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Microsoft Internet Explorer Software Windows

Microsoft Rolls Out Project Spartan With New Windows 10 Build 122

Posted by Soulskill from the this!-is!-spar!-tan! dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Today Microsoft released a new Technical Preview build for Windows 10. Its most notable addition is Microsoft's new browser: Project Spartan. In a brief post explaining the basics of the browser, the company says it includes their personal assistant software, Cortana, as well as "inking" support, which lets you write or type on the webpage you're viewing. But the biggest change, of course is the new rendering engine. The "suggestion box" page for Project Spartan is already filling up with idea from users, including one for Trident/EdgeHTML to be released as open source.
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Microsoft Rolls Out Project Spartan With New Windows 10 Build More

Microsoft Rolls Out Project Spartan With New Windows 10 Build

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  • Approx. every other version of Windows is shit. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @12:14AM (#49377021)

    Approximately every other version of windows is shit. XP (good), Vista (shit), Win7 (good), Win8 (shit).

    Windows 10? No thanks, I'll wait for Windows 9, the good version they skipped.

    • Windows 10? No thanks, I'll wait for Windows 9, the good version they skipped.

      Who knows? Maybe they mean "spartan" in the sense of the opposite of "bloat".

      One can only hope.

      • Maybe it's named after the apple tree:

        The 'Spartan' is an apple cultivar developed by Dr. R.C Palmer and introduced in 1936 from the Federal Agriculture Research Station in Summerland, British Columbia, now known as the Pacific Agri-food Research Centre - Summerland.[1] The 'Spartan' is notable for being the first new breed of apple produced from a formal scientific breeding program.[2] The apple was supposed to be a cross between two North American varieties, the 'McIntosh' and the 'Newtown Pippin', but recently, genetic analysis showed the 'Newtown Pippin' was not one of the parents and its identity remains a mystery. The 'Spartan' apple is considered a good all-purpose apple.[3] The apple is of medium size and has a bright-red blush, but can have background patches of greens and yellows.[4]

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Nah, I'm pretty sure they mean it in the sense of "drowning babies for the advancement of fascism".

    • Windows 10? No thanks, I'll wait for Windows 9, the good version they skipped.

      I'm waiting for Windows 11. Most OSes only go up to 10, but Windows will go up to 11.

    • Approximately every other version of windows is shit. XP (good), Vista (shit), Win7 (good), Win8 (shit).

      Windows 10? No thanks, I'll wait for Windows 9, the good version they skipped.

      There will never be a 9. They are trying to distance themselves from the shitfest that was 8 so it got skipped.

    • Re:Approx. every other version of Windows is shit. (Score:5, Funny)

      by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @09:12AM (#49378527)

      Well if you *really* want it, Windows 9 is available in that alternate universe where Justin Timberlake never left NSYNC. But no fucking way am I going there to get it.

  • I wonder how much headache this will create among web developers. Will Spartan implement things in a new unheard of way or will it actually try to achieve maximum compatibility?

    • What are you talking about?

      MS has not done that in awhile. Unless of course your version of it at work is a decade behind what is out now as usually the case it is with ultra conservative IT departments who laid off the intranet team in 2008 recession

      • Re:Web developer headache? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Pieroxy ( 222434 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @01:26AM (#49377239) Homepage

        The problem is that you need to upgrade your OS (and therefore need to pay) to get a good upgrade of your browser. No other browser vendor enforce this. THIS is why people are stuck with old versions of IE.

        AND IT SUCKS.

        (Was I yelling right there?)

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

          Unless you're stuck on a version of Windows which is over a decade old (XP and previous), this is simply not true. Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for user of Windows 7 and up.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

            You seem to forget Vista in there buddy. Also, this is the first time this is happening, so let's not get carried away.. I'll wait to see how all this rolls out.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by RoLi ( 141856 )

            Vista was released 2007 to consumers, right up to that point XP was the "latest and greatest" from Redmond.

            And of course Vista had it's problems, so maybe we should take 2009 (availability of Win7) as the point when XP got outdated.

        • No, that isn't why people are stuck on old versions of IE - I work for a major UK insurance broker, we have Windows 7 here and we run IE 11, however the major UK insurer (household name) that I deal with on the web side of things is also on Windows 7 but they use IE 8. Scary eh? When I build a new insurance website, the only people I'm dealing with who have IE issues are these people.

          Most people are stuck on an old browser for reasons other than they are too cheap ass to pay for an OS upgrade.

          • It sounds like they are the perfect candidate for the "Compatibility View List" GPO options available with IE 11 - you can define a list of URLs that should open in IE8 compatibility mode, where everything else runs on IE 11.

            It almost fixes bad web sites that are engineered to work with IE8 and nothing else... almost.

    • Re:Web developer headache? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bondsbw ( 888959 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @12:53AM (#49377141)

      I wonder how much headache this will create among web developers. Will Spartan implement things in a new unheard of way or will it actually try to achieve maximum compatibility?

      According to WinBeta [winbeta.org], interoperability with other browsers is the goal of Spartan. Compatibility (for legacy/enterprise sites) is the goal of IE. IE's Trident engine will not be updated except for security fixes, and Spartan's Edge engine will move forward with modern standard, new features, and improved performance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shados ( 741919 )

      Even IE11 isn't terrible. We have a pretty large web development team at work for our product, and being a Unix/Mac shop, its annoying to test IE (need VMs, etc). I'm pretty much the only person who consistently test it, and its very very rare people break something, even though they're only testing on latest Firefox and Chrome. Even IE10 doesn't break that often. IE9 however....that horse was dead a long time ago.

      Now, result may vary, if you use a lot of 3d transforms and bleeding edge features, even Firef

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Someone (I think on reddit) pointed out that using the code name Spartan fits the "Halo" theme they've started with the "Cortana" search assistant.

      • Someone (I think on reddit) pointed out that using the code name Spartan fits the "Halo" theme they've started with the "Cortana" search assistant.

        It works for me, since the only reason I keep Windows around is gaming.

      • The other thing I'd like to point out is that the majority of people who hear the code names (rather than the release names) are in tech circles. Windows has a reputation for bloat in said circles, so calling it "spartan" is likely an attempt to appeal to the tech crowd.

      • Someone (I think on reddit) pointed out that using the code name Spartan fits the "Halo" theme they've started with the "Cortana" search assistant.

        You needed someone on reddit to point that out?

    • Give them nothing! But take from them... everything!

  • Ballmer

    __________
    Total ballmers

  • Caught up to Chrome 20 from 2012 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @12:56AM (#49377155) Journal

    Only 3 years behind webkit now

    Only score 370 from HTML5test.com which places it about where Chrome 20 was in 2012.

    Just like IE years behind. Shame.

    Also the address bar isn't obvious and will confuse the heck out of Grandma and office drones. No arrow in the address bar to show frequent sites. Again phone will be ringing off the hook for it back.

    No thanks will ban this on the corporate desktop and put IE 11 for awhile when we switch to Windows 10 in the next 5 years until MS adds these features back.

    I am trying hard not to be trollish as IE has drastically improved by the POS it was last decade! However, the faster MS is on changing and being not bad the further webkit and even Mozilla plow ahead even faster.

    IE haters it is only beta so it might change and according to smashingmagazine.com the trident team mentioned 3,000 bugs were removed when they re created the whole engine into something new. So kudos Microsoft.

    But all this change freaks the hell out of business users and are parents still clinging to XP for life as the best OS and the last when that worked with things in the right spots etc

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The difference in speeds between all the major browsers now is pretty much irrelevant from a user perspective. For the average user the browser isn't what is the slowest factor. IT is nice to see constant speed and efficiency improvements but we are well beyond where they are a selling point to users. html5 is also still very much in its infancy, HTML5 was only released as a standard late last year, Spartan seems to support about every part that anyone really uses at this point, pretty damn good for a beta.

    • Re:Caught up to Chrome 20 from 2012 (Score:4, Informative)

      by RoLi ( 141856 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @08:18AM (#49378255)

      As a Linux user I'm sometimes jealous of a browser that doesn't change every month.

      Recently, Google announced that they would support IIRC the latest two versions of Chrome and Firefox for their services. The only browser they support for longer than a year is ... (drumroll) ... IE.

      I was really getting my hopes up for the LTS version of Firefox, but they do everything they can to sabotage it (just try to find the LTS version on their website - it's impossible, you have to specifically search for it, they intentionally hid it and do not provide links to it).

      Recently Chrome on my Android tablet changed (it now reloads the site when you scroll to far up). Gosh - I'm really starting to hate Google. And I already hate Firefox for their chicken-brained release schedule. And on Linux there is not really an alternative.

      Somebody has to fork Firefox and offer a stable platform. The funny thing is that they would not really have to do a lot - just fork it and maintain it.

      Until about 2 years ago I was still using Firefox 2 (yes, two) and I didn't have any problems until Google decided to "drop support" (= intentionally break) Google Translate.

      Browsers were "good enough" 7 years ago. Firefox was great except for memory consumption and instability. Today, Firefox is adequate (no longer great, they messed up the UI too much for that) except for memory consumption and instability. So all the real issues of Firefox were ignored while we got "features" we don't need.

      • It is frustrating.

        Here is a flip side? How would you like to write apps (assuming you are a developer) or shell scripts (if you are an admin) which are source compatible with Solaris 9, 10, 11, Linux (from 2006 - present), AIX, and same with c++? Talk about a nightmare!

        IE is an extreme in the other direction and holds back developers 10 years. IN the good old days of the 1990s we had rapid growth and skillsets. If your browser was a year old forget it!

        Then the pointed hair bosses started using it for missio

      • Recently Chrome on my Android tablet changed (it now reloads the site when you scroll to far up). Gosh - I'm really starting to hate Google.

        "Changed"? You mean, you updated it, I guess? We have 5 Android devices in our family, and we all have control over which app we update and which we don't. E.g. the latest gmail for android is shit and buggy as hell, so I rolled back to the previous version, and did not update it on my phone. My wife doesn't update anything by default. So while there's good reason to hrl criticism at Google for their latest versions of their softwares, at least they give people the option to use the older, less sucky,

      • Users may or may not want stable software. Developers want to be able to use new CSS features. As for the Firefox developers, I'm not sure what their UI goals are, but presumably they have them. That's two strikes against stability.

        I suspect you have no idea how difficult it is to support older browsers, as a web developer. The development workflow usually goes like this: first, you code to the spec, and test in a browser that reproduces the specification well. Then you start trying to find out why it doesn

  • My only thought is that of the trojan horse. Aptly named, I think.
    • Yes, it seems like they finally figured out that Rome is burning and no matter how large their army, nothing can save them now :-)

    • Why aptly named? The Spartans had nothing to do with the Trojan horse mythology, that was the Trojans and the Greeks.

  • Not another new rendering "engine" (Score:3)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @04:24AM (#49377615) Homepage

    Just how many have their been over the years? Just how hard is it to render HTML?

    Or is it similar to the move away from skeuomorphism with GUIs - its just arrogant new teams trying to prove that they can do better than previous teams whose ideas are "past it"? I've seen this pointless reinventing the wheel so many times in my career it makes me despair. The amount of wasted manpower....

    • Re:Not another new rendering "engine" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dave420 ( 699308 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @05:54AM (#49377855)
      Microsoft has very specific requirements for its browsers - namely corporate use. Other browser manufacturers don't have this pressure. Rendering HTML is actually very difficult, and that's ignoring media, JavaScript, extensions, user profiles, bookmarks, system integration, and so on. Saying it's just HTML isn't really helping the discussion...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        "Rendering HTML is actually very difficult,"

        Rendering core HTML has been a solved problem since the 90s. HTML5 obviously adds complexities but other vendors have managed without a total rewrite. Perhaps MSs rendering library was rubbish to start with.

        "user profiles, bookmarks, system integration"

        Whats all that got to do with rendering?

        • Re:Not another new rendering "engine" (Score:5, Informative)

          by Shados ( 741919 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @08:51AM (#49378399)

          Rendering HTML in the 90s was easy. Rendering html today, is really, really fucking hard (there was stuff added between the 90s and HTML5 you know...)

          There's 2 big issues.

          First, there's just a lot. The CSS3 spec alone would take forever to implement from scratch. Well, no one finished yet.

          Second, the spec is full of holes. FULL of holes. So people just lean on each other to figure out what to do. If you implement the spec exactly as is, you could still make something totaly useless, because you're not handling the undocumented edge cases the same way Firefox or Chrome do.

          At this point, pretty much no one can realistically write a browser rendering engine from scratch. Even Spartan isn't from scratch. They're just getting rid of the parts of Trident that are holding them back, but very much keeping big chunks of it.

          If all of a sudden, all rendering engines and their memories were to spontaneously go poof, but all existing web pages still remained as well as the html5 and related specs, it would be a very, very long time before we could browse the existing web again.

          • HTML 5 is too ambitious.

            What needs to happen is HTML 5.1, 5.2, etc.

            W3C is trying to work this way. Google and Apple have their own organization. Why I welcome some of this I think it is a nightmare to have pictures api, 2 primptives, etc. It is like they want a visual studio + macromedia shockwave experience.

            Just crazy for a web browser. It should focus on content and use special tools like codecs for particular jobs. WebGL should be doing the 2d primptives as an example right?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dave420 ( 699308 )

          Their current renderer (Trident) was first released in 1997. A re-write is not entirely uncalled for. The other things I mentioned are part of a browser, and suffer from the same issues of an old code-base which doesn't deal well with more modern approaches, and which make a re-write of the browser itself more necessary.

          Their product has been running various parts of code written in 1997. Them rewriting the browser entirely (which is what Spartan is - EdgeHTML is the engine) makes a lot of sense.

      • Microsoft has very specific requirements for its browsers - namely corporate use. Other browser manufacturers don't have this pressure.

        I'm afraid you got that backwards. MS imposed very strict requirements on corporate use because IE (and MS) gave the finger to standards compliance for a very long time. Now that they have a huge install base on a browser in a mess they created. Either IE breaks with backwards compatibility for standards compliance on the next version or they have to release a different browser (Spartan) and keep IE for legacy. Either way it's going to be painful.

        Rendering HTML is actually very difficult, and that's ignoring media, JavaScript, extensions, user profiles, bookmarks, system integration, and so on. Saying it's just HTML isn't really helping the discussion...

        Basic HTML is easy. HTML5 and extensions like scripting are h

    • Just how hard is it to render HTML?

      Hard. If you don't render the page exactly like other browsers, and the web pages 'break' in your browser as a result, then no one will use your browser. The result is you need pixel-perfect rendering of a standard that was designed specifically to not allow pixel-perfect rendering. And of course, there are multiple HTML standards......

  • Called Project Spartan because it comes with 300 security holes built in?
  • The browser is unusable to me because the fonts look like they came from a Linux machine in 2006. Firefox, OTOH looks gorgeous in the font department. It's a non-starter to me when I hate reading anything on it.

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