New Build Available on the Fast Ring

Build 10049 includes the Spartan Browser- Downloading now....

 

To be honest, Spartan is just not very good right now. No download management, history, or password saving. The UI is entirely unresponsive to touch for me while the page is rendering (so I can't change tabs or open a new tab during page render).


The only stuff present is page rendering, Cortana, and the pen feature, which is admittedly pretty nice. Except you can't just save the pen stuff as an image, as far as I can tell.

 

... I take back all the complaints I had about the new TIP. It's smaller, yes, but they finally made it context sensitive (again). Using my finger opens the keyboard, and using the pen opens handwriting recognition. When undocked, it also moves under where I tap the pen.

 

Example of new TIP:


And web notes (which don't export to an image because it's saved as an HTML file):

 

So far on my SP3 this build is much more responsive and stable. I'm enjoying Spartan so far...

 

This build has also fixed OneNote mx with the return of the Radial Menu and Portrait works!

 

I'd agree that it's more stable so far. For one, the all apps crash I was having is fixed. Also, so far it has kept my DPI setting (I prefer 125% on my Surface Pro 2) instead of resetting it to the default 150%.

Not seeing what you're saying about the radial menu being back in OneNote though. I always found the radial menu to be completely overrated anyway though, but that's just me.

As for enjoying Spartan... it's nice to play around with. I don't consider it something I could use day-to-day though. It's crashed a lot, it overheats my device with 100% CPU usage, it's often unresponsive, and it's missing too much functionality for me. Not to sound like a broken record with my thoughts about Windows 10 vs 8.x in general though.... but it's also not even close to as good a tablet browser as Metro IE was.

 

For me at least, I'm finding Spartan as Touch Friendly as MUI IE and I'm really liking the new battery status fly out.

 

I can't get the Eraser tool to work on my SP2. Also wish it would remember that I've made annotations to a certain web page and then either recall those notes or ask me if I need them.

 

Didn't notice the battery thing until you mentioned it. Disagree entirely on Spartan being touch friendly though. The tab buttons are about 1/4 the size of when they were thumbnails in Metro IE. Thumbnails make for a far better experience on a tablet. There's no swipe forward or back, which means you have to tap on small buttons again, which is a downgraded experience. Plus, half the time I can't even change tabs until the page is done rendering, because it refuses to register taps until after it's finished.

Also, the menus just come from far too many places to work well on a tablet. To switch tabs or open a new tab, you need to tap on the top of the screen. To go to one of your bookmarks, you tap on the right and scroll through a menu there. The address bar is on top, but Cortana is a flyout from the right.

In comparison, one thing Metro IE did exceptionally well is that the menus were always surrounding the address bar on the bottom of the screen (which in itself, I prefer the address bar there on a tablet too). Bookmarks were scrolled through the menu at the bottom of the screen, new tabs and tabs on other devices were in the menu at the bottom of the screen, and the address bar and search functionality was in the menu at the bottom of the screen. It was just more efficient and fluid for touch use.

And all of that is ignoring the area on the page I lose from having a taskbar, and a pretty chunky address bar and tab bar all forced to be visible at all times. I mean, my Surface Pro 2 screen is around 5 1/4 inches tall. With the scaling set the way I prefer, at 125%, literally around 15% (3/4 inch) of my vertical browsing space is lost to UI.