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Wednesday, 1 April 2015

To be IE, or not to be IE Microsoft has released more information on their new web browser, currently code-named Spartan. You can read more about Spartan on the newly minted wikipedia page here

The new browser will be completely different from Microsoft IE, with a different rendering engine and a different code-base.

The IE team provided a few different reasons for these changes:

In addition to these changes, I think that there may be some customer confusion about which browser to use, and when. Enterprise customers may still need the legacy compatibility support for their internal enterprise systems while Spartan will be used for the "rest of the web". The web is a messy place, with compatibility issues of its own. I am not sure that a simple distinction of "if it's internal, use IE11 and if not, use Spartan" will work.

That said, Microsoft has updated Windows 10 at its fastest pace ever, and the new browser has been updated as well. Some key elements in the new browser include;

However, if you are currently in the UK (like me) you will not be able to see all of these benefits, until worldwide distribution later this year. You can read more about this latest update to the Windows 10 Insider program here.

This may all sound interesting from a simple technical perspective. However, if you have been watching my patch updates for a while (years?) and see how often IE is completely refreshed/updated each month, this may not be good news for you. Also, I think we have to ask the question, "Will anyone care?". There are already a number of very good, and fast evolving browsers out there. Microsoft is going to have work pretty hard to woo customers back to a new browser.

Actually, it's kind of exciting to watch.

at 12:21 

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