back to article Microsoft's Project Spartan browser is HERE (unless you build apps or run VMs, that is)

Microsoft has shipped a new build of Windows 10 that offers a first look at its much-hyped Project Spartan web browser, but the software giant has cautioned that developers may want to hold off upgrading. In a Monday blog post, Redmond man Gabe Aul said Project Spartan is the main feature of Windows 10 Build 10049, which is …

  1. david 12 Silver badge

    Poor compliance with web standards

    IE was, for many years, the web standard. Compliance was good by definition. You might not like that web standard. Many people didn't, which is why they created new web standards which specifically were different than the existing web standard (IE).

    1. Richard Plinston

      Re: Poor compliance with web standards

      > IE was, for many years, the web standard. Compliance was good by definition. You might not like that web standard. Many people didn't, which is why they created new web standards which specifically were different than the existing web standard (IE).

      You obviously have no idea about history.

      The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in 1994 and produced a set of standards. IE was released in late 1995 when there there were several other browsers in use.

      Microsoft was a late comer to the internet and tried to ignore it. With Windows 95 they included access to the (original) MSN which was a closed network only for Windows 95 users. To get access to the internet the later !Plus Pack was required (or 3rd party networking).

      IE always had non-standard 'features' and was never 'the standard'.

      1. dogged

        Re: Poor compliance with web standards

        > ith Windows 95 they included access to the (original) MSN which was a closed network only for Windows 95 users. To get access to the internet the later !Plus Pack was required (or 3rd party networking).

        Really? I don't remember anything being locked down (if you could remember a URL).

        Then again, I was a Navigator user at the time. On Slowlaris.

        1. Richard Plinston

          Re: Poor compliance with web standards

          > Really? I don't remember anything being locked down (if you could remember a URL).

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN

          The original issue of Win95 did not include a general purpose browser but a set of apps which only accessed MSN. (though OEMs did include 3rd party software).

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Plus!

          """This was the first version of Plus! and included Space Cadet Pinball, the Internet Jumpstart Kit (which was the introduction of Internet Explorer 1.0) ..."""

      2. Stuart 22

        Re: Poor compliance with web standards

        "To get access to the internet the later !Plus Pack was required (or 3rd party networking)."

        That is incorrect. It depended which version of Windows 95 was installed. The standard OEM version I purchased on release from a distributor for our self-built kit contained Mosaic and stack. Crude full Internet/WWW right out of box without MSN or Plus Pack.

        And here is what 'state of the art' microsoft.com looked like at the time (seen through IE):

        http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3574/3809955692_3ce2e81eb6_o.gif

        1. Richard Plinston

          Re: Poor compliance with web standards

          >> "To get access to the internet the later !Plus Pack was required (or 3rd party networking)."

          > That is incorrect. It depended which version of Windows 95 was installed. The standard OEM version I purchased on release from a distributor for our self-built kit contained Mosaic and stack. Crude full Internet/WWW right out of box without MSN or Plus Pack.

          In what way is 'Mosaic and stack' not "3rd party" ? It may be that the OEM added these to Win95 for you but they were not from Microsoft. OEMs often include additional software, called shovelware. There is no 'standard OEM', they get a master from Microsoft and then create their own CD install/recovery disks and include additional software.

      3. david 12 Silver badge

        Re: Poor compliance with web standards

        Non-standard features? You mean like NPAPI? JavaScript? XPCOM?

        Or are you thinking of REST? And HTML 3.x?

        Both HTML 2 and 3 were based on/derived from/inspired by non-standard extendions -- it was a common idea at the time, standard development using the model that gave us Standard C..

        Microsoft, like MOSIAC and Netscape, introduced new features. Some of them stuck: some of them made it into other standards and other browsers.

    2. Gis Bun

      Re: Poor compliance with web standards

      So you are whining about IE. The article is about Spartan.

  2. P. Lee

    No wonder tech is hard

    I presume it's just el reg that's giving the impression that the inclusion of Sparta is what borks the VM boot and Visual Studio by bringing the two things together in one headline.

    Please tell me MS hasn't fouled up again by integrating the browser into the OS!

    1. David 132 Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: No wonder tech is hard

      Ah, I'm glad I'm not the only one who read the headline and immediately thought "so, wait, Sparta won't run in a VM? or won't run if you build an app with it?"...

      For those like me that are slow on the uptake or excessively literal, may I respectfully suggest a little tweaking of the headline, Reg team?

    2. Arctic fox
      Windows

      @P. Lee Re: "No wonder tech is hard" Whilst I agree that aspects of this article.........

      ........lack a certain clarity and the subheading is particularly unfortunate there is as yet no reason to assume that Redmond are going down that route again (indeed they would be very foolish to do so for a whole list of reasons). From the article:

      "But he added that the build* also causes problems with Visual Studio 2015, the preview version of Microsoft's integrated development environment, and that coders who are using VS2015 to build Windows Universal Apps should probably stick to the older Build 10041 for now."

      It becomes even clearer that that is not what is being said if one takes the opportunity to read the blog post by Gabe Aul cited in the article. Aul is referring to the build itself and not the browser. The trialling of Spartan for the first time is the big news but the build itself also causes certain problems which the Win 10 development team are working on.

      Whilst I do not put it past MS to repeat previous foolishness we do not as yet have reason to believe that they actually are integrating the browser into the OS in the way they did with IE.

      *My italics

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No wonder tech is hard

      "Please tell me MS hasn't fouled up again by integrating the browser into the OS!"

      Don't be silly. The OS is now just part of the Browser!

  3. PCS

    Spartan will be available from the app store so hopefully it won't be as integrated as IE currently is.

    IE will still be available for backwards-compatibility with older sites but it can be uninstalled via "programs / features -> add / remove features".

    But then I fully expect the MS haters to comment on this topic while ignoring the "facts"?

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Gimp

      I'm sure even when you uninstall IE, it'll still keep showing up in Windows Update as an 'Optional Update', just like Silverlight does now.

      Still, at least it's unselected by default.

  4. adnim
    Joke

    we have a ton of work left to do with Spartan so expect to see some bugs and rough edges in this first preview. the final release.. Sorry just had too, legacy memories if not legacy standards.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Don't be silly, that's not the way the software market works anymore. Now, final releases only have a handful of bugs. After all, most of them get found by the customers that have paid to beta test the product for several years.

  5. AMBxx Silver badge
    Boffin

    HyperV Problems?

    Be interested to hear more. My VMs on build 10041 (latest slow one) offer me the option to upgrade their configuration to the new Windows 10 version (gracefully declined so far).

    Given the separation between the hyperv layer and the rest of the OS, would be good to hear what's changed and/or what more changes are expected.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows ain't done until Visual Studio won't run! Oh wait, that doesn't sound right...

  7. Kanhef

    Disappointing

    They know they broke VS and Hyper-V, but were willing to distribute it anyway. This does not inspire confidence in the quality or stability of the final product.

    1. Archaon
      Facepalm

      Re: Disappointing

      "They know they broke VS and Hyper-V, but were willing to distribute it anyway. This does not inspire confidence in the quality or stability of the final product."

      Had they distributed it and not known, or not told anyone, that would be a problem. The fact that they''ve told a subset of users not to upgrade shows that (a) they're actually aware of it, (b) are going to patch it and (c) despite that they still want/need to test new features (including Spartan), tweaks etc.

      Or would you rather they didn't release this build and as a result things like Spartan miss out on weeks/months of user testing? Then no doubt when something breaks or doesn't work or is vulnerable to attacks you would troll that they didn't do enough testing.

    2. joeldillon

      Re: Disappointing

      You realise this is a Technical Preview, right? It's allowed to have known flaws. You're not supposed to be running production on it.

    3. Test Man

      Re: Disappointing

      "They know they broke VS and Hyper-V, but were willing to distribute it anyway. This does not inspire confidence in the quality or stability of the final product."

      It's a beta. Obviously things may break. That's how they TEST things. Fool.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Next Year ?

    I wonder how it will stack up at next years Pwn2Own contest and tumble just like every other browser.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Spartan appears to be IE with a new skin

    Spartan scores 375 out of 555 on http://html5test.com/ and this is the same as IE 11. It's unfortunate that they have not embraced new web standards. Considering this is a new browser from the ground up, why didn't the devs use webkit?

    1. Laurent Cargill

      Re: Spartan appears to be IE with a new skin

      Spartan is IE 11 but without all the legacy rendering support for IE6-10, so it will score the same. However, this probably does mean that future versions of Spartan will score better as it will be easier to integrate support for new standards.

      I'm glad they're not using webkit, it's important to maintain a broad range of engines out there, otherwise we could end up in the bad old day's of everything being written around the most common engine, and standards are ignored.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Spartan appears to be IE with a new skin

        Well they certainly are pushing the deadline if they want to add another 100 points to be considered standards compliant and catch up with the other browsers.

  10. Phuq Witt
    FAIL

    They must think we have short memories!

    Do Miscrosoft really think that, after all those years of inflicting Internet Exploder on the web, anyone with an ounce of nous is ever going to forgive them and go within a bargepole's length of this?

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