Microsoft Spartan

[randj89]

SPARTAN

I don't know what to say but I have an iPhone with iOS 8 and it seems that the swype to delete email function for windows 10 on the windows phone is exactly the same concept that ios 8 implemented when it launched last year. It's nice but I don't know if this is kind of a war or concept, it doesn't bother me but I know there's a lot of people that will complain or talk about this.

 

[Parth Dhanani]

MS got to lazy to build proper new browser this is another clone of chromium. I'm hoping that at list it will be faster than Google Chrome which is slowly becoming clogged with some useless features.

Actually no it isnt built on chromium platform but it certainly has some same characteristics..
It will support extensions but those extensions will have largely the same coding as that of google chrome extensions but I can tell this for sure it isnt chromium base

I don't know what to say but I have an iPhone with iOS 8 and it seems that the swype to delete email function for windows 10 on the windows phone is exactly the same concept that ios 8 implemented when it launched last year. It's nice but I don't know if this is kind of a war or concept, it doesn't bother me but I know there's a lot of people that will complain or talk about this.

Yeah its a very basic change which IOS and Android have did it in past but there's alot more and many things windows has brought in and my post was for Spartan browser you should check out that browser and yes Safari already has a reading mode
But there are many things windows has done and can do which cant and hasnt so enoy the concept. if you like it you can switch its totally your choice

 

[randj89]

Actually no it isnt built on chromium platform but it certainly has some same characteristics..
It will support extensions but those extensions will have largely the same coding as that of google chrome extensions but I can tell this for sure it isnt chromium base


Yeah its a very basic change which IOS and Android have did it in past but there's alot more and many things windows has brought in and my post was for Spartan browser you should check out that browser and yes Safari already has a reading mode
But there are many things windows has done and can do which cant and hasnt so enoy the concept. if you like it you can switch its totally your choice

Its totally true and I agree!

 

[Petrovic]

Microsoft shows off Spartan browser's mobile UI, light and dark themes


Microsoft showed the world yesterday its future with Windows 10 and part of the conversation included a new browser which the company is calling 'Project Spartan'; that's a codename for now and may not be the final name. While the details were light yesterday and not all of the features were shown off, the company has provided a bit more information today.

As we previously scooped, Microsoft confirmed that Spartan is a single browser that is designed to work on every Windows 10 device and also includes a new engine too. The company says that the browser will retain legacy support for the enterprise by using the IE11 engine for legacy sites when needed and will use the new engine for modern web sites.

Based on the post, the best way to think about Spartan and the new engine is that it is a browser built for the modern web that aims to do away with the legacy support. While it can render legacy sites when needed, it appears that you will lose out on the performance enhancements of the new engine when that scenario occurs.



Microsoft says that the new engine will be the default for Windows 10, which isn't a major surprise. And for those of you who are curious about what the mobile interface will look like, the images above give us our best look yet including both dark and light themes.

But for those of you who are hoping to see the new browser, it will not arrive in the next public release of Windows 10 Technical Preview. While that will surely disappoint some, it's important that, when Microsoft does release Spartan, first impressions are fantastic as this is a new adventure for a team that's hoping to finally leave all the Internet Explorer baggage behind.
Source

Mod Edit: Source doesn't allow image hotlinking.

 

[Vipersd]

I know that isn't based on chromium engine it is still Trident, but do something new if you want to attract new users.

 

[illumination]

I dont know whether to pity microsoft or admire them.. They are running around between Linux and Mac, and implementing the best features of both into the newest version of windows, while this on one hand, is really smart, and will attract many, it is also lame on their part for lack of innovation.. Im still waiting to see if they are going to wait until the last minute to tack the "annual subscription" on after everyone has moved up to windows 10, possibly with limited functionality unless subscribed.. We shall see..

 

[Parth Dhanani]

I dont know whether to pity microsoft or admire them.. They are running around between Linux and Mac, and implementing the best features of both into the newest version of windows, while this on one hand, is really smart, and will attract many, it is also lame on their part for lack of innovation.. Im still waiting to see if they are going to wait until the last minute to tack the "annual subscription" on after everyone has moved up to windows 10, possibly with limited functionality unless subscribed.. We shall see..

I beg to differ.. Windows has introduced a total new moetro ui some good apps and games like xbox one which both of them lack..
Where it comes close to MAC is with all in all self sufficient OS like chats,mails,etc. but tbh thats a need of every OS even Android does so
Where it comes close to both linux and MAC is free upgrade and store which again same thing we want everything indexed in this huge world of apps and lastly about free upgrade it is a very shrewed move .. MAC users have been loyal and upgrade the OS same goes for Linux (linux is free so no harm done) but windows user dont do that many users stick to windows xp windows 7 and windows 8.1 (now may be) and think if i own this OS and I love it why would i upgrade to a new weird one which has all new ##### like metro Im not used to (happened with Vista and 8 people denied to change) but now since u have free upgrade it will migrade more people also many people will try it and if they like it would buy iy .. Hell they have to because they are used to or addicted to

Its just what I think it may not be a fact

 

[illumination]

I beg to differ.. Windows has introduced a total new moetro ui some good apps and games like xbox one which both of them lack..
Where it comes close to MAC is with all in all self sufficient OS like chats,mails,etc. but tbh thats a need of every OS even Android does so
Where it comes close to both linux and MAC is free upgrade and store which again same thing we want everything indexed in this huge world of apps and lastly about free upgrade it is a very shrewed move .. MAC users have been loyal and upgrade the OS same goes for Linux (linux is free so no harm done) but windows user dont do that many users stick to windows xp windows 7 and windows 8.1 (now may be) and think if i own this OS and I love it why would i upgrade to a new weird one which has all new ##### like metro Im not used to (happened with Vista and 8 people denied to change) but now since u have free upgrade it will migrade more people also many people will try it and if they like it would buy iy .. Hell they have to because they are used to or addicted to

Its just what I think it may not be a fact

Virtual desktops like linux, command style ppa downloads like linux, snap like linux, read mode "much like safari from mac", gestures much like mac, search button on task bar much like mac spotlight, shall i go on..

Do not get me wrong, im glad microsoft is trying to do something to please users, but they really need to try and come up with something themselves instead of just copying everyone else..

 

[Parth Dhanani]

Virtual desktops like linux, command style ppa downloads like linux, snap like linux, read mode "much like safari from mac", gestures much like mac, search button on task bar much like mac spotlight, shall i go on..

Do not get me wrong, im glad microsoft is trying to do something to please users, but they really need to try and come up with something themselves instead of just copying everyone else..

Agreed but it has moved on to new ui features because of multiple reasons
eg search in start just to promote cortana
else windows charms search is technically way better than spotlight or taskbar search (imo)
then gestures are supposed to come when you switch to touch screen devices
read mode and multiple desktop have been requested to microsoft by the users since windows 8 developer preview but they made metro primary target..
there are multiple features which serve the purpose for users and companies have to make use of them for users convenience
Statusbar/Notification bar of android for ios and windows
Clean chrome tabs adapted by firefox
so this things are for our convenience and if you do observe the points both of us mentioned basically windows is bringing in linux mac windows and android positives in one box so how could that be a bad thing ??
As a user I would love it if i get a all in one OS to use

 

[Parth Dhanani]

I know that isn't based on chromium engine it is still Trident, but do something new if you want to attract new users.

Agreed they cant even upgrade icons but microsoft said it is a new engine it isnt even Trident

 

[illumination]

Agreed but it has moved on to new ui features because of multiple reasons
eg search in start just to promote cortana
else windows charms search is technically way better than spotlight or taskbar search (imo)
then gestures are supposed to come when you switch to touch screen devices
read mode and multiple desktop have been requested to microsoft by the users since windows 8 developer preview but they made metro primary target..
there are multiple features which serve the purpose for users and companies have to make use of them for users convenience
Statusbar/Notification bar of android for ios and windows
Clean chrome tabs adapted by firefox
so this things are for our convenience and if you do observe the points both of us mentioned basically windows is bringing in linux mac windows and android positives in one box so how could that be a bad thing ??
As a user I would love it if i get a all in one OS to use

I agreed above that combining the best of all of them is smart. It just lacked innovation, something i hope they plan to continue as time progresses.

 

[Parth Dhanani]

I agreed above that combining the best of all of them is smart. It just lacked innovation, something i hope they plan to continue as time progresses.

Metro, Aero, New kernel to support uefi and fast boot , gesture unlock, cloud os basically everything is synced, live tiles and apps kinda new

 

[jamescv7]

What's powering Spartan? Internet Explorer, of course

Over the past few days we finally saw the UI of Spartan, some of its new features such as annotations directly on webpages, the reading list and integration with Cortana. But there’s still a question of what’s actually going on under the hood? Is this really a whole new browser?

Microsoft keeps saying yes. The company mentioned it numerous times, on stage and in posts, and unequivocally stated that Spartan featured a “new rendering engine”, meaning this was indeed a whole new browser and not your grandpa’s IE.

However, as Neowin has explained before and as Mary Jo Foley reports, that’s not the full story. Spartan is still IE in certain aspects. Trident hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s just been forked into a new version which uses an “Edge mode platform”.

http://www.neowin.net/news/whats-powering-spartan-internet-explorer-of-course

 

[Parth Dhanani]

What's powering Spartan? Internet Explorer, of course


http://www.neowin.net/news/whats-powering-spartan-internet-explorer-of-course

Good piece of information thanks

 

[Petrovic]

Internet Explorer Project Spartan Shows Large Performance Gains

With the release of build 9926 of Windows 10, I have had some time to get to know the new build. One of the things discussed at the Windows 10 event in Redmond was an update to the browser, codenamed Project Spartan, which is a new fork of Microsoft’s browser. There will be a lot of features coming to Spartan, such as the ability to annotate web pages with digital ink or keyboard text input, a new reading experience, and Cortana integration. It will be available on all Windows 10 devices – PCs, tablets, phones, and even Xbox. Internet Explorer has never been on the fast update cycle that other browsers are on – namely Google’s Chome browser and Mozilla’s Firefox.

As a brief history, there are of course several major browsers and many smaller ones. Webkit has become one of the dominant rendering (also called layout) engines, and powers Apple’s Safari browser on both OS X and iOS. Chrome used to be based on Webkit, but in 2013, Google forked WebCore from the WebKit project and created Blink, which is also now used by the Opera browser. Firefox has their own rendering engine, called Gecko, and Internet Explorer has used a closed source rendering engine called Trident since version 4.0.

In addition to the rendering engine, each browser also has an ECMA Script engine for executing JavaScript. JavaScript has become very important on the web, so JavaScript performance of the engine is important for how fast web pages feel. Safari’s engine is branded as Nitro, Chrome has V8, Firefox has SpiderMonkey, and Internet Explorer uses Chakra. This means that even though Chrome and Safari were both based on Webkit, performance can be very different because of the different script engines in each browser.

Previous to Internet Explorer 9, IE used a script interpreter for JavaScript, which was fine back when the web was mostly static content, but not good enough with the move to dynamic webpages. Chakra was created for IE9, and it gave a large jump in performance for IE 9 over IE 8. It was certainly an improvement, but quickly fell behind in terms of performance against the other competitors. IE 10, and IE 11, both improved somewhat over the competition, but still the performance of Javascript was poor.

With Windows 10, Microsoft is finally talking about performance again, but also compatibility. For legacy sites, Spartan can load the IE 11 engine as needed, but most of the time they will be able to avoid the legacy code and use a much leaner, faster engine, along with a revamped Javascript engine which offers much greater performance.



Spartan will not be Internet Explorer. This will be a completely new browser, with a new name. Spartan will however be able to load the IE 11 engine if and when needed to maintain compatibility with older sites. For enterprises which still rely on older technologies such as ActiveX controls and Browser Helper Objects, Internet Explorer will still be available in Windows 10 for those use cases, however it will have the same dual rendering engine as Spartan, allowing modern sites to be rendered with the new rendering engine, and older sites to be rendered with IE 11.



For the Windows 10 build 9926 which was released on January 23rd, Spartan is not yet available, and will show up at a later date. However Internet Explorer does have the new Edge document mode. A small number of testers will have this mode enabled by default, and anyone who wants to test against it can manually enable it by going to about:flags in the address bar. Switch Enable Experimental Web Platform Features to Enabled, and you will be using the latest rendering engine. This is still pre-release software, so enable at your own risk of course. Also in the experimental features is the ability to set a custom user agent string, and Microsoft has continued the successful strategy that they brought forward in Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1 of having a user agent string say that it is not Internet Explorer to avoid old IE-only content.

The performance increase of the new Javascript engine is massive, and brings Internet Explorer basically up to par with Google Chome for Javascript performance. WebGL still has some work to be done, and at the moment, the only HTML5 features that have been added is WebM support. Let’s take a look at the numbers.

IE was well optimized for Sunspider already, so there is not much of a change there. Google Octane 2.0 however has always been terrible in IE, and now it comes in roughly the same as Chrome, for a massive 81.8% increase over the old rendering engine. Kraken continues this with a 45% jump in performance. It is a big change, and a welcome one too.

Spartan should have good performance when it is eventually previewed, and hopefully the standards support will increase as well. Since it will be updated through the Windows Store, the old way of updating Internet Explorer with new Operating System releases should also disappear, allowing Microsoft to ramp up the updates to the new browser. It has taken a long time, but it seems that Redmond is finally focusing on performance and standards for a new web. For those that want to read up on more of the changes, check out the MSDN IE Blog for more information.
Source

 

[Petrovic]

New images from the browser Spartan Windows 10 TP Build 10009

microsoftportal.net

 

[Petrovic]

More Spartan for Windows 10 functionality showcased in new leaked screenshots
Thanks to a Russian site, some patience, and Bing translator, we're getting yet another round of Spartan browser information. Russian blog site MSWin, has some detailed screen shots of an upcoming build of the new browser. We're still not exactly certain whether or not these screen shots are representative of the Spartan browser confirmed by the Windows team to be included in the next build of Windows 10 Technical Preview, but we can sure hope.

The blog starts off showing the new tab functionality of Spartan. It looks like users will now get suggested options as they look to open up a new tab. This was present in IE before but it was dedicated to an entire screen which arguably didn't make good use of it's 'Spartan' interface.

Next up is an example of Spartan's adaptive design. It looks like there will be a limit to the how far the browser can be vertically manipulated; very similar to the way Modern Apps operate in the current build of Windows 10 Technical Preview.

We've been seeing a lot of what the browser looks like on phones and desktop, but very little is mentioned about how this browser will scale for those on tablets or two-in-ones. The screen shot below shows how the UI adjust from desktop to tablet modes, removing the header and outlines.

Perhaps we can chalk this up to early development but it looks like the browser will only offer a minimal set of user actions from the start.

Other features are also missing in this preview. Right now users will not be able to create InPrivate tabs, restore previously closed tabs or add to the favorites menu through tabs. Again, we're not sure which version this is, and we suspect these features will come fast and furiously as the browser will now be treated like an app rather than an attached piece of the OS. It does however look like users can still utilize navigation keyboard shortcuts that are present in previous versions of IE.

'

From interface and navigation to settings and features
It looks like this section is just a bare as the UI. The browser does however offer, 5 basic browser settings: enable/disable the favorites menu, click to identify phone numbers on pages (similar to the way Skype highlights actionable numbers), changes to the address of the homepage and finally users can customize the read mode appearance.

Users now get a glimpse of the integrated Reading List options built into the browser. It's noted on the Russian blog site that some of the features have not been activated yet or function properly at this point.

Lastly, the blog highlights the much anticipated Cortana integration. Sadly the blog was unable to fully utilize the feature as Cortana hasn't made here way to Russia just yet. So we'll have to reserve judgment on this (or you can decide for yourself by watching our exclusive hands-on with this feature). It does look like sprinkles of her assistance did make it to testing. In the image below, users can quickly use her search capabilities inline while they wok within the browser.

The blog goes on to note some of the frustrating issues that are present in the leaked build. Items like confusion in Windows 10 Technical Preview of default IE usage. When moving to tablet mode, the OS consistently brings a pop up asking to switch rather than seamlessly adjusting the current UI of Spartan. It also does not replace Modern UI usage with Spartan in tablet mode without effort. Another noted issue is the lack of communication between Modern IE and Spartan. Saved links, favorites, and general settings are not communicated through browsers, so users should be prepared to start a new session with Spartan, at least as far as this leaked version is concerned.

Finally those looking to test the Chrome-like extension will have to wait a bit longer as leaked documentation is informing that the this implementation will only occur after the final version of Windows 10 and Spartan are released. Microsoft is also said to not to be supporting ActiveX in Spartan in any form, and we suppose that functionality will still remain in 'classic' IE for compatibility reasons.
Source