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

[ColdWetDog]

That would just be a cover up.

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

[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.

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...

They're killing the wrong brand

[ks9208661]

They should kill the Microsoft brand instead.

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.

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?

[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:New name?

[Megane]

Bing Explorer

Re:I have a name!

[Fire_Wraith]

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

Re:New name?

[alexhs]

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

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.

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:I hope it's fast

[SIGBUS]

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

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.