For quite some time we have been hearing about the upcoming end of Internet Explorer in favor of Project Spartan, Microsoft's new web browser designed to make Internet browsing much easier across a variety of devices. Finally, Microsoft has brought Spartan live by including it in the latest release of their Windows 10 Preview.
Spartan comes with many new features not ever before seen in a web browser from Microsoft, including Cortana, Microsoft's built-in voice assistant. Other new features include an inking service that allows users to comment on the websites directly on the page and then share these clips with others using social media or even email.
The browser also features a completely new design that focuses on the page and not on the browser itself.
This doesn't necessarily mean that Internet Explorer is coming to an end. Currently, there is no consumer version of Spartan and Microsoft plans to continue to allow consumers the ability to use Internet Explorer 11, which is supported on Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. For now, if users want to set Spartan as their default browser, they will have to do so using a group policy.
Microsoft made headlines when it announced the new project while at the same time admitting some of the many failings of IE that has caused the company to lose much of its browser market share to other browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and, to a much greater degree, Google Chrome.
The company is still tweaking the software and it is a long way from a final release. As this is the first public release of the browser, you can expect much of it to be incomplete. This is nothing new when it comes to beta software. Regardless, it will give Project Spartan a proper stress test and allow both the company and its consumers the ability to judge just how far along the browser has come.
In addition to the addition of Project Spartan, this latest build (the fourth build released) includes many other bug fixes for known issues. That's par for the course with this release and any other major operating system release. You can expect even more bug fixes and patches in the future as the company works to create the optimal Windows experience.
Microsoft's developer conference, Build, is scheduled for next month, which means that the tech giant may put a hold on other future builds in order to show them off at the conference. However, it seems with Project Spartan, Microsoft was ready to give consumers a taste of what they can expect when Windows 10 hits stores and computers everywhere.
