Microsoft exec confirms they're phasing out the Internet Explorer brand with Windows 10

Jos

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It’s the end of an era. While Microsoft had already revealed it was working on a lightweight browser for Windows 10 codenamed ‘Project Spartan’, and dropped hints it would be an Internet Explorer replacement, a company executive has now confirmed that these two are indeed separate products, and the much maligned Internet Explorer is on the way out.

Speaking at Microsoft’s Convergence conference in Atlanta on Monday, reports The Verge, Microsoft’s marketing chief Chris Capossela said that the company is currently working on a new name and brand. Internet Explorer will still be kept around “in some versions” of Windows 10 for compatibility reasons, but the new browser -- whatever it ends up being called -- will take its place as the primary way for users to access the web from a fresh Windows 10 install.

Although it’s yet to settle on a name it’ll probably have the Microsoft brand attached to it, as in-house research shows the appeal “is incredibly high”.

microsoft internet explorer

The Internet Explorer brand gained a poor reputation in the early and mid-2000s both for security and for standards compliance. Despite Microsoft’s best marketing efforts, and actually delivering a fast and capable browser with the latest versions of Windows, it hasn’t been able to shake off the stigma.

Project Spartan will bring a streamlined interface as well as a few different features, including Cortana support, a Reading List that can save articles for offline reading and sync between your phones and PCs, and the ability to annotate and clip pieces of webpages for easy sharing.

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I would concur that IE sucks, no matter what they call it.

I am a web developer, and as one headache over IE that I have to deal with frequently is that in IE11 the select control looks so terribly bad, I have to resort to custom control usage, just so it looks the same across all browsers. And their customization for check boxes and radio boxes isn't much better, have to rewrite those every time. Not to mention the *****ic non-standard things they keep plugging in it still, like that moronic Clear button inside edit box that doesn't even issue the Change event when the content is cleared on that button press; - what ***** came up with that one?

I sincerely hope IE vanishes at last, just like Netscape Navigator did.
 
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It doesn't matter what they call it, IE or otherwise, it'll never be good without a quality rewrite from the bottom up.
 
I'd like to point out that IE had built-in VRML 2.0 support back in 1997, but they dropped it almost immediately after, essentially setting public acceptance of Virtual Reality back by 20 years. Rumors swirled at the time that they killed it as part of the Browser Wars, but no real justification that made any sense was ever made public as far as I know. If anyone knows the real reason, please enlighten me.
 
.. Not to mention the *****ic non-standard things they keep plugging in it still, like that moronic Clear button inside edit box that doesn't even issue the Change event when the content is cleared on that button press; - what ***** came up with that one?

That Clear x button along with the password-reveal button is the DUMBEST most security flawed thing they have done. Whey have a password to begin with if it's viewable!?!?!????!?!?

I have, however, found a way to turn that crap off; still don't know how to turn off that clear option.
 
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