Experimental Spartan Browser Rendering Engine Wakes Up and Works

[NoelC]

...if you set the agent string differently.

 

​I tried the "Experimental Web Platform Features" of the web browser shipped with Windows 10 TP some time ago, and found that most sites with editors (e.g., this forum) just didn't work.  So I reported a frowny face, sent Feedback, and switched it off.

 

​But what I didn't realize until recently (thanks to JorgeA for a link provided to a discussion with Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott)  is that the new engine could benefit from NOT being treated like Internet Explorer, but more like WebKit-based browsers et. al. by web sites.

 

​SO...

 

​I tried turning on the suggested Custom User Agent string provided in the Experimental Features section accessed by navigating to about:flags and voila, more things work.

 

 

-Noel

 

[vinifera]

and this just shows how browser wars again come

 

if they all would comply to W3C standards, there would be NO need for any user agent string at all

but this is such a bul***** childish game that I'm so sick of

 

few months ago I had to hex-edit agent string in OLD Opera 11, to show Firefox 24

in order to approach Apple's iCloud site

 

ain't that hilarious ?

 

it gets better now, now I'm using Otter along with old Opera, and Otter allows users

to manually write whatever agent string they want... (which is great for the very reason above)

 

so will web at the end become playground for agent strings ?

Edited March 3, 2015 by vinifera

[Tripredacus]

so will web at the end become playground for agent strings ?

Sounds like you're late to the party!

Or more-so that IE/MS may be late to the custom User Agent party. Firefox and Chrome have had add-ons/plugins/whatever to change user agents for quite some time now. No hex editing required!

[vinifera]

no I'm not 

 

chrome and idiotic firefox started that bul*****
before that all was fine, Opera worked on all sites and IE.... who gives a s***

 

then comes HTML 5/CSS 3, and hypocritic chrome and ff become using their own prefixes

poor opera had to follow and since then agent strings started to determine who has "rights" to approach the web

 

bloody idiotic world

 

most ironic, all now put "mozilla 5 compatible" inside string

what the hell is with that ?

Edited March 3, 2015 by vinifera

[NoelC]

Well, it's just barely possible this is Microsoft giving up trying to forge their own path, since the engine works better if it's made to look like other browsers - implying it acts more like those others, which are likely closer implementations to the standards.

 

IMO, IE has a decent security model.  Why Microsoft would configure it to be so promiscuous out of the box is anyone's guess.  Microsoft seems to be the very embodiment of...

 

 

-Noel

[vinifera]

well heres some heads up

the so overhyped Spartan, whatever that is lulz

 

will be and stay as "appx", so yeah Metro only 

henceforth Internet Exploder stays integrated in OS too... coz you know... you still need shell

[mikedigitize]

Really loves the webnote tools in spartan 0.10.10049.0 But it seems to crash a lot.

Edited March 31, 2015 by mikedigitize

[NoelC]

Frustrated graffiti artist, Mike? 

 

In all seriousness, where are the settings for making Spartan more secure?  I've briefly tested it with several sites and a couple of them reported it was less secure than IE (with my settings to lock it down better than default).

 

-Noel

Edited March 31, 2015 by NoelC