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Building a more power-efficient browser

blogs.windows.com

21–30 of 105 posts

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#21
post #20
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HW has proprietary power management features that Windows cannot take advantage of. For the end user it's probably no big deal, but I think the commenter you replied to is right - power management is a delicate dance between hardware and software, and not all hardware is accessible from all software on every platform.

"Can't" and "won't" are distinct; if Apple doesn't want to write e.g. Power Nap drivers for Windows, Microsoft could certainly do it. (I'm surprised they haven't; Windows has the incentive to work well everywhere much more than Macs have an incentive to run everything equally well.)

Could they? Do they have access to the Apple firmware documentation?

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#22

But how does it compare to Safari on Apple computers? AFAIK Safari is extremely power efficient.

That's really an Apples to Oranges comparison since Macs and PCs aren't comparable. Yes you could run Windows in BootCamp but it isn't tuned for that and is actually hampered. It would be like making a Surface Pro a hackintosh and using that as a basis for comparison.

Comparing Edge on Windows to Safari on macOS is apples to apples. Browsers running on an OS. I d be really interested in this comparison, since Apple's big selling point is being apple to specialize since they control the hardware. If Edge can come close or beat them on more diverse hardware, that would be very impressive.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#24
They can start to compare themselves against Chrome when they are at least at feature parity with HTML5, CSS3, Ecmascript6, work cross-platform (not just on Microsoft-owned platforms), and have useable developer tools. I'm not sure I know of any professional web developers that don't view IE/Edge as an afterthought still. We build our applications in Chrome/FF, using Chrome/FF, and occasionally test to make sure the experiences don't totally suck in the others. They are also missing something like Electron, which is used a lot to build native cross-platform apps using web technologies.

Power efficient is nice, but today's mobile phones have much lower hanging fruit -- you could run the CPU for days at 100% if you didn't care about the display/backlight, cellular radio, or GPS. If you don't believe me put your phone in airplane mode and play a video or game on loop with the brightness turned all the way down.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#26

They can start to compare themselves against Chrome when they are at least at feature parity with HTML5, CSS3, Ecmascript6, work cross-platform (not just on Microsoft-owned platforms), and have useable developer tools. I'm not sure I know of any professional web developers that don't view IE/Edge as an afterthought still. We build our applications in Chrome/FF, using Chrome/FF, and occasionally test to make sure the…

Different strokes for different folks. I'd personally rather have a power efficient browser than one that implements every single experimental W3C spec.

Now, I don't use Windows, but I've switched from Chrome to Safari because it's easier on my aging MacBook battery.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#27
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extensions are coming with the anniversary update in a month or so, I'm excited!

I have a Surface Book, once Edge support EFF Privacy Badger, Edge will likely become my default browser.

Sold my SP3, but do Firefox and Chrome both still feel wrong on the touchscreen, as far as scrolling and zooming go?

I'd been using IE on that thing on account of nobody else being able to do it right.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#28

They can start to compare themselves against Chrome when they are at least at feature parity with HTML5, CSS3, Ecmascript6, work cross-platform (not just on Microsoft-owned platforms), and have useable developer tools. I'm not sure I know of any professional web developers that don't view IE/Edge as an afterthought still. We build our applications in Chrome/FF, using Chrome/FF, and occasionally test to make sure the…

> They are also missing something like Electron, which is used a lot to build native cross-platform apps using web technologies.

While I am not a Windows developer in the slightest, this is sort of missing quite a bit.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/get-started/cre...

https://github.com/Microsoft/node-uwp

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/develop/winjs

Microsoft support using JS to develop desktop applications using web-tech as a first-class citizen.

Re: Building a more power-efficient browser

#30

They can start to compare themselves against Chrome when they are at least at feature parity with HTML5, CSS3, Ecmascript6, work cross-platform (not just on Microsoft-owned platforms), and have useable developer tools. I'm not sure I know of any professional web developers that don't view IE/Edge as an afterthought still. We build our applications in Chrome/FF, using Chrome/FF, and occasionally test to make sure the…

>when they are at least at feature parity with HTML5, CSS3, Ecmascript6

Edge 14 has 90% on kangax, putting it on par with current Firefox 48.

>work cross-platform (not just on Microsoft-owned platforms)

Valid concern.

>have useable developer tools

Have you tried them recently? They've made massive improvements.

>They are also missing something like Electron

UWP for Windows 8+, HTA for older platforms.

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