Microsoft unveil Project Spartan

I remember the day when Microsoft released the first version of Internet Explorer in 1995, by acquiring Spyglass Mosaic and rebranding it. For a decade it seemed that nothing could withstand the onslaught of that browser. Even the name and desktop icon have become synonymous with the web for many people.

But all good things must come to an end (even bad things, obviously). Microsoft are busy creating a new browser.

The upcoming browser is code-named “Project Spartan” and started as a fork of the classic Trident engine. Spartan is powered by a new rendering engine, but it’s not quite time yet to say farewell to Trident. Parts of the old engine seems to live on in some way, since legacy web sites will be rendered with the IE11 engine. According to Rey Bango, the IE11 legacy engine (mshtml.dll) is included but the new engine (edgehtml.dll) will be default.

These days many web developers build sites and apps for WebKit and Blink (the engines of Safari and Chrome) and consider IE compatibility to be of lesser importance, since Microsoft’s desktop market share has dwindled in the last years. It’s probably easier to release a new browser than to get rid of the bad reputation of Internet Explorer.

Update: On April 29, the final name of the browser was announced to be Microsoft Edge.