Welcome 2015 & Microsoft is ready to offer its users a thrilling web browsing experience with its new, enhanced & upgraded search engine “Spartan”! Officially launched on 21st January 2015 “Spartan” comes with Windows 10 OS and vouches on offering improved performance & great features to its consumers. Microsoft’s new “Spartan” browser and Internet Explorer11 (IE11) will coexist in the new Windows 10 OS but IE11 would remain as a legacy browser in the new version & enterprises using IE11 or older versions of IE would still be provided with requisite support from Microsoft but they will have to evolve overtime & shift to “Spartan” browser in a time bound manner.

“Spartan” guarantees its users great compatibility across its entire Windows 10 device family! It promises a great user experience right from desktops to smartphones, touch screens, gestures, voice & sensors! Windows 10 OS & “Spartan” wishes to remain up to date & evergreen both in providing newer platform capabilities, security and performance improvements and at the same time offering web developers a consistent platform across Windows 10 devices! 

Let have a look at some the new features “Spartan” offers to its users: –

• “Spartan” will now serve as the default browser for both PC and mobile devices versions of Windows 10 OS.
• “Spartan” uses the new “Edge” layout engine devised from (its own layout engine) “Trident” that is “designed primarily for interoperability of modern web”.
• The new “Edge” layout engine will be used as a default engine across Windows 10 OS and other web pages.
• Now on, “Spartan” won’t support legacy technologies like ActiveX and Browser Helper Objects but it will utilize extension systems in rendering better search results to its users.
• “Spartan” is well integrated with Microsoft’s digital platforms like “Cortana Digital Assistant” to provide voice control, search functionality and dynamic personalized information to its users in the address bar.
• Users can make web annotations that can be stored and shared directly on “Microsoft OneDrive” cloud-based application.
• It also integrates with the “Reading List” function to sync content between devices and provides a “Reading Mode” option (which shows relevant content) to its users & improves its legibility.

Performance aspects of “Spartan” browser:-

• Different benchmark shows that “Spartan’s” “EdgeHTML” engine offers drastically improved JavaScript performance as compared to Trident 7 which was used for developing Internet Explorer 11.
• “Spartan” uses the WebGL API for 2D and 3D graphics more efficiently than Google Chrome 41 and Mozilla Firefox 36.
• “Spartan” will load IE11 for legacy enterprises when needed but at the same time it will render results as per new engine for modern websites thus offering dual-compatibility, convenience & interoperability to its users.

What does this mean to web developers?

• “Spartan” will continue to support “Spartan” toolbar development through HTML5 even if they haven’t yet migrated to Trident (MSHTML) Windows application development standards.
• Developers while devising Windows apps development & Windows mobile apps services need to encourage their clients to migrate from legacy web browsing standards to a newer web browsing experience like “Spartan” & service providers must assist them in a smoother migration process to their clients.
• Developers facing interpretability & other technical issues can raise their queries & voices via Connect & Twitter so that Microsoft can work with Web Wide Consortium (W3C) & other browser manufacturers to ensure great compatibility in Windows products.