Importantly, Nigro notes that the new browser would be the default. Longtime Microsoft observer Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet expanded on the tweet, citing unnamed sources who said Internet Explorer 11, the default browser in Windows 8.1, would still be present for backward compatibility.
The new browser is codenamed "Spartan," according to Foley.
Spartan will look and feel more like Chrome and Firefox, however, and it will support extensions, according to Foley's report. The "lightweight" browser will be available on both desktop and mobile devices in Windows 10.
The switch from IE to Spartan appears to be more an exercise in rebranding rather than a big technical change. The new browser will still use Microsoft's Chakra JavaScript engine as well as its Trident rendering engine, Foley says, rather than a nonproprietary engine such as WebKit. (Apple's Safari uses WebKit and Google Chrome is based on a "fork" of the open-source software called Blink.)
Microsoft is due to reveal many of the new features in Windows 10 at a Jan. 21 event in the company's hometown of Redmond, Washington. Spartan may make its formal debut there, but the general release of Windows 10 isn't expected until the fall, so it may come at a later date.
Rebranding the official Windows browser makes a great deal of sense. Internet Explorer has a poor reputation among developers and users, much of it rooted in Microsoft's traditional preference for proprietary tools over open standards. Although that stance has changed considerably since the early days of IE, the stigma is so great that Microsoft recently made an ad explaining that the browser's poor reputation isn't deserved.
Still, IE took some time to adopt certain standards (such as WebGL) and it suffers from a non-intuitive split experience in Windows 8 and 8.1, with one browser for the desktop and another for the "Modern" UI. In addition, the longtime head of IE, Dean Hachamovitch, left Microsoft earlier in December.
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