14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft will come with a completely new browser that at first will be offered alongside Internet Explorer for compatibility reasons, but sources claim that, at some point in the future, it will completely replace the existing default Windows browser.
And there are many reasons this is going to happen sooner rather than later, and one of them is the number of improvements that Microsoft is planning for its app.
We already know that the so-called Spartan browser (this is currently a codename and it could change before the public release of the app) will come with support for extensions, but according to a new report, Microsoft has developed this feature in a way that doesn’t make its browser start from scratch.
Spartan will support Google Chrome extensions from the very beginning, which pretty much means that developers can create apps for both browsers with little effort.
At the same time, this is very important for Microsoft’s users because it’s pretty clear that, at first, the number of extensions available on Spartan would be really small. Obviously, convincing devs to create extensions for a new browser would take time, and with this implementation, Microsoft would clearly boost the early adoption of Spartan.
How exactly Chrome extensions are going to work in Spartan is not known right now, but it appears that all will be supported natively in the browser, so everything should work very smoothly.
UI also very similar to Chrome
Extensions support is not the only thing that Spartan takes from Google Chrome. Some blurry screenshots that got leaked to the web a few weeks ago revealed a user interface very similar to that of Chrome, but a bit cleaner, although that could change until the final browser sees daylight.
In Spartan, Microsoft moved the tab bar at the top of the screen, as is currently the case with most other modern browsers, and placed only a few buttons in the main window, in an attempt to keep it organized and clean.
Spartan will most likely be confirmed by Microsoft at today’s Windows 10 event, but it’s very unlikely to be released for testing purposes anytime soon.
It is, however, expected to be shipped in the final version of Windows 10, which, according to sources, should hit the shelves in early fall of this year.