Microsoft Convergence 2015 – Windows 10 Bids Farewell To Internet Explorer Brand

Microsoft has announced that its next version of Windows will not feature its traditional Internet Explorer browser, but instead the newly-developed ‘Project Spartan’.

Speaking at the Convergence event in Atlanta, Microsoft’s marketing head Chris Capossela confirmed that the company is currently working on both a new name and brand for its browser.

“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.”

Au revoir?

However, this isn’t the end for Internet Explorer, which will still exist in some versions of Windows 10, primarily for enterprises and customers who require legacy support, but the new Project Spartan will be named separately and will be the primary way for Windows 10 users to access the web.

“Project Spartan is Microsoft’s next generation browser, built just for Windows 10,” a Microsoft spokesperson told TechWeekEurope. “We will continue to make Internet Explorer available with Windows 10 for enterprises and other customers who require legacy browser support.”

Project Spartan was first announced as part of the Windows 10 reveal back in January. Among its new features are annotation, a ‘distraction free’ reading mode and simplified layout for better web surfing. Project Spartan is also integrated with Cortana, Microsoft’s voice-activated personal assistant, which makes the jump from smartphones to PCs and tablets.

The company revealed more about the browser last month, when a blog post from Charles Morris, Project Spartan project lead, detailed how it would differ from Internet Explorer.

As part of a new “interoperability-focused approach,” his group decided to take a fork in the path laid out by previous versions of IE. “The break meant bringing up a new Web rendering engine, free from 20 years of Internet Explorer legacy, which has real-world interoperability with other modern browsers as its primary focus—and thus our rallying cry for Windows 10 became ‘the Web just works,’” said Morris.

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