11–20 of 29 posts
Spartan is based on an improved version IE11's trident engine. The browser window is a WinRuntime app. It's still unclear if it will support WebGL 2, WebRTC, CSS 3D transformations.
Great, now I have to support IE 7 AND Spartan...
Every browser pretty much presents webpages correctly according to modern CSS standards.
Every browser is fast enough that the difference is negligible
Not many people use any major add-on features of browsers, except like adblocker and stuff like that.
I really don't understand why this is an area that's worth competing in anymore, except providing an browser for your mobile ecosystem (chrome for android, spartan for windows phone, safari for apple, whatever). Webpages are still needed but apps are sweeping the field and providing better UX for the webpages that people use the most.
And downvote me as you might but firefox days are sadly counted
It's interesting that they decided to start from scratch with a new rendering engine. (I imagine the UI itself could have been updated without a lot of trouble.) They probably looked at the thousands of special cases in the old spaghetti code, maybe took a gander at the Blink/Webkit sources ;-), and then decided, "Hang it, we can do this ourselves, and do it right." Likely a pretty fun project, betting against the "n…
Curious that they're calling it a 'new' rendering engine at all. I could have sworn they said somewhere that it was still the same Trident engine, but without the legacy IE bits. Also, according to Paul Thurrott [1], the browser team was considering WebKit/Blink and ultimately decided to stick with Trident – apparently because of Google's control over Blink. [1]: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/470/maybe-…
Because of its popularity as a rendering engine, being used by Safari, Chrome and Opera, both on the desktop and on mobile phones, it is quickly becoming a monoculture. Even if we are talking about an open-source project, to me it smells too much like the lock-in that IExplorer once had on the market and people might not remember, but IExplorer was at some point very innovative and the best browser available. And many people also don't remember what happened after that.
So even though I'm very grateful about WebKit/Blink, we really must avoid repeating mistakes of the past. Multiple implementations of a standard are very healthy, monocultures are not.
However, I also think that given this overhaul, Microsoft should open-source this rendering engine. I really hope they do it and it would be in their interest to do so.
Spartan is based on an improved version IE11's trident engine. The browser window is a WinRuntime app. It's still unclear if it will support WebGL 2, WebRTC, CSS 3D transformations.
https://status.modern.ie says WebRTC is in development and CSS 3D transforms are part of a IE preview release.
Google, Mozilla and Opera - "WebRTC":
http://caniuse.com/#search=WebRTC and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC
Microsoft proposed another draft "CU-RTC-WEB" based on Skype details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-RTC-WEB and later "ORTC": http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/08/ortc-webrtc
Hangout vs. Skype vs. iOS messages is the deal breaker why WebRTC isn't suppored in Safari and IE. That's sad as it already works in ~1.7B devices.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://status.modern.ie says WebRTC is in development and CSS 3D transforms are part of a IE preview release.
There are three incompatible proposed web real-time communication standards. Google, Mozilla and Opera - "WebRTC": http://caniuse.com/#search=WebRTC and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC Microsoft proposed another draft "CU-RTC-WEB" based on Skype details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-RTC-WEB and later "ORTC": http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/08/ortc-webrtc Hangout vs. Skype vs. iOS messages is the deal breaker wh…
That alone is enough to keep me from giving Spartan a real chance.
It feels like browsers in general has become to commoditized for people to even bother. How much does it really matter these days if you use chrome, firefox,opera etc. It used to be that it DID matter that you used IE because they were so hopefully after (after they were before netscape) but these days it more of a popularity contest. Every browser pretty much presents webpages correctly according to modern CSS stand…
It feels like browsers in general has become to commoditized for people to even bother. How much does it really matter these days if you use chrome, firefox,opera etc. It used to be that it DID matter that you used IE because they were so hopefully after (after they were before netscape) but these days it more of a popularity contest. Every browser pretty much presents webpages correctly according to modern CSS stand…
I think Microsoft feels it needs to provide a better browser because the popular alternative is controlled by their competitor. Chrome itself does its best to make sure you get pulled into the Google ecosystem - you need a Google account just to use the sync feature. On top of that, when you switch Chrome to its full-screen Windows 8 app mode (for touch screen support, etc.) it basically turns into a clone of Chrome…
