Microsoft’s new ‘Spartan’ web browser for Windows 10 (and W10 for phones)

The Halo franchise is serving Microsoft well outside of the Halo gaming universe. Cortana, the personal voice assistant, is a very worth while piece of kit that works really well on phones and is likely to appear on the desktop too.

Another Halo named product was first mentioned back in September. Codename “Spartan” this was to be the next internet explorer version.

“Spartan is the term used to describe members of several supersoldier programs instituted by the UNSC at various times, named after the Ancient Greek warriors of Sparta.”

The latest news indicates that Spartan is an even bigger project – a completely new web browser that will look and feel a bit more like “chrome or firefox” with support for extensions/plugins.  It won’t however be webkit based, but instead will use Chakra JavaScript engine and Microsoft’s Trident.

Windows 10 will come with both I.E. and the new Spartan browser. W10 for phones will also see Spartan or whatever it will be called.

Cortana as a personal assistant really benefited from having that Cortana-from-Halo connection. Although she is a circle on the phone, we know her face and (the American version at least) can hear the original Cortana voice. Spartan sounds like a better name than the baggage “Internet Explorer”. Although it might be less well known (at least in the Halo/Microsoft sense) it sounds like a strong brand to build on. We might even see it on other platforms.

Expect to see this possibly January 21st 2015.

Source: ZDNet

Category: Windows Phone