Tag Archives: browser

First Look: Microsoft’s new Spartan browser for Windows 10

Here’s what sets Spartan apart from Internet Explorer.

Spartan
The most recent Windows 10 Technical Preview comes with Spartan, a web browser that will eventually replace Internet Explorer. It’s not an updated version of IE under a different name; it’s a new browser that Microsoft built from scratch. Here’s what sets Spartan apart from Internet Explorer.

New name
For the time being, the browser is officially referred to as Project Spartan, and “Spartan” may or may not be its final name when it’s released with Windows 10. Sure, unlike “Internet Explorer,” the name doesn’t strongly imply that this program is for browsing the Internet, but neither do the names Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Safari. So we think “Spartan” sounds like it would fit in perfectly among its competitors.

Internet Explorer lives on
Microsoft’s previous, and not much-loved browser will still be included in Windows 10, in case you need to visit sites or use web services that absolutely require it. This will probably apply mostly to enterprise users. The current Windows 10 Technical Preview doesn’t list Internet Explorer on the desktop or taskbar. It’s hidden under Windows Accessories in the Start Menu.

Spartan is the default
Spartan will be set as the default browser in Windows 10. This status can be changed by another browser, like Chrome or Firefox, to take over the role as the default. There isn’t a way to set Spartan back to default within its own settings. To do this you have to go to the new Windows 10 Settings app.

Spartan features Edge
rendering engine
Not only will Windows 10 come with two web browsers, each browser will use a different rendering engine. IE will still use Trident, while Spartan comes with the faster and more technologically up-to-date successor Edge. Originally, Microsoft considered stuffing both engines into their new browser, but elected not to, in order to better clarify the separation between the two browsers: IE would be sticking around for backward compatibility.

Spartan becomes Windows app
Is Microsoft’s new browser a Windows app or desktop application? It appears to be the former. In Windows 10, users will interact with Windows apps on the desktop environment in resizable windows; the overall feel from using Spartan suggests it is such an app. It also shares the same design language as the other new, resizable Windows apps coming to Windows 10, such as the Store and Maps apps, as seen in its title bar and borderless frame.

Spartan has cleaner, simpler look
As its name implies, compared to IE, Spartan sports a cleaner looking UI with a borderless viewing pane and simpler graphical elements in the toolbar. This minimalism is also evident under its settings menu, which displays things in large text and isn’t cluttered with several options. In a side-by-side matchup, Spartan’s GUI initially looks similar — the main differences are that Spartan’s has fewer colors and slightly larger toolbar icons, but its tabs are set over the toolbar, as opposed to the way IE does it by setting tabs within the toolbar. Spartan’s arrangement of tabs looks less confusing.

Spartan has link sharing feature
This is a minor feature, but one that isn’t in the latest IE. In Spartan, you can send a link directly to another Windows app, such as OneNote or the Reading List.

Cortana is integrated into Spartan
Microsoft’s personal digital assistant Cortana will come with Windows 10. It’s similar to Apple’s Siri or Google’s Google Now, where, basically, you speak aloud a command or question and the technology will scour the Internet for your requested information, sometimes speaking out what it finds in a digital voice. Cortana’s features are integrated into Spartan but, as of this writing, can be accessed only in the US versions of the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview, but Microsoft plans to expand its availability to other countries soon.

Spartan will likely support extensions
Firefox has add-on functionality, while Chrome refers to its equivalent feature as extensions. Under Spartan, add-ons appear to refer to plugins for running multimedia technologies, like Flash. It’s been reported that Spartan’s final release will have extension support similar to Chrome, so developers will be able to write tools to enhance the usability of the browser.

Spartan has ‘reading view’ for smaller screens
Spartan can re-render certain pages to display only the main body of text and a related image, stripping out extraneous graphics and text from the original layout. This is meant to make an online article more legible and visually comfortable to read, especially on a tablet. To do this, you click the open-book icon to the right of the URL address bar. This function isn’t available when this icon is grayed-out: Not every page is able to be stripped down to its essentials. Spartan’s reading view tends to be available when you visit a page showing an article or blog entry, but not always.

Spartan integrates with Web Note drawing tool
This ballyhooed feature lets you draw right onto a page, doodling over it or jotting handwritten notes (if you are using a digital pen on a Windows 10 tablet). But technically what Web Note does is capture an image of a page, and then give you basic drawing and highlighting tools. You can also annotate the image with notes you type in, and copy the image of the page, or portions of it, so that you can paste it into a document or image that you’re editing in another program. Pages can be saved as a favorite (bookmark), added to the browser’s reading list, or forwarded to other Windows apps through Share.


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IE ‘silent’ upgrade helps put newest browser on Windows

Stats show some Windows 7 and Vista users upgraded to IE9, but the new practice affected few XP users

Computerworld – Microsoft’s decision late last year to switch on “silent” upgrades for Internet Explorer (IE) has moved some Windows users to newer versions, but has had little, if any, impact on the oldest editions, IE6 and IE7, according to usage statistics.

In December 2011, Microsoft announced it would start automatically upgrading IE so that users ran the newest version suitable for their copy of Windows.
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Under the plan, Windows XP users still on IE6 or IE7 would be updated to IE8, while Windows Vista or Windows 7 users running IE7 or IE8 would be pushed to IE9.

Previously, Microsoft has always asked users for their permission before upgrading IE from one version to the next, even if Windows’ automatic updates was enabled.

First to get the automatic treatment, Microsoft said, would be Australia and Brazil, both guinea pigs for the January 2012 debut. The program would then be gradually expanded to other markets.

Yesterday, Microsoft declined to disclose what other countries, if any, had had the auto-upgrade switched on.

But in Australia and Brazil, the move shuffled share among some editions of IE, according to data from StatCounter, an Irish Web analytics company that publishes country-by-country usage share numbers for IE6, IE7, IE8 and IE9.

In both countries, IE9 jumped unexpectedly in February, the first full month after the auto-upgrade switch was thrown, while IE8 saw an almost-corresponding decline in share.

IE9 in Australia climbed 3.3 percentage points that month, a 23% increase, which was significantly greater than any spike of the previous 12 months. Meanwhile, IE8 slipped 2.8 points, or 15%, in February.

The result in Brazil was eerily similar: IE9 jumped by 3.5 points (42% increase over the previous month) and IE8 dropped by 3.1 percentage points (for a decline of 16%).

There was some evidence that the auto-upgrade did impact IE7’s share in Australia, since the browser’s February decline was only a third that recorded for both January and March.

It’s impossible to tell if, assuming some copies of IE7 were upgraded to IE8 or IE9, which operating system — Windows Vista or Windows XP — was affected: Both those editions can run IE7.

The theory that IE auto-upgrades primarily applied to Windows 7 and Vista users was bolstered by the shares XP owns in each of the two countries: In Australia, XP accounted for 19.5% of all operating systems used in February, while Brazil’s XP share that month was double that at 37.7%.

If appreciable numbers of XP users had had their copies of IE upgraded, one would have expected to see Brazil’s numbers for IE 6 and IE 7 show a larger variance from the norm than Australia. That just wasn’t the case.

The shifts reported by StatCounter hint that IE’s automatic upgrade program successfully moved some Windows 7 and Vista users from IE8 to IE9, but did little to migrate Windows XP users to a more modern browser, since IE6 and IE7 shares did not drop more than the usual.

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Google boosts Web bug bounties to $20,000

Increases payments for bugs in core sites, services and Web apps

Computerworld – Google today dramatically raised the bounties it pays independent researchers for reporting bugs in its core websites, services and online applications.

The search giant boosted the maximum reward from $3,133 to $20,000, and added a $10,000 payment to the program.

The Vulnerability Reward Program (VRP) will now pay $20,000 for vulnerabilities that allow remote code execution against google.com, youtube.com and other core domains, as well as what the company called “highly sensitive services” such as its search site, Google Wallet, Gmail and Google Play.

Remote code flaws found in Google’s Web apps will also be rewarded $20,000.

The term “remote code execution” refers to the most serious category of vulnerabilities, those which when exploited allow an attacker to hijack a system and/or plant malware on a machine.
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A $10,000 bounty will be paid for SQL injection bugs or “significant” authentication bypass or data leak vulnerabilities, Google said in the revised rules for the program.

Other bugs, including cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgery (XSRF) flaws, will be compensated with payments between $100 and $3,133, with the amount dependent on the severity of the bug and where the vulnerability resides.

Google explained the higher bounties as ways “to celebrate the success of this [program] and to underscore our commitment to security.”

The website and web app reward program debuted in November 2010, and followed Google’s January 2010 launch of a bug bounty program for its Chrome browser. Google paid out about $180,000 in Chrome bounties last year.

The maximum award for reported Chrome vulnerabilities remains at $3,133, Google confirmed today.

Since VRP’s introduction, Google today said it has received more than 780 eligible bug reports, and in just over a year, paid out around $460,000 to approximately 200 researchers.

“We’re confident beyond any doubt the program has made Google users safer,” said Adam Mein, a Google security program manager, and Michal Zalewski, a engineer on the Google security team, in a Monday post to a company blog.

Google has shown that upping bounty payments will shake loose vulnerabilities it wasn’t aware existed.

Last month, the company wrote $60,000 checks to two researchers at Pwnium, the Chrome hacking contest it ran at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Both researchers revealed bugs and associated attack code that demonstrated how hackers could escape the browser’s isolating, anti-exploit “sandbox, to hijack the browser and plant malware on a machine.