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Microsoft Spartan: Chrome Extensions targeted for native support

Tomorrow is Microsoft's big day when they will pull back the curtain on Windows 10 and show off a new browser. We have been reporting on Spartan since September and at that time, we pointed out that Redmond was working on extensions too.

Neowin has learned a bit more about these extensions and how Microsoft plans to make its browser attractive for developers. Spartan will be able to use Chrome extensions and, while we are not sure if they will work 100% natively, the way extensions have been implemented is nearly identical to that of Chrome which will make it a simple process for developers to make their extensions work on Spartan.

There is actually evidence that you can look at today to see this, which our sources confirmed is accurate, that shows how similar Spartan extensions are to Chrome: WrapMsBrowserExtensionPageAndBackground.js was posted up on Pastebin by h0x0d, which was extracted from a build of Windows 10, and shows the similarities between the two extension platforms. More so, Chrome is specifically mentioned in the commenting of the js file too.

This approach makes a lot of sense. Rather than having developers have to start over and build a new extension for Spartan, they can simply bring their Chrome extension over to Spartan quickly and have both browsers covered with minimal effort.

We will learn a lot more about the Spartan and how Microsoft will position the browser at the press event tomorrow.

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