8 ms·

Microsoft announces Project Spartan, its new web browser for Windows 10

85 points by sz4kerto 12y ago

makepanic 12y ago
I would love to know what this browser is using as a user agent string.
- rkuykendall-com 12y ago
  If it's like every single web browser for it, an insanely long amalgam of the user agent strings of every competing browser, every browser that came before it, and the word Spartan.
  - Mahn 12y ago
    Or even worse, the UA of another browser verbatim, for "compability purposes".
- wmf 12y ago
  Probably the same as IE Edge mode, which has disavowed its heritage completely: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.4; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.143 Safari/537.36 Edge/12.0 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/hh869301(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/hh869301(v=vs.85...
ddod 12y ago
I wonder how they can reconcile the name "Spartan" with built in note taking, social sharing, Cortana, and webpage overlay drawing.
- cwyers 12y ago
  It's just a codename, and like all Microsoft codenames the past few years, it's taken from the Halo games. It doesn't really mean anything, and it probably won't be the final name, but who knows.
  - theandrewbailey 12y ago
    Cortana made it from code name to product name, as did Windows 7.
    - Someone1234 12y ago
      XBox too.
- debacle 12y ago
  Because Halo is the strongest brand Microsoft has built in the last fifteen years.
  - paulornothing 12y ago
    Well now they own minecraft. So perhaps they can call this "Creeper"
    - notduncansmith 12y ago
      Presumably, as in "scope".
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- pdabbadabba 12y ago
  > Who is this wording aimed at? Part of this is probably just marketing people wanting to make things sound exciting. (I'm tempted to mock this tendency, but it may well be that this sort of wordplay works. I have no idea.) But I also think there is a surprising number of People who are familiar with the phrase "browsing the internet" but are not necessarily aware that the software you use to do this is called a "web browser." I find that many non-technical people in my life fall into this category. It's surprising that people don't make the purely grammatical connection between "browsING" and "browsER," but it seems to be a real phenomenon. Perhaps the word "browser" strikes people as jargon and so they screen it out.
quakkels 12y ago
So, it will take a 'snapshot' of the page that you can markup. This snapshot will disable dynamic features of the webpage but still allow links to work. I wonder if they are talking about halting DOM manipulation, or JavaScript execution. Seems this will definitely create new classes of QA test paths.
Animats 12y ago
"Chief among those new features is new inking support that lets users annotate web pages and sync all of those notes to OneDrive and share them with collaborators" In other words, your web browsing is reported to Microsoft so this markup will be in sync. Will that information be made available to advertisers? Will Microsoft backdoor HTTPS to make this work?
- devindotcom 12y ago
  So all cloud services are inherently suspect? Then why call one in particular out at all? This is no different than saving a web page for reading later on instapaper or the like.
  - bsilvereagle 12y ago
    With a service like instapaper you select what is being reported. If it not possible to turn off the Spartan Annotation, all of your web activities are reported.
    - mynameisvlad 12y ago
      And you know this how? Have you had extensive time with it to know that? Nothing in the demo showed that Spartan Annotation was by default on for every page. In fact, it most likely will only turn on if you explicitly start markup mode.
    - pmelendez 12y ago
      It actually would work the same way since Spartan would be saving an snapshot of the website once you create a comment on it.
    - cwyers 12y ago
      If you don't annotate anything, there's no annotation to be reported to Microsoft. (And if Microsoft wanted a log of your browser activity, they could just put a back door in your browser.)
na85 12y ago
Will Project Spartan continue Microsoft's trademarked aversion to standards-compliant DOM rendering?
tw04 12y ago
If it's not cross-platform, I'm not sure why they're bothering. They seem to think that the turn-off is simply standards compliance. While that's a big deal, a bigger deal is having to learn a whole new workflow when switching between operating systems... at least in my world.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- blumkvist 12y ago
  And how big is your world?
  - tw04 12y ago
    Roughly 40,000 employees and customers. But apparently hacker news doesn't approve so I guess we're the minority.
wanda 12y ago
Naturally, Cortana will be integrated into Project Spartan It'll pop up on relevant pages where Cortana can be useful Another Internet Explorer I won't be using. Block pop-ups only to have one natively installed.
- bhhaskin 12y ago
  It reminds me of clippy...
  - marpstar 12y ago
    Exactly what I thought. I know that virtual assistance is hot right now, but this seems like a bit much.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    I was hoping they'd reference clipping in the presentation today. After they talked about "Cortana" appearing randomly on your desktop and in IE, all I could think of was "it looks like you're writing a letter. Would you like help? Get help typing the letter. Just type the letter without help." every... single... time... I really hope this isn't another Clippy. If "Cortana" gets annoying I'm totally figuring out how to add the Clippy graphic to the UI and rename her "Clippy" (I bet you can personalise the name). Which, after thinking about it, I might try to do anyway just because it would be amusing...
- sibbl 12y ago
  I guess there will be an option for that. Almost everything of the Win 10 stuff that MS showed off today was optional.
- giancarlostoro 12y ago
  I think it would be great for anyone who is visually impaired to have such functionality enabled by default. I imagine it's configurable, usually everything in Windows is, even if you have to hack through the system registry to configure it.
- pdabbadabba 12y ago
praeivis 12y ago
Spartan looks more like small OS built over bigger OS. Oh, wait, it's trend for years now. Nothing new then? :)
- wmf 12y ago
  Spartan will reduce Windows to a set of signed device drivers. (Context: http://www.wired.com/2012/04/ff_andreessen/2/ http://www.wired.com/2012/04/ff_andreessen/2/ )
vesinisa 12y ago
Pretty surprising that it's coming with a new rendering engine given the good progress Microsoft has been making in bringing Trident in line with the competition.
- Touche 12y ago
  That's by far the most interesting thing about this, where are the details on that?
- Eyas 12y ago
  Insiders have reported on this previously. Basically the "new" rendering engine is a fork of Trident which removes backwards compatibility and legacy code. They might call it something else, but the new engine is basically Trident, refactored, and without the legacy cruft. Source: http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-explorer-12-big-changes-are-coming-to-trident http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-explorer-12-big-changes-... Validated by a few other insiders, including Paul Thurrott, Tom Warren (The Verge), and Mary Jo Foley (ZDNet).
  - Touche 12y ago
    So in this case fork = rename.
    - Eyas 12y ago
      My understanding is fork = fork + rename. An actual fork did take place, the older branch will continue to be maintained for a separate browser process used by enterprises for compatibility.
    - phaker 12y ago
      Webkit was called called a fork of khtml, if that was a fork then so is this.
- wmf 12y ago
  Is "new rendering engine" marketing-speak for "Trident with backwards compatibility ripped out"?
freshyill 12y ago
I really wish they would just base IE (or whatever this ends up being called) on WebKit or Blink and call it a day. They could immediately solve 90% of the actual problems people have with their browser, instead of tacking on crap that nobody's asking for. Once the real problems are fixed, feel free to tack on crap because IE is basically only exists as a way for people to download Chrome anyway.
- theandrewbailey 12y ago
  Build a browser on Webkit or Blink, just like everyone else? There's already dozens of those. You can download Chrome just as well in any browser. It's great that MS is improving IE, because having a Webkit/Blink dominated monoculture is bad. Didn't we learn this with IE6?
  - integraton 12y ago
    > a Webkit/Blink dominated monoculture is bad Gecko exists. Furthermore, having many browsers using Webkit, Blink, and Gecko isn't "bad," and calling it a "monoculture" is a weasel word attempting to link it to the problem of IE's dominance in the 2000s. The problem with the 2000s IE monoculture wasn't just that it was a monoculture, it was that it was closed source, stagnant, and mostly single-platform. Webkit, Blink, and Gecko aren't.
  - benaston 12y ago
    But this software is vapor. If you are running forwards slower than a treadmill is taking you back, are you advancing?
    - cwyers 12y ago
      How is this vapor? Vapor is something that doesn't exist, not something that hasn't been released yet.
      - theandrewbailey 12y ago
        Perhaps "vaporware" was meant, but this browser has only been known for two months (I think), and is presumably in heavy development.
Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
Great, another bloody rendering engine.
- sp332 12y ago
  Web content is supposed to render properly on multiple engines. We shouldn't be encouraging a monoculture of webkit.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
    "supposed to"
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- mjs7231 12y ago
  Progress sucks doesn't it.
- conradk 12y ago
  Having only one resulted in the IE nightmare. Supporting Gecko and Webkit nowadays is quite simple. I don't mind a new, standards compliant rendering engine.
benaston 12y ago
So... they are trying to make the Web more shareable with a proprietary annotation feature, thereby introducing a new category of UX issues, bugs and incompatibilities. I suppose that would be kind of neat if the Web wasn't already the most shareable medium in the world (you've heard of URLs?). MS is way behind in standards implementation (yes still, even in IE11). Yes this software is pure vapor, but has their browser project office heard of feature prioritization? MS has not, cannot and will never change. They are onto a losing strategy long-term (just review your GA logs). And for that I am glad because as a developer for the Web, I hate them with a passion.
- cma 12y ago
  Those who have heard of URLs might also have heard of link rot.
  - benaston 12y ago
    The use case presented was the sharing of a news article. If I email a colleague a hyperlink to an article it would be highly unusual to experience link-rot in the expected timeframe for them to open the email and click the link. I might experience one 404 a month. Even if you multiply that by ten to account for selective memory, link rot is a good example of something that sounds like it will be a massive problem, but generally isn't in reality.
- theandrewbailey 12y ago
  While the web is the most sharable thing ever, it's not the most annotatable or drawable medium. This annotation feature will let corporate office monkeys communicate changes to their intranet sites easier than using vague text descriptions or printouts (or, kill me, scanned printouts). And guess who the primary target audience is for MS browsers? Corporate office monkeys.
  - benaston 12y ago
    But as most corporate monkeys know, Windows includes a snipping tool already with an annotation feature.
wolf550e 12y ago
Peter-Paul Koch (ppk) about this, and why developers should call it MSIE12 internally but call it a new browser to non-technical people: http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2014/12/a_new_microsoft.html http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2014/12/a_new_micros...
Alupis 12y ago
Now when you install Windows, you will get no less than two pre-installed browsers (at least for the next several versions of Windows). You will get IE and Spartan... neither of-which you can fully remove since they'll be baked into Windows like IE is now (things depend on IE specifically and don't just rely on the default-set browser)
- taf2 12y ago
  which may actually be a good thing because it will further reduce the total number of IE/Spartan marketshare driving fewer developers to care. A real win for the web.
  - millstone 12y ago
    Fewer supported browsers is not a win for the web.
    - Alupis 12y ago
      Fewer rendering engines might be though. So long as it's an Open Source and freely-contributable engine (like Webkit is today). Or maybe a better defined specification for how things should render. Today it's a wild west, your site may look great in one browser but terrible in another, etc.
hokkos 12y ago
Not a new rendering engine, reading view/list already exist in Safari or with plugins, annotation doesn't seem that usefull. I would have expected more tools to handle tab overload, password management, plugins.
- hackinthebochs 12y ago
  Personally I'm happy to have functionality that previously required a plugin to be built-in. As it is I've sworn off all plugins except adblock for potential security compromises. It's just not worth it.

85 points by sz4kerto 12y ago

makepanic 12y ago

I would love to know what this browser is using as a user agent string.

rkuykendall-com 12y ago
If it's like every single web browser for it, an insanely long amalgam of the user agent strings of every competing browser, every browser that came before it, and the word Spartan.
- Mahn 12y ago
  Or even worse, the UA of another browser verbatim, for "compability purposes".
wmf 12y ago
Probably the same as IE Edge mode, which has disavowed its heritage completely: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.4; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.143 Safari/537.36 Edge/12.0 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/hh869301(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/hh869301(v=vs.85...

ddod 12y ago

I wonder how they can reconcile the name "Spartan" with built in note taking, social sharing, Cortana, and webpage overlay drawing.

cwyers 12y ago
It's just a codename, and like all Microsoft codenames the past few years, it's taken from the Halo games. It doesn't really mean anything, and it probably won't be the final name, but who knows.
- theandrewbailey 12y ago
  Cortana made it from code name to product name, as did Windows 7.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    XBox too.
debacle 12y ago
Because Halo is the strongest brand Microsoft has built in the last fifteen years.
- paulornothing 12y ago
  Well now they own minecraft. So perhaps they can call this "Creeper"
  - notduncansmith 12y ago
    Presumably, as in "scope".

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

pdabbadabba 12y ago
> Who is this wording aimed at? Part of this is probably just marketing people wanting to make things sound exciting. (I'm tempted to mock this tendency, but it may well be that this sort of wordplay works. I have no idea.) But I also think there is a surprising number of People who are familiar with the phrase "browsing the internet" but are not necessarily aware that the software you use to do this is called a "web browser." I find that many non-technical people in my life fall into this category. It's surprising that people don't make the purely grammatical connection between "browsING" and "browsER," but it seems to be a real phenomenon. Perhaps the word "browser" strikes people as jargon and so they screen it out.

quakkels 12y ago

So, it will take a 'snapshot' of the page that you can markup. This snapshot will disable dynamic features of the webpage but still allow links to work. I wonder if they are talking about halting DOM manipulation, or JavaScript execution. Seems this will definitely create new classes of QA test paths.

Animats 12y ago

"Chief among those new features is new inking support that lets users annotate web pages and sync all of those notes to OneDrive and share them with collaborators" In other words, your web browsing is reported to Microsoft so this markup will be in sync. Will that information be made available to advertisers? Will Microsoft backdoor HTTPS to make this work?

devindotcom 12y ago
So all cloud services are inherently suspect? Then why call one in particular out at all? This is no different than saving a web page for reading later on instapaper or the like.
- bsilvereagle 12y ago
  With a service like instapaper you select what is being reported. If it not possible to turn off the Spartan Annotation, all of your web activities are reported.
  - mynameisvlad 12y ago
    And you know this how? Have you had extensive time with it to know that? Nothing in the demo showed that Spartan Annotation was by default on for every page. In fact, it most likely will only turn on if you explicitly start markup mode.
  - pmelendez 12y ago
    It actually would work the same way since Spartan would be saving an snapshot of the website once you create a comment on it.
  - cwyers 12y ago
    If you don't annotate anything, there's no annotation to be reported to Microsoft. (And if Microsoft wanted a log of your browser activity, they could just put a back door in your browser.)

na85 12y ago

Will Project Spartan continue Microsoft's trademarked aversion to standards-compliant DOM rendering?

tw04 12y ago

If it's not cross-platform, I'm not sure why they're bothering. They seem to think that the turn-off is simply standards compliance. While that's a big deal, a bigger deal is having to learn a whole new workflow when switching between operating systems... at least in my world.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
blumkvist 12y ago
And how big is your world?
- tw04 12y ago
  Roughly 40,000 employees and customers. But apparently hacker news doesn't approve so I guess we're the minority.

wanda 12y ago

Naturally, Cortana will be integrated into Project Spartan It'll pop up on relevant pages where Cortana can be useful Another Internet Explorer I won't be using. Block pop-ups only to have one natively installed.

bhhaskin 12y ago
It reminds me of clippy...
- marpstar 12y ago
  Exactly what I thought. I know that virtual assistance is hot right now, but this seems like a bit much.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  I was hoping they'd reference clipping in the presentation today. After they talked about "Cortana" appearing randomly on your desktop and in IE, all I could think of was "it looks like you're writing a letter. Would you like help? Get help typing the letter. Just type the letter without help." every... single... time... I really hope this isn't another Clippy. If "Cortana" gets annoying I'm totally figuring out how to add the Clippy graphic to the UI and rename her "Clippy" (I bet you can personalise the name). Which, after thinking about it, I might try to do anyway just because it would be amusing...
sibbl 12y ago
I guess there will be an option for that. Almost everything of the Win 10 stuff that MS showed off today was optional.
giancarlostoro 12y ago
I think it would be great for anyone who is visually impaired to have such functionality enabled by default. I imagine it's configurable, usually everything in Windows is, even if you have to hack through the system registry to configure it.
pdabbadabba 12y ago

praeivis 12y ago

Spartan looks more like small OS built over bigger OS. Oh, wait, it's trend for years now. Nothing new then? :)

wmf 12y ago
Spartan will reduce Windows to a set of signed device drivers. (Context: http://www.wired.com/2012/04/ff_andreessen/2/ http://www.wired.com/2012/04/ff_andreessen/2/ )

vesinisa 12y ago

Pretty surprising that it's coming with a new rendering engine given the good progress Microsoft has been making in bringing Trident in line with the competition.

Touche 12y ago
That's by far the most interesting thing about this, where are the details on that?
Eyas 12y ago
Insiders have reported on this previously. Basically the "new" rendering engine is a fork of Trident which removes backwards compatibility and legacy code. They might call it something else, but the new engine is basically Trident, refactored, and without the legacy cruft. Source: http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-explorer-12-big-changes-are-coming-to-trident http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-explorer-12-big-changes-... Validated by a few other insiders, including Paul Thurrott, Tom Warren (The Verge), and Mary Jo Foley (ZDNet).
- Touche 12y ago
  So in this case fork = rename.
  - Eyas 12y ago
    My understanding is fork = fork + rename. An actual fork did take place, the older branch will continue to be maintained for a separate browser process used by enterprises for compatibility.
  - phaker 12y ago
    Webkit was called called a fork of khtml, if that was a fork then so is this.
wmf 12y ago
Is "new rendering engine" marketing-speak for "Trident with backwards compatibility ripped out"?

freshyill 12y ago

I really wish they would just base IE (or whatever this ends up being called) on WebKit or Blink and call it a day. They could immediately solve 90% of the actual problems people have with their browser, instead of tacking on crap that nobody's asking for. Once the real problems are fixed, feel free to tack on crap because IE is basically only exists as a way for people to download Chrome anyway.

theandrewbailey 12y ago
Build a browser on Webkit or Blink, just like everyone else? There's already dozens of those. You can download Chrome just as well in any browser. It's great that MS is improving IE, because having a Webkit/Blink dominated monoculture is bad. Didn't we learn this with IE6?
- integraton 12y ago
  > a Webkit/Blink dominated monoculture is bad Gecko exists. Furthermore, having many browsers using Webkit, Blink, and Gecko isn't "bad," and calling it a "monoculture" is a weasel word attempting to link it to the problem of IE's dominance in the 2000s. The problem with the 2000s IE monoculture wasn't just that it was a monoculture, it was that it was closed source, stagnant, and mostly single-platform. Webkit, Blink, and Gecko aren't.
- benaston 12y ago
  But this software is vapor. If you are running forwards slower than a treadmill is taking you back, are you advancing?
  - cwyers 12y ago
    How is this vapor? Vapor is something that doesn't exist, not something that hasn't been released yet.
    - theandrewbailey 12y ago
      Perhaps "vaporware" was meant, but this browser has only been known for two months (I think), and is presumably in heavy development.

Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago

Great, another bloody rendering engine.

sp332 12y ago
Web content is supposed to render properly on multiple engines. We shouldn't be encouraging a monoculture of webkit.
- Sir_Cmpwn 12y ago
  "supposed to"
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
mjs7231 12y ago
Progress sucks doesn't it.
conradk 12y ago
Having only one resulted in the IE nightmare. Supporting Gecko and Webkit nowadays is quite simple. I don't mind a new, standards compliant rendering engine.

benaston 12y ago

So... they are trying to make the Web more shareable with a proprietary annotation feature, thereby introducing a new category of UX issues, bugs and incompatibilities. I suppose that would be kind of neat if the Web wasn't already the most shareable medium in the world (you've heard of URLs?). MS is way behind in standards implementation (yes still, even in IE11). Yes this software is pure vapor, but has their browser project office heard of feature prioritization? MS has not, cannot and will never change. They are onto a losing strategy long-term (just review your GA logs). And for that I am glad because as a developer for the Web, I hate them with a passion.

cma 12y ago
Those who have heard of URLs might also have heard of link rot.
- benaston 12y ago
  The use case presented was the sharing of a news article. If I email a colleague a hyperlink to an article it would be highly unusual to experience link-rot in the expected timeframe for them to open the email and click the link. I might experience one 404 a month. Even if you multiply that by ten to account for selective memory, link rot is a good example of something that sounds like it will be a massive problem, but generally isn't in reality.
theandrewbailey 12y ago
While the web is the most sharable thing ever, it's not the most annotatable or drawable medium. This annotation feature will let corporate office monkeys communicate changes to their intranet sites easier than using vague text descriptions or printouts (or, kill me, scanned printouts). And guess who the primary target audience is for MS browsers? Corporate office monkeys.
- benaston 12y ago
  But as most corporate monkeys know, Windows includes a snipping tool already with an annotation feature.

wolf550e 12y ago

Peter-Paul Koch (ppk) about this, and why developers should call it MSIE12 internally but call it a new browser to non-technical people: http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2014/12/a_new_microsoft.html http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2014/12/a_new_micros...

Alupis 12y ago

Now when you install Windows, you will get no less than two pre-installed browsers (at least for the next several versions of Windows). You will get IE and Spartan... neither of-which you can fully remove since they'll be baked into Windows like IE is now (things depend on IE specifically and don't just rely on the default-set browser)

taf2 12y ago
which may actually be a good thing because it will further reduce the total number of IE/Spartan marketshare driving fewer developers to care. A real win for the web.
- millstone 12y ago
  Fewer supported browsers is not a win for the web.
  - Alupis 12y ago
    Fewer rendering engines might be though. So long as it's an Open Source and freely-contributable engine (like Webkit is today). Or maybe a better defined specification for how things should render. Today it's a wild west, your site may look great in one browser but terrible in another, etc.

hokkos 12y ago

Not a new rendering engine, reading view/list already exist in Safari or with plugins, annotation doesn't seem that usefull. I would have expected more tools to handle tab overload, password management, plugins.

hackinthebochs 12y ago
Personally I'm happy to have functionality that previously required a plugin to be built-in. As it is I've sworn off all plugins except adblock for potential security compromises. It's just not worth it.