One of the most exciting additions to Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 10 operating system is the IE browser killer, Project Spartan. We’ve been excited for months and months, but Spartan was never even meant to be the new browser’s final name, but today Microsoft revealed the official moniker of its next-gen window to the internet — Microsoft Edge.
Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore announced the new name on stage during the Build 2015 keynote, a three-hour talk session filled with software news, coding, and other amazingly interesting-yet-boring info. Whereas Project Spartan was a fun nod to Master Chief from the Halo series — much like Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant — Microsoft Edge sounds like something an angsty teenager would think up. There is some reasoning behind this name change at least, as Belfiore describes:
The name refers to the idea of being on the edge of consuming and creating. It refers to the developer notion of being closer to the modern capabilities of the web.
Couldn’t Spartan mean this is a no-nonsense application that is the browser-equivalent to a modified super-soldier that is the saviour of the human race? I think that would have worked too.
I guess we can’t have nice things.
Microsoft Edge does have some neat additions in this latest build including a super useful and well-designed “New Tab” page (pictured above). But the absolute best news is Edge will include web extensions with only “minor” code alterations needed from existing extensions on Firefox and Chrome. As we’ve already seen from Microsoft’s closing the app gap approach for Windows Phone — by making ports from iOS and Android way easy — it seems Edge is also adopting the “if you can’t beat ’em” tactic to make up for lost time.