Microsoft Is Building a New Browser As Part of Its Windows 10 Push 248
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."
This is not good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another quirky browser to support. More idiots using -yetanotherbrowserspecificcsstag: 0px;
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Not really, it's still based on Trident, which is what IE's rendering engine is.
And it's not a bad thing - I mean, remember when IE6 was king? Now we have multiple rendering engines (Blink (Chrome, Opera), WebKit (Safari, dozens other), Trident (IE), Gecko (Firefox)) which serve to keep each one honest and standardized.
Heck, when you think about it, WebKit has almost become the de-facto web renderer on the Interne
Not so much (Score:2)
More like Chrome? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, not another useless Chrome clone. We already have more than enough browsers with crap UIs, thank you.
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It bugs me that things need to copied. Why not try something new? Gah!
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God yes. What is it with this convergence fetish? So many excellent ideas fallen by the wayside because everyone is trying to be like each other.
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I agree. Other than greed, I can't understand why they don't just make an agreement with Google or Mozilla - preferably both - to have one of their browsers automatically installed with Windows. Writing a browser from scratch is a huge project, and while I'm sure it's a tiny fraction of Microsoft's output, that's a fair amount of resources that could be directed elsewhere, while generating a fair amount of good will in the software community.
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Control. If it's delivered by Microsoft then Microsoft gets the blame when something goes wrong, and rightly so. Also, giving up competition entirely means giving up control over the future of the Net. Finally, having a browser means being able to test net-facing code before implementing it on server.
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Other than greed, I can't understand why they don't just make an agreement with Google or Mozilla - preferably both - to have one of their browsers automatically installed with Windows.
For the sake of argument, why should they? Why should any company be forced to distribute a competing product? It's not like it's at all difficult to install a browser of your own choice.
Re:More like Chrome? (Score:5, Informative)
that tabs are on top and you can't change that
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Actually, chromium (chromes main lib) is open source. So you can change it!
https://code.google.com/p/chro... [google.com]
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The source is about 10 GB and you need a tiny super computer to compile.
Anyone who complains about monolitic monsters should take a look at so called "modern" browsers.
gee willikers (Score:2)
But only is they make Trojan for OS X or Linux
At least it's not ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nth verse, same as the first (Score:4, Informative)
If the JS and rendering engines are the same, then there's nothing new that matters to developers. Making it look like Chrome/FF is not necessarily a good thing, as those browsers have stripped the browser UI of many of the most important elements.
Trident is ancient hacked up garbage that MS needs to replace.
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I thought we agreed to ditch JS, and use Python with C-style brackets instead.
rumor alert (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [imgur.com]) 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.
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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.
I won't be impressed until you successfully some of the early DOS games (like Lunar Lander) where the speed of the game play was dependent on the 8086's clock frequency. I've probably even got the 5.25" installation floppies laying around somewhere...
And if you manage to install them, and can stay alive longer than 0.1 second - I'll be REALLY impressed! I remember the first time I tried one of those on a newer machine with a 20MHz 80286...
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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.
I won't be impressed until you successfully some of the early DOS games (like Lunar Lander) where the speed of the game play was dependent on the 8086's clock frequency. I've probably even got the 5.25" installation floppies laying around somewhere...
And if you manage to install them, and can stay alive longer than 0.1 second - I'll be REALLY impressed! I remember the first time I tried one of those on a newer machine with a 20MHz 80286...
Maybe you're just slowing down in your old age. :-)
A little off topic, but that's actually a solved problem. Google "moslo" or wiki "slowdown utility". I seem to recall I had to research this in order to play the original Wing Commander on a modern machine.
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Maybe you're just slowing down in your old age. :-)
There's no "maybe" about it!
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I remember my XT with a turbo button (4.77 to 8 MHz). I'd play on one and the other, and as you note, it's like a whole different game.
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I won't be impressed until you successfully some of the early DOS games (like Lunar Lander) where the speed of the game play was dependent on the 8086's clock frequency. I've probably even got the 5.25" installation floppies laying around somewhere...
And if you manage to install them, and can stay alive longer than 0.1 second - I'll be REALLY impressed! I remember the first time I tried one of those on a newer machine with a 20MHz 80286...
I tried such a game. I don't remember what it was, but I was barely holding on on a game that I was good at on the 8088. When I later upgraded to a 386, there was NFW I could even begin to play it.
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I was deeply impressed. And a little appalled.
Why? Microsoft is all about being held back by backwards compatibility.
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If you say so [wiktionary.org].
Re:user created dictionaries aren't dictionaries (Score:5, Informative)
It might be a pseudo-english term invented by german speakers.
That is actually a pretty concise definition of "English."
Support Yet Another Browser (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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If it uses the same rendering and js engine, then you can probably mostly ignore it.
The only thing I ask of Microsoft is that Trident sees more regular improvements (toward standards compliance) independently of major IE version releases.
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They could pitch Spartan as a separate product, in perpetual beta and coexisting side-by-side with IE dlls.
Then once every 6 months, sync IE 12.x with the improvements.
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Even with the same rendering and js engine... some stuff like auto-complete behavior can differ (it was a big plague for AngularJS dev for a while until they changed how they detected textfields updates), security settings can be different (ie: what kind of certificates Chrome consider valid for SSL vs other browsers), a bunch of weirdo edge cases (jsonp over https failing in very specific scenarios on some android versions), and so on and so forth.
Safari's pretty damn popular (relatively speaking. Its too
Does it use or support ActiveX? (Score:3)
If so it's dead on arrival.
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This. Microsoft should force corporations to ditch that shitty "technology".
Marketing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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Ugh, sorry, trying to type and take a call at the same time.. I meant I still prefer Chrome and Mozilla, not IE and Mozilla.
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From a front-end developer's perspective, IE sucks for two reasons:
1. It used to be bad
2. It takes the average IE user forever to upgrade
Start over = new bugs + old bugs (Score:2)
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But hey, you can connect to your Xbox Live account on it, and emulate some games that you can play on your phone and such.
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Hope it's not tightly integrated like IE (Score:3, Insightful)
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The real question is... (Score:2)
So Windows will be shipping with THREE browsers? (Score:2)
We already have the original Internet Explorer and the metro "Internet Explorer", which isn't quite the same thing, and now a whole new browser (new but still using the same rendering engine and javascript engine as before).
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Oh Goodie Goodie (Score:2)
Something new with lots of holes to PEN test!
End of click to infect? (Score:3)
If I sent an accurate description of the malware situation now back in time to 2000 it would be discarded as a blatant attack rant on MS disguised as incredibly unlikely SF.
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Webkit is only Apple. Who are the other companies?
Re:WHY GOD WHY (Score:4, Informative)
Chrome, Dolphin, the Android browser, Kindle, and about a dozen others. The vast majority of web browsers are based on WebKit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
Re:WHY GOD WHY (Score:4, Informative)
Re:WHY GOD WHY (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, Blink drops a lot of the Apple stuff but also adds a lot of Google specific stuff. Swings and roundabouts really.
Re:WHY GOD WHY (Score:5, Informative)
WebKit came from KDE.
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Re:WHY GOD WHY (Score:5, Funny)
MS is the new IBM, while android is the new windows.
Source: I own an android phone.
Re: WHY GOD WHY (Score:3)
I can read and respond to your vapid post on my Android phone, with effort, since Slashdot Mobile sucks so hard.
But I can. It's not just for Google ads.
Re: WHY GOD WHY (Score:2)
Actually Slashdot Mobile works great on iOS! ;-)
Re: WHY GOD WHY (Score:2)
It's a big world out there...
Re: WHY GOD WHY (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wow.... Maybe you should develop a sense of humor...
You have just proven a point. I just can not say anything so silly that the internet will not provide me a fool that will take it seriously.
Re:WHY GOD WHY (Score:4, Informative)
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You must not have to deal with IE10 on a daily basis. It's missing features from dev tools that make developers' lives easier, especially on Javascript heavy web platforms like Sharepoint. It was finally decided in IE11 that making improvements to the dev tools could be done without having to upgrade the browser which is ludicrous.
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It's a development environment for people who develop web pages. I'm not talking about general users I'm talking about my experience with their shoddy tools.
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Finally they have. Why Microsoft couldn't improve their dev tools without a browser update until version 11 is a mystery. I haven't mentioned Chrome so I'm not sure why you have.
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It's good for Microsoft, especially when they make you bend over...
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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?
Indeed, and besides, if it's using the Trident engine (and the same JS engine), then WTF - it's basically going to be IE 12.
Re:WHY GOD WHY (Score:4, Interesting)
It's my understanding that MS is going to try to diverge from their waterfall development model and aim for a model more akin to the Chrome development model of rapid small releases, but they've probably gotten enough blow back from their corporate clients that there will be two browsers, one a more classic IE with a slower less disruptive development model, and the new browser with the rapid paced model. This is probably a good thing, as a slower target with longer release cycles is good for those of us that have to support third party systems that rely on the client browser to be the UI (basically every enterprise system that's not so crufty as to use a client/server or green screen) and will allow us to have a centrally managed and security updated browser with features that web devs will love.
Re: WHY GOD WHY (Score:2)
It's called Agile, and it's pus unless your entire dev team is ADHD.
Then your dev team is pus.
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Yeah, except FF ESR is a joke compared to IE support, MS gives years and years of security support to IE versions whereas FF barely gives a year. We've had projects take nearly a year from demo to golive, having to go through a complete QA and UAT cycle just as you go live is not what most businesses want to do.
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Re:WHY GOD WHY (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
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However they ALL NEED TO RENDER THE WEB PAGE THE SAME WAY!
Why? I like the idea of having browsers that can show off what they're better at, by rendering pages in different ways. It creates a market with a variety of browsers.
Re: WHY GOD WHY (Score:2)
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Or a return to the bad old days of "Best viewed with $browser" plastered over web pages.
When did those bad old days go away?
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However they ALL NEED TO RENDER THE WEB PAGE THE SAME WAY!
Why? I like the idea of having browsers that can show off what they're better at, by rendering pages in different ways. It creates a market with a variety of browsers.
The great unwashed masses fucking EXPECT them to render in exactly the same way.
That's why.
'But it looks different at home .... blah blah blah"
If that quote above, didn't give you fits of anger, you haven't done enough web development and need to shut up on the subject you don't know anything about.
Re:WHY GOD WHY (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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No shit. I wish they'd put some work into links2.
Re:WHY GOD WHY (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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As I see it - the core engine(s) used aren't the key problem, the key problem is rather that many browsers today have been bloated to no end with additional crap.
Like the "Accelerators" that Microsoft provides.
ASP (Score:2)
I fucking better not have to rewrite all my ASP.NET web apps.
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Rofl...thanks for making my day.
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Re: WHY GOD WHY (Score:2)
God, we really DO need a new OS in the marketplace...
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More like Trojan.
Lubricated or regular?
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Re:Spartan? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Spartan? (Score:4, Funny)
More like Trojan.
Lubricated or regular?
Dry, impregnated with glass shards and wooden splinters for 'pleasure'.
Like thousands of tiny rocks, urging a woman to let go.
Gar, this deteriorated quickly...
Re:"Support Extensions" is not real (Score:4, Insightful)
"... giving up control is anthem to them."
For future reference, that should be "anathema".
Re:"Support Extensions" is not real (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, like how Google is heavily restricting Chrome extensions these days?
Re:"Support Extensions" is not real (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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Well, binaries dont talk much so there is that.
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poor performance on hardware nearing 10 years old
who would have thought
in unrelated news, my hp48gx can not run crysis.
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I'll stick with FTP, thank you.