Spartan on Windows 7? Microsoft is 'watching demand' Details of Microsoft’s fledgling Windows 10 Spartan browser are emerging with a suggestion of possible support for Windows 7. Redmond’s Spartan team is working on a plan for support for extensions to the Windows 10 browser. Silverlight, HTML and CSS extensions will be supported in Spartan, according to the software giant. “ …
"Hi! I see you're tying to view a standards compliant webpage any quality browser released in the last 5 years has no trouble with, but you're using instead a microsoft browser. If you insist on doing this, you now have 2 choices - you can either see it quickly, but with totally broken alignment and horribly chosen fonts, or slowly with that the other way round."
Spartan is designed to work with Windows 10, so it won't run on non-Windows platforms – continuing Microsoft's policy on browsers.
Down vote me to hell, but it would be nice to see support for OSx & Linux or do they get fired for even mentioning them?
Or is single OS badly too much trouble?
Microsoft DID at one time did release their browser for Macintosh.
Internet Explorer for classic Mac around version 7 or 8.
It actually shipped on Apple's OS install CD's.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) it was not the same as IE on windows.. it was better.
It was more standards complient (which the windows version wasn't,) it also did not do ActiveX and used Apple's font technology to render web pages far more beautifully than other browsers and platforms.
It was small, crash proof, and fast.
It was in point of fact NOT Internet Explorer as we know it.
...
As far as testing your HTML on your Mac in IE (or Sparta)..
If you want to test web pages in various browsers on your Mac.. well that's what virtuallization is for.
In fact, seeing how scary it is to use a Windows envirement, virtuallization is the only way to go and I'm shocked Microsoft doesn't use it themselves.
Maybe while they are busy releasing Windows 10, they could revive their Pallidum project, and restrict running older "classic" Windows applications in virtualized cages so you could keep running your old Windows applications.
You know.. "A better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than Windows".
OH WAIT A MINUTE!!!
Forget the browser - it's the app store that needs back-porting to Windows 7. Look at Google - they don't own the operating system, yet they've managed to get their app store (Chrome) installed on millions of PCs worldwide. It even works on Windows XP. Microsoft haven't a clue about strategy.
Good Point:
I hear-by ask that Microsoft start using Adobe and Java to push out their browser and having it automatically be installed and set as default browser every-time the aforementioned programmes do their updates.
Wouldn't surprise me 50% of the Chrome install base was done this way. My parents have chrome installed and they have no idea what it is.
To Microsoft other OS do not exist, apart from being a Sales opportunity. I also wonder if they really will go for a Windows 7 version, if it's a good product surely using it as a leaver to move people to Windows 10 makes more sense, rather than allowing Windows 7 to become another XP.
Mind you you could take the line, why do I actually need Windows 10, or Spartan.
You don't need them unless you have XP and can't find a copy of 7 to upgrade to.
10 ? the default best option will be a sort of 7 lookalike desktop and spartan is just chrome done by MS.
Save time and money, stick with the current OS unless XP for support or 8/8.1 for better UI and install chrome.
Or better yet buy a chromebook and use that
Chrome on (my) Windows (7) is a serious memory hog, worse than IE.
I assume Spartan will be less so, or there will be no point (and the name will be a misnomer),
Personally, even on my older, never re-installed Win7 core i5 laptop, it runs quite fast enough for me, and the video doesn't freeze like it sometimes does on Chrome.
Still, if Spartan is also faster, yay!
about this TBH, I use chrome as it syncs with my phones and tablet chromebook and pc perfectly, same reason I use gmail for all my mail accounts, yeh I know but I do nothing Google or anyone else would be interested in and I use IE for banking etc so it never sees any but a couple of sites. If there was a better vpn than Hola (works with andoid phone, tablet, chromebook and chrome browser for US netflix etc) that was also free I would use another browser however chorme is the default forme now.
IE being embedded in Windows isn't due to "spaghetti" code. OS's and browsers are growing ever closer and we are reaping the benefits of that. Why implement HTML rendering and vector graphics and javascript at the browser level when you can build support for this directly into the operating system and gain the benefits of direct use of graphics hardware and other performance gains. With Windows RT (the API, not the OS) you can code apps directly in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript if you want, no browser needed. Tight integration is one reason Metro IE11 is so quick.
You make it sound like careless coding when it's actually design with good reasons behind it. If you don't agree with all that and think that browsers and OS's aren't growing closer and closer, just look at ChromeOS - that's an operating system that actually IS a browser.
MADNESS are/were a band.
This is a quite sane idea, to start again with a standards-compliant browser, giving the opportunity to remove all the code that does non-standard stuff.
Potentially the new browser should be fast and lightweight, and the redesign should make future development easier and quicker.
It is like a Linux fork.
Take all the stuff you think is good, do a code save with all the conditionals set accordingly, find all 'ifs' supporting stuff you don't wanna support anymore and then go over it with a fine toothcomb to optimise it.
Or, rewrite from scratch with new classes etc. designed precisely for the job.
The latter is definitely tempting but requires more bug removal I expect.
do you recommend they then use Chrome to download Firefox? After all, it has less cruft in the form of spyware and phoning all your searches back to Google and it doesn't keep asking you to "log in" to your Google account. It also renders hi-res text and images better than a 1970s American TV. Unlike Chrome.
I can't argue if that's where you were going but I would strongly suggest cutting out the middle man.
"I have that one solved. I don't install Flash."
However, apparently certain sites require it.
By coincidence I rendered OSX and my Linux machines flash free just this morning.
However if you do need to run Flash, there is always Chrome.. Google maintains their own version.
And as for Linux users, they are stuck back at version 11 unless they install Chrome.
Sadly, there was some good media which was created back in the old days. Comic book interactive.. "things" which though hard to find, will become almost impossible to play.
Sad that..
RIP Mr. Snoozelberg.. .. Hey! It's on Android! (probably wants your contacts...)
Don't even bother. It would be far better that web devs learn to code their HTML to work with lots of different browsers across disparate operating systems and environments. If they code to a monoculture (in this case some browser engine called Sparta) then the same will set in that made IE4/5/6 so hard to get rid of.
Just leave Windows 7 alone.
Unless the update comes through and happens automatically via Windows Update, in which case they better be damn sure it doesn't break anything more than the automatic update to SP1.
Even if Windows 10 is the greatest OS ever known, only a small minority of people will go to the trouble and risk of upgrading their OS. Besides, knowing Microsoft they'd require you upgrade from 7SP1->8->8.1->10 which would really cut down the number of people who care.
You certainly haven't given any indication that you know what you're talking about, since you've basically told me "you're wrong, but it is up to you to 'research' randomly to find out why I say so because I can't be bothered to tell you". Hardly surprising you got all the downvotes you did, you deserved more.
There was no word on whether Spartan would back-track to work with ActiveX controls, thereby bringing in support for legions of legacy applications. Microsoft has said there will be no ActiveX support in Spartan.
They never will: it's been going nowhere as a technology for years and is one of the biggest attack vectors in IE.
Unfortunately, even keeping it around in IE 11 doesn't even solve all the legacy (read crap) applications that enterprises have lying around. One place I know reckons that around 10 % of such apps won't run in anything more modern than IE 8. Virtual machines spinning up to run IE 8 are probably the best solution in such situations.
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