8 ms·

First look at Project Spartan, Microsoft's take on the modern browser

60 points by shawndumas 12y ago

sytelus 12y ago
Annotations are a actually great idea if they are all in cloud by default and attached with my social IDs. Then I can follow friends, family and people and view their annotations on web pages as I surf the web. For example, I'm visiting a restaurant website and my friend already annotated with menu recommendation or better direction. The feature can turn every web page in to a wiki. That would be a killer feature that can get viral.
- jules 12y ago
  _why made something like that years ago, with an intentionally high barrier to entry because it required changing your HOSTS file.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  MS actually did this already like 15 years ago. It may have been an Intranet-oriented thing. The end result was that users could add notes to pages. I think it died off with the rest of the Office-web thingies. Edit: It was Office 2000 that enabled this, called "Web Discussions". You had a "Discussion" button in IE[1]. Here's a paper talking about how useful it was: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/coet/annotations/cscw2000/paper.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/coet/a... 1: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751423.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751423.aspx
  - frik 12y ago
    > Intranet-oriented thing It used the discussion feature of Microsoft Office Server aka SharePoint Portal Server. The history of SharePoint is very complex but interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20120419073951/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joelo/archive/2007/12/28/7-years-of-sharepoint-a-history-lesson.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20120419073951/http://blogs.msdn... , https://web.archive.org/web/20080303180618/http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/12/27/sharepoint-yes-we-ve-certainly-come-a-long-way-and-happy-new-year-to-you.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20080303180618/http://blogs.msdn... , https://web.archive.org/web/20120409232321/http://www.joiningdots.net/downloads/SharePoint_History.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20120409232321/http://www.joinin..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharePoint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharePoint , https://web.archive.org/web/20120519235139/http://www.seoconsultants.com/frontpage/history/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120519235139/http://www.seocon... , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage I remember an SP2003 installation with thousands of sub portal sites, hundreds of GB (blobs) stored in SQL server. What I really don't understand is the almost non-existing upgrade paths (between versions '01, '03, '07, '10, '13) and the URL-hell (IIS URL alias would solve that). Instead of Cairo-OS, WinFS, an improved Explorer shell & improved file server, nowadays SharePoint fulfill various enterprise needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
- minthd 12y ago
  But in order for annotation to become a thing, don't they need to be integrated into most browsers ? And the annotation extension that supports all browsers will win once this becomes popular ?
  - jsprogrammer 12y ago
    I tried creating 'Peanut Gallery' about a decade ago. The main issues then were trying to figure out the best interface that could work across browsers. I also didn't know how to scale the solution up to allow it to work on every web page for every users. Also, I anticipated that there would be lots of privacy concerns as you'd basically be collecting every web page a user went to.
    - kenshaw 12y ago
      1. Scaling this would be a combination of selecting the right data store that would scale linearly on performance as well as on storage costs. There are many. 2. If you were concerned about privacy issues by exposing URLs, you would simply do the following: a) pass URLs only as hashes of the original text, b) have a policy of only storing URLs if they contained annotations This is actually fairly trivial to do right.
      - jsprogrammer 12y ago
        1. What data store can scale linearly on performance and storage (with no bounds)? I'm not sure it exists (or is even possible). We decided on horizontal partitioning with hashed URLs/IPs as the key. 2. We also wanted to provide real-time stats for pages, sites, and hosts. This requires IDing the user and page in a reversible way. Even if it's not reversible, you could easily use a rainbow table to reverse, especially with the limited IPv4 namespace. However, it seems that such URL collection isn't too big of a concern among the general population. You also have to maintain plugins or extensions across all the major browsers, which is a pain. This was a project I was working on before completing a CS degree and/or getting exposure to some of the solutions that could be used. I'd be interested in exploring it again, but I have a few more interesting projects on the stack for now.
- Retra 12y ago
  If it's done right, it could be useful. Done wrong, it'd just be a massive store for cartoon penises. It also sounds like the kind of thing some would want to use to overlay their own advertisements onto other people's websites...
- lallysingh 12y ago
  What happens when the page changes?
- pinaceae 12y ago
  relies on friends and family sharing similar interests, etc. also same geo space. hereby super limited in reality. and if it's people then you just invented comments. which are toxic most of the time. also invented (rap)genius. congrats, millions of funding for you.
- fiatjaf 12y ago
  Google Sidewiki? http://getpoint.co http://getpoint.co? http://hypothes.is/ http://hypothes.is/
dejv_cz1 12y ago
I just hope that times when freezing of IE meant that whole OS got frozen too are over. Anyway the design is very clear. They had to redisign it this way because whole Modern UI (metro) is based on minimalism, simple shapes and typography and MS will for sure try to include this browser in Win 10 mobile version. But I'm afraid of plugins which can totally ruin the fresh look and also other things like bookmarks... Anyway if in MS they want to get back on the top then they have to do their best and I guess they know that and attractive design can't solve everything. Mozilla and Chrome are really tough competitors.
Zikes 12y ago
Is there any word on intent to support extensions, or implement tab sandboxing?
- frik 12y ago
  IE has already sandboxing since IE8 (on Vista onwards). Spartan is forked of the (former) IE12's "Edge" trident code. It's basically a new WinRuntime based GUI app that uses the refactored trident engine (with old legacy compatibility code removed).
- MLR 12y ago
  They've stated that they will have extension support, and the rumour is that porting Chrome extensions will be incredibly easy. As for sandboxing, I just had a quick look at task manager and it seems to spawn a new process per tab.
jakejake 12y ago
It'll be interesting to see if MS can stand strong on no backwards-compatibility. It seems like every time they release something new, by the time it's out of beta it's got tons of compatibility baggage added.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  I know what you mean. But in this specific case they are continuing to offer the "legacy" IE engine for those jobs, so they may be able to keep this one unencumbered just by pointing people to that.
slayed0 12y ago
They sure chose a distracting snapshot of their website to showcase the minimalist UI of this new browser. all I notice at first glance is the alarming "Top Post" and all of the images. I guess this is a good thing?
leeoniya 12y ago
as a web dev, the main thing i'm looking forward to is its "evergreen-ness" for all the web's consumers not on Chrome or FF. now only Safari left to make a similar commitment and shorten the release cycles...
- Encosia 12y ago
  For what it's worth, recent versions of IE are already evergreen and auto-update by default. The real culprit behind us still having to support IE8 for some clients is your average enterprise IT department. They'll find ways to lock down updates on any browser. Just as some IT departments have auto updates locked down on Chrome/Firefox already, they'll probably demand a way to do that with Microsoft's browsers too (or find a way to block the updates without Microsoft's support).
  - Spearchucker 12y ago
    I ask every enterprise I walk into what the patch management strategy is. There's always herds of testing, that often takes months. Recommendation? Patch first, deal with compatibility later. In most cases (note, not all) being hacked is more expensive than a temporary, self-imposed denial of service. Edit: Thing I forgot to add is that an aggressive patch management strategy just so happens to do great things for technical debt.
    - Encosia 12y ago
      The thing that makes my life difficult is that even if you (and I) choose not to work directly with/for those laggard companies, their locked down userbase is still on the web and impacts the requirements of sites I build for completely unrelated clients.
  - palsecam 12y ago
    Side question: what is the difference between “evengreen” and “auto-updating”? Does the former mean something else or more than the latter?
nailer 12y ago
My money's on the annotation thing being moved into an extension.
wantab 12y ago
On another board, people are all excited about this but I said they need to take a wait and see and "I'm from Missouri, show me" attitude. Microsoft has not shown they can produce a standards compliant browser on par with the others and, so far, the article points out it isn't even level with IE11. And it is this same hype for every version of IE for the past 10 years that we've all been told the same thing, "This one will be the best!".
- leeoniya 12y ago
  if it will truly be evergreen as they promise, then it doesnt need to roll out completely bug-free, because things will hopefully get fixed/patched continuously. i'll take that over the inter-windows-release stagnation and long tail legacy support we have to deal with today.
- MLR 12y ago
  It's way beyond IE11, what the article was referring to is the score of the IE11 version running with all the optional flags of the Edge rendering engine, which you can't configure in Spartan yet. Honestly I think it'll have surpassed Firefox before the beta of Windows 10 finishes.
  - wantab 12y ago
    Nowhere in the article does it say that. It DOES say Spartan couldn't match IE11's score.
MichaelGG 12y ago
I just got updated to the new Win10 build and tried Spartan. I like the UI; it's not as ugly as before. But the font rendering being all blurry is still a showstopper. As is the apparent lack of addons, for blocking (and vim nav). It's also very unfinished. Alt-D doesn't go to the address bar, which is a pretty big thing to forget... I'm guessing internal users aren't using it.
- jpeg_hero 12y ago
  I always thought Ctrl-L was address bar!!
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Well that one doesn't work in the Sparta preview either.
    - Encosia 12y ago
      I'm reading this in Sparta. Pressing Ctrl + L just now did focus the address bar.
      - bpicolo 12y ago
        Yeah but on what browser?
        Encosia 12y ago
        What do you mean? Sparta.
joosters 12y ago
Does it let you disable 3rd party cookies, or are Microsoft throwing us to the advertising / tracking companies?
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Yes, disabling 3rd party cookies is one of the few options in the settings flyout. (There's under 20 settings, total.) The cookies setting is as prominent as Do Not Track and Block pop-ups. Also, don't think that somehow just disabling third party cookies is going to make you untrackable or prevent you from being thrown to advertisers.
  - joosters 12y ago
    Good to see the option is there. I know it's nothing like a perfect safety net against tracking, but when the option is missing, it's a great sign that the company doesn't care at all about user privacy. Also, 3rd party cookie disabling is very difficult to do elsewhere - you can set up a proxy server to filter requests & responses but it has no easy way to determine 1st/3rd party requests.
nikanj 12y ago
IE11 is going to be the new IE6.
- Mahn 12y ago
  If only.
- babby 12y ago
  It already is for me. I had to spend ~2-3 days recently debugging IE11's utterly abysmal dom performance and stylesheet performance. Smooth as butter on chrome, 4 FPS on IE. The only way to fix it was to display: none everything I could, and we're only talking about a few hundred dom elements.
kenshaw 12y ago
Microsoft's biggest issue here is that there is no such thing as a "modern" browser that runs only on one unreleased platform (Windows), that is closed source, and that cannot also run on mobile devices with significant market share (iOS, Android). Regardless of how polished, fast, and great Microsoft makes this, without the above it will never be a "modern" browser, nor gain any significant market share, simply because developers won't support it. One of the primary reasons why Microsoft needs to immediately halt, backpedal and release a version that can run on Linux/OSX (beyond the obvious need to port to Android/iOS) is that so many high quality sites are tested using automated testing suites (through Selenium, or otherwise), and those testing instances typically run through bash shells / scripts. While I'm sure you could jury-rig Windows 10 to do that (I've used bash on Windows previously, via Git Bash), you would need to rewrite extensive build and testing tool chains to use non-Unix-y commands --- and even then, you'll likely find many of the open source libraries you rely on are broken, unmaintained, or otherwise unusable on Windows. As an anecdote, and fairly recently, I actually tried getting unit tests for a pre-existing, fairly sizable project with 10s of developers and many hundreds of thousands of lines of code to run on Windows, and realized it was cheaper to just hand all the developers Mac Books than to either train them on installing Unix tool chains on Windows, or on "properly" using Linux -- especially considering they were not responsible to write the unit tests, just run them. It's also much easier to cross-build for Windows from a Unix system, thus it was possible to completely eliminate Windows in the release process almost completely, other than for later manual testing/verification that can't be automated anyways.
- jameshart 12y ago
  It's been clear for a while that 'modern browser' is basically defined as 'browser not made by Microsoft'. That you're willing to define 'modern browser' as basically "must run on iOS and be scriptable from bash" as a way to exclude their latest effort just implies Microsoft is doomed to forever fail your 'true scotsman' test. If they provided a Linux and android port, you'd find something else to exclude them on - modern browsers render their type using TypeKit, after all.
  - kenshaw 12y ago
paraphrase 12y ago
Spartan needs to be on iOS, OS X, and Android to make it big. It has to go cross platform

60 points by shawndumas 12y ago

Annotations are a actually great idea if they are all in cloud by default and attached with my social IDs. Then I can follow friends, family and people and view their annotations on web pages as I surf the web. For example, I'm visiting a restaurant website and my friend already annotated with menu recommendation or better direction. The feature can turn every web page in to a wiki. That would be a killer feature that can get viral.

jules 12y ago
_why made something like that years ago, with an intentionally high barrier to entry because it required changing your HOSTS file.
MichaelGG 12y ago
MS actually did this already like 15 years ago. It may have been an Intranet-oriented thing. The end result was that users could add notes to pages. I think it died off with the rest of the Office-web thingies. Edit: It was Office 2000 that enabled this, called "Web Discussions". You had a "Discussion" button in IE[1]. Here's a paper talking about how useful it was: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/coet/annotations/cscw2000/paper.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/coet/a... 1: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751423.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751423.aspx
- frik 12y ago
  > Intranet-oriented thing It used the discussion feature of Microsoft Office Server aka SharePoint Portal Server. The history of SharePoint is very complex but interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20120419073951/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joelo/archive/2007/12/28/7-years-of-sharepoint-a-history-lesson.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20120419073951/http://blogs.msdn... , https://web.archive.org/web/20080303180618/http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/12/27/sharepoint-yes-we-ve-certainly-come-a-long-way-and-happy-new-year-to-you.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20080303180618/http://blogs.msdn... , https://web.archive.org/web/20120409232321/http://www.joiningdots.net/downloads/SharePoint_History.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20120409232321/http://www.joinin..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharePoint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharePoint , https://web.archive.org/web/20120519235139/http://www.seoconsultants.com/frontpage/history/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120519235139/http://www.seocon... , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage I remember an SP2003 installation with thousands of sub portal sites, hundreds of GB (blobs) stored in SQL server. What I really don't understand is the almost non-existing upgrade paths (between versions '01, '03, '07, '10, '13) and the URL-hell (IIS URL alias would solve that). Instead of Cairo-OS, WinFS, an improved Explorer shell & improved file server, nowadays SharePoint fulfill various enterprise needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_system) , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
minthd 12y ago
But in order for annotation to become a thing, don't they need to be integrated into most browsers ? And the annotation extension that supports all browsers will win once this becomes popular ?
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  I tried creating 'Peanut Gallery' about a decade ago. The main issues then were trying to figure out the best interface that could work across browsers. I also didn't know how to scale the solution up to allow it to work on every web page for every users. Also, I anticipated that there would be lots of privacy concerns as you'd basically be collecting every web page a user went to.
  - kenshaw 12y ago
    1. Scaling this would be a combination of selecting the right data store that would scale linearly on performance as well as on storage costs. There are many. 2. If you were concerned about privacy issues by exposing URLs, you would simply do the following: a) pass URLs only as hashes of the original text, b) have a policy of only storing URLs if they contained annotations This is actually fairly trivial to do right.
    - jsprogrammer 12y ago
      1. What data store can scale linearly on performance and storage (with no bounds)? I'm not sure it exists (or is even possible). We decided on horizontal partitioning with hashed URLs/IPs as the key. 2. We also wanted to provide real-time stats for pages, sites, and hosts. This requires IDing the user and page in a reversible way. Even if it's not reversible, you could easily use a rainbow table to reverse, especially with the limited IPv4 namespace. However, it seems that such URL collection isn't too big of a concern among the general population. You also have to maintain plugins or extensions across all the major browsers, which is a pain. This was a project I was working on before completing a CS degree and/or getting exposure to some of the solutions that could be used. I'd be interested in exploring it again, but I have a few more interesting projects on the stack for now.
Retra 12y ago
If it's done right, it could be useful. Done wrong, it'd just be a massive store for cartoon penises. It also sounds like the kind of thing some would want to use to overlay their own advertisements onto other people's websites...
lallysingh 12y ago
What happens when the page changes?
pinaceae 12y ago
relies on friends and family sharing similar interests, etc. also same geo space. hereby super limited in reality. and if it's people then you just invented comments. which are toxic most of the time. also invented (rap)genius. congrats, millions of funding for you.
fiatjaf 12y ago
Google Sidewiki? http://getpoint.co http://getpoint.co? http://hypothes.is/ http://hypothes.is/

dejv_cz1 12y ago

I just hope that times when freezing of IE meant that whole OS got frozen too are over. Anyway the design is very clear. They had to redisign it this way because whole Modern UI (metro) is based on minimalism, simple shapes and typography and MS will for sure try to include this browser in Win 10 mobile version. But I'm afraid of plugins which can totally ruin the fresh look and also other things like bookmarks... Anyway if in MS they want to get back on the top then they have to do their best and I guess they know that and attractive design can't solve everything. Mozilla and Chrome are really tough competitors.

Zikes 12y ago

Is there any word on intent to support extensions, or implement tab sandboxing?

frik 12y ago
IE has already sandboxing since IE8 (on Vista onwards). Spartan is forked of the (former) IE12's "Edge" trident code. It's basically a new WinRuntime based GUI app that uses the refactored trident engine (with old legacy compatibility code removed).
MLR 12y ago
They've stated that they will have extension support, and the rumour is that porting Chrome extensions will be incredibly easy. As for sandboxing, I just had a quick look at task manager and it seems to spawn a new process per tab.

jakejake 12y ago

It'll be interesting to see if MS can stand strong on no backwards-compatibility. It seems like every time they release something new, by the time it's out of beta it's got tons of compatibility baggage added.

Someone1234 12y ago
I know what you mean. But in this specific case they are continuing to offer the "legacy" IE engine for those jobs, so they may be able to keep this one unencumbered just by pointing people to that.

slayed0 12y ago

They sure chose a distracting snapshot of their website to showcase the minimalist UI of this new browser. all I notice at first glance is the alarming "Top Post" and all of the images. I guess this is a good thing?

leeoniya 12y ago

as a web dev, the main thing i'm looking forward to is its "evergreen-ness" for all the web's consumers not on Chrome or FF. now only Safari left to make a similar commitment and shorten the release cycles...

Encosia 12y ago
For what it's worth, recent versions of IE are already evergreen and auto-update by default. The real culprit behind us still having to support IE8 for some clients is your average enterprise IT department. They'll find ways to lock down updates on any browser. Just as some IT departments have auto updates locked down on Chrome/Firefox already, they'll probably demand a way to do that with Microsoft's browsers too (or find a way to block the updates without Microsoft's support).
- Spearchucker 12y ago
  I ask every enterprise I walk into what the patch management strategy is. There's always herds of testing, that often takes months. Recommendation? Patch first, deal with compatibility later. In most cases (note, not all) being hacked is more expensive than a temporary, self-imposed denial of service. Edit: Thing I forgot to add is that an aggressive patch management strategy just so happens to do great things for technical debt.
  - Encosia 12y ago
    The thing that makes my life difficult is that even if you (and I) choose not to work directly with/for those laggard companies, their locked down userbase is still on the web and impacts the requirements of sites I build for completely unrelated clients.
- palsecam 12y ago
  Side question: what is the difference between “evengreen” and “auto-updating”? Does the former mean something else or more than the latter?

nailer 12y ago

My money's on the annotation thing being moved into an extension.

wantab 12y ago

On another board, people are all excited about this but I said they need to take a wait and see and "I'm from Missouri, show me" attitude. Microsoft has not shown they can produce a standards compliant browser on par with the others and, so far, the article points out it isn't even level with IE11. And it is this same hype for every version of IE for the past 10 years that we've all been told the same thing, "This one will be the best!".

leeoniya 12y ago
if it will truly be evergreen as they promise, then it doesnt need to roll out completely bug-free, because things will hopefully get fixed/patched continuously. i'll take that over the inter-windows-release stagnation and long tail legacy support we have to deal with today.
MLR 12y ago
It's way beyond IE11, what the article was referring to is the score of the IE11 version running with all the optional flags of the Edge rendering engine, which you can't configure in Spartan yet. Honestly I think it'll have surpassed Firefox before the beta of Windows 10 finishes.
- wantab 12y ago
  Nowhere in the article does it say that. It DOES say Spartan couldn't match IE11's score.

MichaelGG 12y ago

I just got updated to the new Win10 build and tried Spartan. I like the UI; it's not as ugly as before. But the font rendering being all blurry is still a showstopper. As is the apparent lack of addons, for blocking (and vim nav). It's also very unfinished. Alt-D doesn't go to the address bar, which is a pretty big thing to forget... I'm guessing internal users aren't using it.

jpeg_hero 12y ago
I always thought Ctrl-L was address bar!!
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Well that one doesn't work in the Sparta preview either.
  - Encosia 12y ago
    I'm reading this in Sparta. Pressing Ctrl + L just now did focus the address bar.
    - bpicolo 12y ago
      Yeah but on what browser?
      - Encosia 12y ago
        What do you mean? Sparta.

joosters 12y ago

Does it let you disable 3rd party cookies, or are Microsoft throwing us to the advertising / tracking companies?

MichaelGG 12y ago
Yes, disabling 3rd party cookies is one of the few options in the settings flyout. (There's under 20 settings, total.) The cookies setting is as prominent as Do Not Track and Block pop-ups. Also, don't think that somehow just disabling third party cookies is going to make you untrackable or prevent you from being thrown to advertisers.
- joosters 12y ago
  Good to see the option is there. I know it's nothing like a perfect safety net against tracking, but when the option is missing, it's a great sign that the company doesn't care at all about user privacy. Also, 3rd party cookie disabling is very difficult to do elsewhere - you can set up a proxy server to filter requests & responses but it has no easy way to determine 1st/3rd party requests.

nikanj 12y ago

IE11 is going to be the new IE6.

Mahn 12y ago
If only.
babby 12y ago
It already is for me. I had to spend ~2-3 days recently debugging IE11's utterly abysmal dom performance and stylesheet performance. Smooth as butter on chrome, 4 FPS on IE. The only way to fix it was to display: none everything I could, and we're only talking about a few hundred dom elements.

kenshaw 12y ago

Microsoft's biggest issue here is that there is no such thing as a "modern" browser that runs only on one unreleased platform (Windows), that is closed source, and that cannot also run on mobile devices with significant market share (iOS, Android). Regardless of how polished, fast, and great Microsoft makes this, without the above it will never be a "modern" browser, nor gain any significant market share, simply because developers won't support it. One of the primary reasons why Microsoft needs to immediately halt, backpedal and release a version that can run on Linux/OSX (beyond the obvious need to port to Android/iOS) is that so many high quality sites are tested using automated testing suites (through Selenium, or otherwise), and those testing instances typically run through bash shells / scripts. While I'm sure you could jury-rig Windows 10 to do that (I've used bash on Windows previously, via Git Bash), you would need to rewrite extensive build and testing tool chains to use non-Unix-y commands --- and even then, you'll likely find many of the open source libraries you rely on are broken, unmaintained, or otherwise unusable on Windows. As an anecdote, and fairly recently, I actually tried getting unit tests for a pre-existing, fairly sizable project with 10s of developers and many hundreds of thousands of lines of code to run on Windows, and realized it was cheaper to just hand all the developers Mac Books than to either train them on installing Unix tool chains on Windows, or on "properly" using Linux -- especially considering they were not responsible to write the unit tests, just run them. It's also much easier to cross-build for Windows from a Unix system, thus it was possible to completely eliminate Windows in the release process almost completely, other than for later manual testing/verification that can't be automated anyways.

jameshart 12y ago
It's been clear for a while that 'modern browser' is basically defined as 'browser not made by Microsoft'. That you're willing to define 'modern browser' as basically "must run on iOS and be scriptable from bash" as a way to exclude their latest effort just implies Microsoft is doomed to forever fail your 'true scotsman' test. If they provided a Linux and android port, you'd find something else to exclude them on - modern browsers render their type using TypeKit, after all.
- kenshaw 12y ago

paraphrase 12y ago

Spartan needs to be on iOS, OS X, and Android to make it big. It has to go cross platform