The latest news to create a buzz in the computer world is that Internet Explorer may be reaching the end of it’s life as this week Microsoft announced a new browser called Spartan.
Internet Explorer (IE) is the bane of most web developer’s existence … I know it is for me. During it’s 20 year history, Internet Explorer has had problems keeping up with the other main stream browsers in the market (Chrome, Firefox) with both security and web standard compliance.
All good websites should look and act the same on every browser so usually a good chunk of testing time before launching a new website goes to make sure that you have workarounds in place for HTML5/CSS3 items that older versions of IE can’t handle as not every user has upgraded to the latest release.
Why Spartan Will Be Different To Internet Explorer
As opposed to Internet Explorer, Spartan looks to be supported to any operating syste.
One of the most interesting features is new inking support that lets users draw and write notes directly on web pages and sync all of those notes to OneDrive and share them with collaborators.
Picture courtesy of theverge.com
Another great feature is the reading mode which allows you automatically downloads web pages for which you can read offline, which is super handy if you’re travelling with no internet access.
Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President of Operating Systems at Microsoft. said that Spartan is the current codename and will likely change before the release. No official release date has been announced but Belfiore said the features will roll out “over the next few months.” Only once we start using it will we see if Spartan has the power to kill off Internet Explorer for good.
