Microsoft's latest information about Spartan's features

In a previous article we covered Microsoft's announcement regarding their new browser called Spartan and its features.

However, Microsoft officials talked about more interesting facts about Spartan, during the event that took place on the 21st January to reveal Windows 10.

Spartan will become available soon

Those who watched the event had the opportunity to take a glimpse of Spartan and as we got to know, testers will be able to try its Technical Preview program in the next few months. However, the January Build of Windows 10 Technical Preview doesn't include Spartan.

The leaks about Spartan that we covered in our previous article were confirmed in the event, and attenders were presented a demonstaration of these features, including how to annotate and share web pages, the unique reading experience, and integration with Cortana.

In addition, the day after the event (January 22nd), in the official Microsoft IE blog it has been confirmed that Spartan will be different than what Internet Explorer has been up until now. More specifically, they mention that Spartan will be "powered by a new rendering engine" than what was previously used in IE. Until recently, it was speculated that this new rendering engine will be an updated version of Trident (mshtml.dll) that was used in IE 11. However, Microsoft officials have confirmed that although "the new engine began as a fork of Trident, it has since diverged rapidly from it" and it is "being built with a very different set of principles than Trident".

Powered by a new rendering engine, Spartan is designed for interoperability with the modern web. We've deliberately moved away from the versioned document modes historically used in Internet Explorer, and now use the same markup as other modern browsers. Spartan's new rendering engine is designed to work with the way the web is written today.

The Spartan rendering engine (edgehtml.dll) is a new component and separate from Trident (mshtml.dll). The new engine began as a fork of Trident, but has since diverged rapidly over the past many months, similar to how several other browser engines have started as forks prior to diverging. The new rendering engine is also being built with a very different set of principles than Trident - for example: a focus on interoperability and the removal of document modes.

What has also been revealed by Microsoft is that IE will not cease to exist and will be available for Windows 10 with the same rendering engine as Spartan. What we don't know yet is whether it will be able to run only on desktop computers or mobile devices as well. Judging from the way these devices work, it's possible they will only come with Spartan browser and not IE too. Plus, we don't know if Spartan will support browser extentions, but different sites seem to believe that Spartan will have the ability to run Chrome extentions.

Yet, these are nothing more than mere speculations, at least until we get an official statement about them. What's undeniable ithough is the (reasonable) increasing interest about Spartan, and it's a good example of marketing done right.

We'll keep you up to date when more facts are revealed, so stay tuned here!