Farewell to Internet Explorer? Microsoft Corp Windows 10 release could include new browser

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When Windows 10 arrives, probably by next fall, Microsoft could include a brand new browser that’s more like Chrome and Firefox and less like Internet Explorer. The project goes by the codenamed “Spartan,” reports Mary Jo Foley.

Microsoft won’t completely kill off IE in Windows 10, sources told Foley. It will include a version of IE for “backwards compatibility” meaning for sites, particularly older enterprise apps, that have been fine-tuned to function with Internet Explorer.  That version is expected to be IE 11, the current version of Internet Explorer.

The new browser is expected to look more like Firefox and Chrome in design and do a better job of supporting extensions, which are apps you can add to your browser.

Interestingly, Foley says that the new browser will still use Microsoft’s same underlying browser technology. In geek speak, that’s Microsoft’s Chakra JavaScript engine and Microsoft’s Trident rendering engine, not the popular WebKit, originally developed by Apple and later adopted by Google. Versions of Webkit are used in Safari and Chrome.

This is important because each browser engine has its own tweaks that developers must learn. That’s why a website sometimes works well on one device and is wonky on another. As you might imagine, given the dominance Apple and Google have over the mobile devices, a lot of mobile developers optimize their sites for Webkit.

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