It's the end of an era... kinda. Microsoft unveiled the Windows 10 Consumer Preview in Redmond today and, with it, a new browser codenamed Spartan. This replaces Internet Explorer as the default Windows browser, and it represents the future of Microsoft's browser development.

The browser brings new interface. Just as Firefox did before it, the new interface takes its design cues from Chrome, with tabs in the title bar and the address bar inside the tabs.

Microsoft showed off a few different Spartan features, including Cortana support, a Reading List that can save articles for offline reading and sync between your phones and PCs, and the ability to annotate and clip pieces of webpages for easy sharing.

Further Reading It’s time for Microsoft to open source Internet Explorer

Spartan won't be in the first Windows 10 preview builds, and it will take a little longer to come to phones. Like Internet Explorer, however, it will eventually give users the same basic browser and rendering engine across platforms.