquitous download manager.

Firefox became competitive in 2005/2006. Prior to that IE was top dog, when IE6 was released it was better than the other browsers by means of features like standards support and speed. Prior to the JavaScript engine wars fundamentally changing things, there were incremental steps. IE6 believe it or not was peppy compared to Netscape's offerings. This is documented in Netscape Navigator's decline. IE6 at the time it was released and for many years was what the vast majority of designers targeted and designed for. Designed for Internet Explorer, Designed for Netscape Navigator were prevalent like perverse badges of honor. In my opinion the debut of Firebug in 2006 was a turning point for designer/developer interest considering many tools are heavily inspired by its features. Here's a neat little read on IE1.0 upto Firefox 2.0.

I never claimed there was only _one_ tool. You sure love to jump to conclusions about things I never said. There was another utility I used to use back in the day too, it might have been MultIE. I've deleted / removed almost everything related to IE.

The way you mentioned it was, paraphrasing: "Sandboxie was really annoying." So is installing Steam games into it and so is supporting dozens of viewport sizes. Welcome to software!

You're missing the point. Microsoft popularized that crap. Just because other vendors are doing it doesn't give MS a free pass.

I feel like somewhere in your secret volcano lair there exists a giant whiteboard which has a soul crushing flowchart with winding complex paths leading to the giant Sauron like cloud labeled "Microsoft: Great Satan". At some point the responsibility shifts to the shoulders of those who take action.

Re:A turd by any other name

[armanox]

There is, but it is extremely slow and clunky. Either SGI had some sort of magic they put in to their Firefox build (very possible) that people didn't figure out for 3, or 3 supports a lot of slowness that isn't in the older build. Since I just upgraded my Octane (upped the RAM to 1280MB from 384MB and the CPU from a 250MHz R10K to a 300MHz R12K) I intend to play with it again.

And relevant to this thread, the string for Firefox 3 is:

"Mozilla/5.0; U; IRIX64 IP30; en-US; rv:1.9.0.19) Gecko/2013020113 Firefox/3.0.19"

Re:A turd by any other name

[ppanon]

                Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
                That here obedient to their laws we lie.

                Stranger, go tell the men of Lacedaemon
                That we, who lie here, did as we were ordered.

                Stranger, bring the message to the Spartans that here
                We remain, obedient to their orders.

                Oh foreigner, tell the Lacedaemonians
                That here we lie, obeying those words.

Re:A turd by any other name

[gtall]

I don't think we need to bring Putin into this discussion.

Microsoft Spartan?

[MikeTheGreat]

Isn't this how the XBox became the XBox? They released the code name of their internal project, people kept using the name, and then they just stuck with it?

On the one hand "Microsoft Spartan" doesn't seem corporate enough. On the other hand it'll fit right in with Firefox & Chrome, which also have non-descriptive names that are pan-inoffensive yet interesting...

Re:Microsoft Spartan?

[erikscott]

pan-inoffensive

Persia? I could see it going either way...

They're killing the wrong brand

[ks9208661]

They should kill the Microsoft brand instead.

Re:New name?

[Sarlok]

Nah, that's too new still. Here's to the new Microsoft Bob.

A shame, in a way...

[ClickOnThis]

...because this video will become less funny.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

A thorn by any other name hurts just as bad

[Art3x]

In other news, Microsoft is also renaming Windows to something else, although they're not sure what. The version number will start at at least 20, though, to further distance itself from Windows 10.

Microsoft is also seeking to ditch the names Bing and Microsoft.

That's impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

The previous CEO of Microsoft assured European regulators that IE was so deeply embedded in Windows architecture that it could not be replaced.

Re:That's impossible

[Daltorak]

The previous CEO of Microsoft assured European regulators that IE was so deeply embedded in Windows architecture that it could not be replaced.

It's not impossible at all -- Spartan is a copy of the IE engine code, repackaged as a Metro app and will be updated on an ongoing basis through the Windows App Store model. Anything that doesn't work in that space like ActiveX/COM, Browser Helper Objects, etc. are all stripped out.

IE11 will also remain in Windows 10, with good ole' MSHTML.DLL and all that other cruft that developers (and parts of Windows itself) have been taking hard dependencies on for 15+ years. It will receive security updates, performance improvements and so on, but it will not be updated at the pace of Spartan.

Maybe shipping two browsers with the OS will upset some people, but this should actually work out pretty nicely.

Re:That's impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded as informative? It's as if you and the people who modded you didn't even read the TFS:

".. IE will still exist, and stick around for compatibility issues.."

Aside from the minor fact that the TFS is about "Windows 10" which presumably wasn't around at the time the "previous CEO" assured those European regulators, because you know.. an entire new OS might involve significant architectural changes?

I know it's /. and hating on Microsoft is one of the great pastimes here.. but really..

Why does Microsoft even need a browser?

[i_ate_god]

I don't understand why Microsoft wants to make a browser so badly. The consumer world has moved on to Firefox and Chrome and Safari and this is propogating through the enterprise world now.

What is the business case for having your own browser? So that bing can be the default search engine?

Re:Why does Microsoft even need a browser?

[robinsonne]

A very large part of Microsoft's business is the enterprise and business world. That's where it matters a lot more than what ordinary people are using to go to facebook and pintrest.

Re:Why does Microsoft even need a browser?

[pr0nbot]

I would guess it's because Google and Apple make the other browsers (apart from Firefox) and will begin to integrate their cloud services into the browser, which could potentially lock Microsoft out.

Re:Why does Microsoft even need a browser?

[RabidReindeer]

I don't understand why Microsoft wants to make a browser so badly. The consumer world has moved on to Firefox and Chrome and Safari and this is propogating through the enterprise world now.

What is the business case for having your own browser? So that bing can be the default search engine?

Well Duh. In Windows, the browser must be (squeaky Ballmer voice) "an Integral part of the Windows Operating System".

Because that works so much better than OS's like Linux and MacOS where the browser is a mere application program.

Re:Why does Microsoft even need a browser?

[imp7]

How else will you be able visit https://www.mozilla.org/ without a browser?

Re:Why does Microsoft even need a browser?

[Marginal Coward]

Note that Chrome and Safari are made by two of Microsoft's arch rivals. Evidently they both thought there was a business case for that. I assume that Google, Apple, and Microsoft are generally interested in optimizing the browser experience on their platforms and being a participant in creating future browser standards. And Microsoft wouldn't want to leave its competition in charge of the latter with just a little help from Mozilla, et. al.

Re:Why does Microsoft even need a browser?

[bondsbw]

Exactly! I mean, just imagine what might happen if say Google decided to make an OS that was pretty much just a web browser. Like that would sell!

New name

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Zilla. MSzilla if you like to abbreviate.

Re:New name?

[Megane]

Bing Explorer

Re:New name?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say "Bung" to match with its search strategy.

So the question is if the name change will be the entirety and the code will still suck and cause web developers to rip out their hair in frustration.

Re:Stick around or stuck with?

[RabidReindeer]

Don't you mean rusty tetanus-infected hook?

I hope it's fast

[Atrox666]

I can't wait to install Chrome faster than I ever have on a new machine.

Re:I hope it's fast

[SIGBUS]

I think they should just call it "Firefox Downloader."

I have a name!

[gadget junkie]

How about "Completely Researched Archiving Program"? it would make for an interesting Acronym.

Re:I have a name!

[Fire_Wraith]

I'm partial to Spartan Heuristic Internet Transceiver, myself.

Rename Microsoft

[jfdavis668]

Getting rid of the name "Microsoft" may help in the long run.

Re:New name?

[alexhs]

I'm rooting for "Internet 365". Internet... on the Cloud !

The reason for the new browser...

[VAXcat]

IE's replacement will provide a more Windows Phone like Internet browsing experience to desktop users. We're all gonna love it.

Why wouldn't they?

[Dracos]

At this point the IE brand is so tainted that it's basically an albatross around MS' neck.

Because Spartan is a long-overdue pruning of the Trident codebase (which has been gathering ugly cruft for 17 years) rather than a clean sheet rewrite, it'll still carry a slight IE odor no matter how much they cut out. Even the name Spartan is ripe for jokes about it's feature implementation.

The name is not the problem

[Karmashock]

It is sort of unfair to nail MS too much for IE. The big problem was javascript and really javascript is still a big problem.

I use noscript myself with firefox and whenever I turn it off the absolute garbage that spews onto my pages is amazing. They are nesting one script inside of another inside of another. And it is mostly ads and social network crap.

Look, I'm okay with ads. But the ads need to be DUMB ads. That is, no scripting. You want to put a banner ad with two chicks getting mounted by a water buffalo? I'm actually fine with that. I don't even see it. What kills me is the scripts. That includes the popups and all that crap.

I also refuse to deal with Flash or any kind of non-gif animation unless I personally press PLAY on the video. If I don't press play... do not even begin to download that animation or movie or stream. Absolutely not.

And because of crap like that, I have to micromanage the loading of every page using various tools to keep the various bits of shit from loading every time I go to those pages.

Again, no problem with ads. Have ads. That's fine. But tracking cookies will be rejected, scripts will not be run, and flash animations of any kind will only be launched at my personal discretion.

MS made no effort to control this shit and as a result people hate IE. That is mostly what happened.

Every time you saw some poor bastard using IE he'd have 100 little programs in his tool bar eating up 90 percent of his screen along with endless pop up swatting. And MS really didn't do anything about it.

THAT was the mistake. Fix THAT.

Re:The name is not the problem

[Threni]

The problem was never javascript. Sure, IE was the posterboy in slow, buggy javascript. But it's hard to imagine anything other that static pages (and there's nothing wrong with that) being handled with anything better than javascript. Perhaps you're not very technical, but forget ads and gifs for a moment and explain how you'd provide the same functionality javascript (and ajax and all that goes along with it) would be handled without javascript? Uploading files to a site with a progress bar? Dragging and dropping files onto the browser. Sensible, rich clientside validation of user input (in addition to the back end validation, obviously)? The only alternative I can imagine you giving is some other client side language. The only reason you're not blocking those too is because they're not as popular as javascript; they can certainly produce and handle popups.

Isn't it obvious?

[ArcadeMan]

It's going to be called "The browser formerly known as Internet Explorer".

Hmmm...

[MitchDev]

Microsoft Shite 2.0?

Re:New name?

[The Grim Reefer]

I'm thinking Bada. It goes better with their search engine name. They will need another web based product they call Boom.

Bada Bing, Bada Boom.

You cannot change the name! This is madness!!

[RevWaldo]

THIS. IS. SPARTAN!!

// (prerequisite additional lowercase text to avoid the yelling error.)

.

Name: Microsoft Style

[hoggoth]

I predict just before release they will name it "Microsoft Browser", keeping with their habit of trying to co-opt the generic term for a technology but only ending up making it impossible to do keyword searches for their software.

You heard it here first.

Re:New name?

[GNious]

My bet's on "Microsoft Internet"

The new name is obvious....

[bobbied]

Microsoft Bing Application.... OR MBA for short.

How do I know? The whole thing has MBA all over it. It will be designed by a group of MBA's, marketed by a different group of MBA's and coded by 10 software engineers who are managed by 100 MBA's...

Re:New name?

[Andy_R]

After Bing and Zune, I think they'll continue with the 'rejected 60s Batman fight scene captions' theme, and it'll be Splork, Zoing or possibly Ptoink.

The new MS

[danaris]

It is sort of unfair to nail MS too much for IE. The big problem was javascript and really javascript is still a big problem.

Nonsense. The big problem was the "not invented here" syndrome. I started writing HTML in about 1998 or so, maybe earlier, and IE has always been a PITA because it always had its quirks and wanted to be treated special. Everyone else was at least trying to implement the standard, MS attitude was basically to fuck it from both sides and approaching the Internet with a "you will write this stuff the way we want" attitude.

And from what I've seen of Microsoft since Nadella took over, I would be surprised (and disappointed) if they continued in that attitude with whatever they call the new browser—not just because they've been playing nicer with the civilized world, but because they seem to recognize that they have to if they don't want to just dry up and blow away over the next decade or so.

When they originally released IE, they could do that because as screwed-up and frustrating as it was for the rest of us, they were right with that attitude. Now? They're not the big dog on the browser block anymore. If they try to push random crap that neither Apple nor Google support (or refuse to support stuff that both Apple and Google are backing, that's actually in use), it's just not going to fly.

Dan Aris