

Microsoft's new browser and the Windows 10 January preview build - asyncwords
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2015/01/22/project-spartan-and-the-windows-10-january-preview-build.aspx

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TheAceOfHearts
An OS-bound browser is a non-starter for me. I like Safari too, but having to
use a different browser between different OSs is too much of a hassle.

That alone is enough to keep me from giving Spartan a real chance.

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cpr
It's interesting that they decided to start from scratch with a new rendering
engine. (I imagine the UI itself could have been updated without a lot of
trouble.)

They probably looked at the thousands of special cases in the old spaghetti
code, maybe took a gander at the Blink/Webkit sources ;-), and then decided,
"Hang it, we can do this ourselves, and do it right." Likely a pretty fun
project, betting against the "never start from scratch" common wisdom of the
crowd.

~~~
asyncwords
Curious that they're calling it a 'new' rendering engine at all. I could have
sworn they said somewhere that it was still the same Trident engine, but
without the legacy IE bits. Also, according to Paul Thurrott [1], the browser
team was considering WebKit/Blink and ultimately decided to stick with Trident
– apparently because of Google's control over Blink.

[1]: [https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/470/maybe-
window...](https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/470/maybe-
windows-10s-spartan-isnt-going-suck#.VL5onjELVEw.reddit)

~~~
bad_user
Well, I for one am glad that Microsoft decided against WebKit/Blink.

Because of its popularity as a rendering engine, being used by Safari, Chrome
and Opera, both on the desktop and on mobile phones, it is quickly becoming a
monoculture. Even if we are talking about an open-source project, to me it
smells too much like the lock-in that IExplorer once had on the market and
people might not remember, but IExplorer was at some point very innovative and
the best browser available. And many people also don't remember what happened
after that.

So even though I'm very grateful about WebKit/Blink, we really must avoid
repeating mistakes of the past. Multiple implementations of a standard are
very healthy, monocultures are not.

However, I also think that given this overhaul, Microsoft should open-source
this rendering engine. I really hope they do it and it would be in their
interest to do so.

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johansch
The bottom bars of the mobile IE10 look really awkward. That button
distribution and mis-alignment...

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mhomde
It feels like browsers in general has become to commoditized for people to
even bother. How much does it really matter these days if you use chrome,
firefox,opera etc. It used to be that it DID matter that you used IE because
they were so hopefully after (after they were before netscape) but these days
it more of a popularity contest.

Every browser pretty much presents webpages correctly according to modern CSS
standards.

Every browser is fast enough that the difference is negligible

Not many people use any major add-on features of browsers, except like
adblocker and stuff like that.

I really don't understand why this is an area that's worth competing in
anymore, except providing an browser for your mobile ecosystem (chrome for
android, spartan for windows phone, safari for apple, whatever). Webpages are
still needed but apps are sweeping the field and providing better UX for the
webpages that people use the most.

And downvote me as you might but firefox days are sadly counted

~~~
asyncwords
I think Microsoft feels it needs to provide a better browser because the
popular alternative is controlled by their competitor. Chrome itself does its
best to make sure you get pulled into the Google ecosystem - you need a Google
account just to use the sync feature. On top of that, when you switch Chrome
to its full-screen Windows 8 app mode (for touch screen support, etc.) it
basically turns into a clone of Chrome OS:

[http://i.imgur.com/YJ1OJqi.png](http://i.imgur.com/YJ1OJqi.png)

~~~
mhomde
Yeah, I think Chrome is the browser to beat right now... but does most people
really use the sync feature? I might be wrong but my guess would be no, and
that's true for a lot of the other "additional value" features that browsers
add

~~~
spinchange
It would be interesting to see those metrics on sync adoption.

I can tell you from my own personal, anecdotal experience, it's one of those
things as soon as someone knows about (and fully understands) they typically
become Chrome users everywhere because of it. I found this to be the case for
our Apps domain users at work and even friends & family who just have personal
Google accounts and maybe even use iPhones, etc. It's powerful to show someone
that your history, bookmarks, and even open tabs across devices stay in sync.
I find that if one isn't "creeped out" by that, they usually think it's
extremely convenient.

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jbob2000
Great, now I have to support IE 7 AND Spartan...

~~~
McGlockenshire
Can you explain what circumstances require that you support IE7?

~~~
tehaugmenter
I work for a company that has a "managing" application that runs on windows.
This application has a browser plugin that runs in an equivalent IE7
environment which must be supported.

Unfortunately that is what you get with proprietary sometimes.

~~~
michaelbuddy
I always hear about these applications but I've never actually seen one.

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frik
Spartan is based on an improved version IE11's trident engine. The browser
window is a WinRuntime app.

It's still unclear if it will support WebGL 2, WebRTC, CSS 3D transformations.

~~~
cremno
[https://status.modern.ie](https://status.modern.ie) says WebRTC is in
development and CSS 3D transforms are part of a IE preview release.

~~~
frik
There are three incompatible proposed web real-time communication standards.

Google, Mozilla and Opera - "WebRTC":

[http://caniuse.com/#search=WebRTC](http://caniuse.com/#search=WebRTC) and
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC)

Microsoft proposed another draft "CU-RTC-WEB" based on Skype details:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-RTC-WEB](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-RTC-
WEB) and later "ORTC": [http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/08/ortc-
webrtc](http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/08/ortc-webrtc)

Hangout vs. Skype vs. iOS messages is the deal breaker why WebRTC isn't
suppored in Safari and IE. That's sad as it already works in ~1.7B devices.

~~~
gtjrossi
We're implementing ORTC (which actually gets its origins from outside
Microsoft: [http://ortc.org/history/](http://ortc.org/history/)). ORTC is
essentially WebRTC "1.1" and there's active standardization work going on (in
both WebRTC 1.0 and ORTC specs) to make them have a high level of
compatibility. ORTC enables more scalable video and simplifies the way the
data is exchanged by using a vanilla JS object style (eliminates SCP
Offer/Answer).

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kethinov
Really looking forward to this.

Great new design.

Trident without the legacy bits.

And free upgrades to get people onto the latest software as quickly as
possible.

I'm liking this new Microsoft.

