Microsoft's Project Spartan web browser will host a new rendering engine exclusively, with the Internet Explorer 11 to remain fundamentally unchanged from Windows 8.1, Microsoft says. When Microsoft announced Project Spartan in January, the company laid out a plan to use its new rendering engine to power both Project Spartan and Internet Explorer on Windows 10, with the capability for both browsers to switch back to Microsoft's legacy engine when they encounter legacy technologies or certain enterprise sites. However, this strategy has changed.

Speaking at the "Project Spartan" developer workshop held yesterday at the company's Silicon Valley campus, Kyle Pflug, a program manager for the new browser, said that the decision to feature a new rendering engine exlusively in Project Spartan was based on
feedback from Windows Insiders.

He said that testing with Project Spartan showed that it was on track to be highly compatible with the modern Web, which means the legacy engine wasn't needed for compatibility.

In addition, hosting a new engine in Internet Explorer 11 would have compatibility implications that impact legacy scenarios and Microsoft's enterprise customers.

this promise and would have made the browser behave differently on Windows 10.

Project Spartan is Microsoft's future browser. It will be the default browser for all Windows 10 users and will provide new user experiences including the ability to annotate on web pages, a distraction-free reading experience, and integration of Cortana.

For a websites that were built to work with legacy technologies, Microsoft will make it easy for users to access thiose sites using Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10. Enterprises with large numbers of sites that rely on these legacy technologies can choose to make Internet Explorer 11 the default browser via group policy. In addition, since Internet Explorer 11 will now remain fundamentally unchanged from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, it will provide a stable and predictable platform for enterprise users to upgrade to Windows 10 with confidence.