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.
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
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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...
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.
Well, in fairness, they said Cortana would only pop up on "pages where Cortana can be useful." Perhaps this means Cortana will be configured to never pop up.
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.
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.
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.
Every person with SPARTAN will have IE installed too. A site can say "works only in SPARTAN/Chrome/Firefox/Safari" or "Works only in IE" (for different markets).
I don't see how this is any different from calling io.js a "new server-side javascript platform" even though its forked from node. Ripping out the backwards compatibility will do a ton for maintainability and regression testing.
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.
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.
There is one Web, yet browsers handle it differently. I'd very much rather have a monoculture in browser rendering engines if that's what it takes to make things just work consistently.
"The reason Microsoft didn’t adopt Blink is simple: Google.
Aside from the obvious issues these two companies have with each other, consider a few other relevant details. Google had split Blink from WebKit earlier because it was always fighting with Apple and wanted control. But now Google is doing what it wants with Blink—as Apple did/does with WebKit—because it’s strategically important to Google. That is, Google could only be counted on to do what was best for Google at all times, and not what was best for Blink generally, and the community of companies using it."
Given how Apple and Google had the public divorce over WebKit, it makes sense that Microsoft didn't trust Google enough to base their new browser on Blink.
I hate IE, especially it's older versions. Dealing with ie 6-10 and all of their crappy warts and stagnation have made my life more difficult and objectively held the entire web back for years. But the reason why they are so crappy are not so much that they are made by Microsoft but because for much of that time they could be. IE 6 was way better than anything else at the time and for more than a decade after that, MS could just sit on their laurels untill others leap-frogged them.
Competition is good. Webkit and Blink are better now, but without competition, there will be no one to push them forward.
If everyone is based on WebKit then we'll eventually wind up in an IE 6.0-type situation where nothing moves forward because there are too many cooks in the kitchen. I think the competition between WebKit, Gecko, Trident, and KHTML is healthy and spawns innovation.
Honestly I hope Microsoft keeps trying to make the best browser possible if for nothing else just to keep WebKit on its toes. Otherwise the others will spend less and top engineers will grow bored and move on to impactful problems.
Yeah IE11 is fine, if you want basic ACID compliance and ES5 support, but this is 2015 and Chrome and FF leave IE in the dust when it comes to modern (i.e. as of 2015 modern) features like WebRTC, shadow DOM, web components, 3D transforms, yadda yadda.
Right, it's a little old. But it's not fundamentally broken. And one of the proposals in Project Spartan is for the browser to be in the MS App Store, and for it to update automatically. That would be huge.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
83 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadhttps://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/hh869301(v=vs.85...
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.
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?
This is no different than saving a web page for reading later on instapaper or the like.
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.
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...
(Context: http://www.wired.com/2012/04/ff_andreessen/2/ )
Source: 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).
really tired of having:
<!--[if IE x]><html class="please-dont-make-my-site-look-awful"><![endif]-->
Now instead we'll have:
<!--[if SPARTAN x]><html class="please-dont-make-my-site-look-awful"><![endif]-->
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.
It's great that MS is improving IE, because having a Webkit/Blink dominated monoculture is bad. Didn't we learn this with IE6?
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.
If you are running forwards slower than a treadmill is taking you back, are you advancing?
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/470/maybe-window...
"The reason Microsoft didn’t adopt Blink is simple: Google.
Aside from the obvious issues these two companies have with each other, consider a few other relevant details. Google had split Blink from WebKit earlier because it was always fighting with Apple and wanted control. But now Google is doing what it wants with Blink—as Apple did/does with WebKit—because it’s strategically important to Google. That is, Google could only be counted on to do what was best for Google at all times, and not what was best for Blink generally, and the community of companies using it."
Given how Apple and Google had the public divorce over WebKit, it makes sense that Microsoft didn't trust Google enough to base their new browser on Blink.
I hate IE, especially it's older versions. Dealing with ie 6-10 and all of their crappy warts and stagnation have made my life more difficult and objectively held the entire web back for years. But the reason why they are so crappy are not so much that they are made by Microsoft but because for much of that time they could be. IE 6 was way better than anything else at the time and for more than a decade after that, MS could just sit on their laurels untill others leap-frogged them.
Competition is good. Webkit and Blink are better now, but without competition, there will be no one to push them forward.
Honestly I hope Microsoft keeps trying to make the best browser possible if for nothing else just to keep WebKit on its toes. Otherwise the others will spend less and top engineers will grow bored and move on to impactful problems.
I don't want a rendering engine monoculture.
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.
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.
And guess who the primary target audience is for MS browsers? Corporate office monkeys.
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2014/12/a_new_micros...
Today it's a wild west, your site may look great in one browser but terrible in another, etc.