Hands on with Microsoft’s next browser, Project Spartan

We’re finally getting a real taste of Microsoft’s new Web browser Project Spartan. That’s just a codename for now, but based on my recent experience with the online surfing tool, which I downloaded with the latest Windows 10 Preview Build, the name fits.

It would be easy to describe Project Spartan as a boiled-down version of Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s legacy browser that will live on with less frequent updates. But that description would also be wrong. Spartan, which arrives alongside Windows 10 later this year, has a new browsing engine, one that IE will not share.

In practice, Spartan feels whip-fast. It may also be that there’s little else that comes along with the web pages — in the form of icons, menus or other surrounding clutter — to slow down page loads.

Project Spartan is still recognizable as a web browser. But Microsoft dispensed with things like color (beyond white and gray) and text, leaving a very simplistic interface. You have to intuit what the icons mean and where to type in your URL.

If that sounds like a bad thing, it’s not. Project Spartan delivers Microsoft’s goal: a browser where everything but the website fades into the background.

 

Curated from Hands on with Microsoft’s next browser, Project Spartan