14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft presented the new Spartan browser at the Windows 10 event on Wednesday, but in a blog post rolled out today, the company finally reveals some new details about its plans for this app in the upcoming operating system.
One of the most important pieces of info revealed by Microsoft in this post is that Windows 10 will ship with two different browsers, which means that Internet Explorer won't be killed when Spartan is brought to life.
This was, in fact, one of the first rumors that reached the web as part of the Spartan browser speculation frenzy, with some sources familiar with Microsoft's plans revealing that the company is willing to keep Internet Explorer available in order to address any compatibility issues that might be experienced when loading specific websites.
And yet, Spartan will be promoted as the main browser in Windows 10, sources say, so Internet Explorer will only be there to make sure that everything's working fine.
Working as a service
Microsoft explains that its main goal is to keep Spartan fully up to date, just like it will happen with Windows 10.
“Like Windows 10 itself Spartan will remain up-to-date: as a service, both providing new platform capabilities, security and performance improvements, and ensuring web developers a consistent platform across Windows 10 devices. Spartan and the new rendering engine are truly evergreen,” the company says.
So, how would Spartan tackle compatibility issues that could be experienced on websites designed for Internet Explorer? The software vendor claims that Spartan, which is based on the same Trident rendering engine but with several improvements in most areas, can automatically load the Internet Explorer 11 engine whenever it finds that websites might be loaded incorrectly. Modern websites will be loaded using the improved engine, it says.
“This approach provides both a strong compatibility guarantee for legacy enterprise web sites and a forward looking interoperable web standards promise,” the company points out.
Spartan is currently in early development phase, but Microsoft plans to offer it as part of the future Windows 10 Technical Preview build expected to be released in the next months. It won't be included in the next build, but it will definitely be there when Windows 10 comes out.