Project Spartan: new Microsoft web browser announced

Microsoft has officially unveiled “Project Spartan”, a web browser that was rumoured to be in development to replace Internet Explorer.

“We think it’s the right time to build a new browser for the modern web,” Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president for the Operating Systems group at Microsoft told journalists at the company’s Redmond headquarters on 21 January 2015.

Built on Microsoft’s new cross-device application framework, Belfiore said they were focusing on three “significant features”:

1. Note-taking directly on a web page, with either touch using your finger or pen, or with a keyboard.
2. Reading Mode and Reading List, providing layout and offline reading features similar to those in Safari, as well as Pocket and Instapaper.
3. Cortana integration. Microsoft will be bringing its voice assistant software from Windows Phone to the desktop version of Windows 10, and will also integrate it into its new browser.

Project Spartan will come to the Windows Insider Programme in the next “3, 4, 5 months,” Belfiore said, explaining that features will be rolled out at different times.

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