It’s come a long way in recent years, but even so, Internet Explorer may be Microsoft’s most reviled product: a web browser so bad it held web standards back for years. From a Mac fan’s perspective, the best that can be said about Internet Explorer is that, for the most part, you never have to use it at all: the most up-to-date versions only run on Windows.
But that could soon change. A new report suggests that Microsoft could be rebranding Internet Explorer while giving it a radical overhaul… while simultaneously releasing it on non-Windows systems like Mac and iOS.
According to a new report by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft is planning on replacing Internet Explorer with Spartan, a new browser that, while built on Microsoft’s existing JavaScript and rendering engines, would otherwise model itself after the likes of Chrome and Firefox.
Foley’s sources say that when Microsoft releases its latest and greatest OS, Windows 10, it will ship with both Spartan and IE11 installed. IE11 will only be included for backwards compataibility, though, and Spartan will be the way forward.
As for whether or not Spartan will come to the Mac, there’s no word yet, but it makes sense: now that Ballmer’s gone, Microsoft’s new strategy is to open up its software to every platform capable of running them. If we can have Office on the iPad, why not Microsoft’s new browser on the Mac?
Source: ZDNet
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
8 responses to “Microsoft’s next-gen ‘Spartan’ browser could run on iOS and the Mac”
Not bad. I mean more browsers the better!
They should make sure that it can run on older versions of Windows! Maybe it would help move folks along from ancient IE versions.
Only time people use IE is to download another browser. Myself included.
+1
Forgive me while I yawn. MS can barely come up with a workable OS let alone a web browser. How can you have any faith in a company that runs years behind its competitors? After the windows 8 debacle, they looked at the pile of crap 9 was turning out to be, scrapped it and jump right into 10. And they’re the biggest software company on earth. God help them.
I was actually excited until they said that Windows 10 would include TWO browsers. Really? You can’t make a new browser that is backward compatible? And compatible with what?! It’s is just so typical from Windows, it drives me crazy. Can’t you for once, think of the user. Just once.
Spartan, so advanced it can’t be backwards compatible. poor Windows users.
Sorry, but after the monstrosity called Internet Explorer that we’ve had to put up with for twenty years, I won’t accept anything from Microsoft. IE is garbage. MS has consistently tried to rewrite the rules and force everybody else to follow them. The same thing is going to happen with “Spartan,” regardless of what the PR says.
As a web developer, the only thing I hate more than Windows is Internet Explorer. In my own work, I’ve stopped attempting to make anything work in it. I even trap the user_agent string and display a warning page asking people to use a different browser. But when I have paying clients, I don’t often have that luxury. And I’m seriously fed up with having to accommodate IE’s idiotic problems.