Microsoft is continuing to move forward with Windows 10 which aims to draw customers from the business world that are still running Windows 7. The current code-named Spartan browser that will be released on Windows 10 will not be available through Microsoft on Windows 7. While Microsoft is placing a list of familiar features from Windows 7 into Windows 10, their official support for Windows 7 ended earlier this year and the announcement of Spartan not being available on the old operating system is a natural step forward.
The Windows 10 January Technical Preview does not include a version of the new browser code named ‘Spartan’, but the news about the latest web browser is slowly trickling out. Without being able to test all of the features on Spartan, it’s difficult to say how this affects everyday browsing but a list of coding changes looks to make Spartan easier to use for web developers. While Spartan may not be available in Windows 7, it will have features that focus on backward compatibility.
The Spartan browser has a lot of code changes that will simplify how it renders web pages. As of now there is a mixture of how coding is handled within Microsoft operated browsers. Simply put, due to multiple incarnations of Internet Explorer running in different ways some web pages were designed to run on various versions of Internet Explorer. In Spartan, Microsoft is chopping out some of the old ways, introducing a new web design tool named Edge, and will still render web pages designed for Internet Explorer to be displayed the way they were intended. Rather than abandon Internet Explorer’s coding altogether, this gentler switch will allow web designers to be grandfathered into Edge without making old websites not run correctly.
Spartan is a source of hope for some and fear for others. While Internet Explorer 11 is recognized as being faster and more stable than previous versions, there are many that turned out the Internet Explorer brand so much that they never even tried the new version of the browser. Microsoft is using the upcoming upgrade to Windows 10 as a springboard for a new browser that looks to gain popularity. It’s reported that Spartan will run a version of extensions similar to Chrome, has a layout that will be more familiar to users accustomed to other browsers, will give users the ability to annotate web pages directly from within the browser, and will have a reading mode that renders web pages more like an e-reader than the current reading mode on Internet Explorer 11. Spartan will also be a universal app that better connects web browsing between multiple devices.
