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Well, the name at least.
Speaking at a conference for the company, Microsoft’s marketing chief Chris Capossela has revealed that the company behind Windows is currently working on a new name and brand for Explorer.
“We’re now researching what the new brand, or the new name, for our browser should be in Windows 10,” he said.
“We’ll continue to have Internet Explorer, but we’ll also have a new browser called Project Spartan, which is codenamed Project Spartan. We have to name the thing.”
What we do know is that the above mentioned Project Spartan is Microsoft’s new flagship browser, and will form a central part of Microsoft’s next big Windows update; Windows 10, which will be released later this year.
Internet Explorer will also continue in some form – mainly for the benefit of enterprise compatibility – but Spartan, complete with an official name and brand, will be the front and centre internet point of Windows 10.
Explorer has been the butt of web-based jokes for some years now, and the arrival of strong competitors like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and even Apple’s Safari has seen IE slip further down the usage list of many web surfers, as Explorer has become out-paced.
@HigginsDav @cafferkey_sean @jeff_johnston_ @EndaKennyTD you could apply most internet explorer meme jokes to bing pic.twitter.com/Iy5B5vKUUY
— Noel Rock (@NoelRock) March 15, 2015
Microsoft are hoping that Windows 10 and the final incarnation of Project Spartan can change that image – indeed both have gone down very well so far following a preview event at the beginning of the year, during which we got a peak at the sort of features the new browser will support. These include the ability to annotate and note-take directly onto web pages, as well as a minimalist reading feature; reducing pages to simple text. The latter already exists on Mac and iOS.
Windows 10, and indeed Spartan, don’t have a release date confirmed just yet, but are coming later in the year.
