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Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher

#141

Post by jeffdavis »

yesimahuman wrote: post #138
mixedbit wrote: post #59

Edge is a good browser, people seem to default to criticizing it because of its infamous predecessor. We should root for Edge, it is in the open Web best interest to have several browsers sharing the market.

I agree that it's good to have multiple browser _products_, but why is it better that MSFT has its own engine instead of investing in OSS ones like webkit/blink? This is the same question I have for Firefox. They can still achieve their privacy goals without having to invest in and maintain a separate engine. Is having a unique engine really all that beneficial in the long run?

There should be some freedom to render the same page in different ways. Lynx is an extreme version, but there is lots of room to consider different platforms, environments, input devices and users.

Re: Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher

#142

Post by mintplant »

yesimahuman wrote: post #138
mixedbit wrote: post #59

Edge is a good browser, people seem to default to criticizing it because of its infamous predecessor. We should root for Edge, it is in the open Web best interest to have several browsers sharing the market.

I agree that it's good to have multiple browser _products_, but why is it better that MSFT has its own engine instead of investing in OSS ones like webkit/blink? This is the same question I have for Firefox. They can still achieve their privacy goals without having to invest in and maintain a separate engine. Is having a unique engine really all that beneficial in the long run?

- Because that would leave Google with near-total power to drive the evolution of the web, via their control of Blink's development.

- Gecko was around before either of WebKit or Blink, so targeting this toward Firefox is getting history backward.

Re: Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher

#143

Post by Santosh83 »

richard_todd wrote: post #86
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is Edge for Windows. It's called Edge. Windows 10, is believe it or not, Windows. Any computer running Windows 7 or 8.1 can still (yes, it can) be upgraded to Windows 10 for free. So the only Windows PCs which cannot run Edge were those manufactured prior to 2009. Contrary to popular belief, there is no good reason to be running Windows 7 or 8.1. All of the telemetry anti-features were backported into those ver…

How does the free upgrade happen these days? I thought that was over in 2016? If it is still available somehow I have some machines I would upgrade.

If you use assistive technologies, you can still upgrade for free [1]. In practise this allows anyone to upgrade as it doesn't seem to particularly test for active use of an assistive technology.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/accessibility/windows10upgra...

Re: Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher

#144

Post by yesimahuman »

mintplant wrote: post #142
yesimahuman wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's good to have multiple browser _products_, but why is it better that MSFT has its own engine instead of investing in OSS ones like webkit/blink? This is the same question I have for Firefox. They can still achieve their privacy goals without having to invest in and maintain a separate engine. Is having a unique engine really all that beneficial in the long run?

- Because that would leave Google with near-total power to drive the evolution of the web, via their control of Blink's development. - Gecko was around before either of WebKit or Blink, so targeting this toward Firefox is getting history backward.

1) They could fork it, adopt standardized changes, but continue to innovate on it if they like

2) That wasn't my point. WebKit derivatives clearly won. Does Firefox even need to also own an engine when their goals seem to be entirely around the browser product?

Re: Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher

#145

Post by s73ver_ »

jeffdavis wrote: post #141
yesimahuman wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's good to have multiple browser _products_, but why is it better that MSFT has its own engine instead of investing in OSS ones like webkit/blink? This is the same question I have for Firefox. They can still achieve their privacy goals without having to invest in and maintain a separate engine. Is having a unique engine really all that beneficial in the long run?

There should be some freedom to render the same page in different ways. Lynx is an extreme version, but there is lots of room to consider different platforms, environments, input devices and users.

Why? When I design a page, I know what I want it to look like. I don't want to have to waste a bunch of my time in compatibility hacks to get around crap that they do different.

Re: Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher

#146

Post by jeffdavis »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #122
mixedbit wrote: post #59

Edge is a good browser, people seem to default to criticizing it because of its infamous predecessor. We should root for Edge, it is in the open Web best interest to have several browsers sharing the market.

Or we should shun it, so that if anyone else decides to use their monopoly power to try to destroy the web, they know the consequences will be long lasting.

We shun a browser, some other company sees that, and decides not to become a monopoly? Sounds implausible.

MSFT has new leadership and is cooperating much with open platforms more than ever before. Let's encourage that.

Re: Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher

#147

Post by CaptSpify »

s73ver_ wrote: post #145
jeffdavis wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be some freedom to render the same page in different ways. Lynx is an extreme version, but there is lots of room to consider different platforms, environments, input devices and users.

Why? When I design a page, I know what I want it to look like. I don't want to have to waste a bunch of my time in compatibility hacks to get around crap that they do different.

I always thought we had this backwards. We should abandon sending the UA altogether and design pages according to the standards. If a browser doesn't render then correctly, then tell the browser to fix their shit.

I realize that nowadays this isn't as simple as that, but if we had started along that path, things would be much better now.

Re: Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher

#148

Post by CaptSpify »

jeffdavis wrote: post #146
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we should shun it, so that if anyone else decides to use their monopoly power to try to destroy the web, they know the consequences will be long lasting.

We shun a browser, some other company sees that, and decides not to become a monopoly? Sounds implausible. MSFT has new leadership and is cooperating much with open platforms more than ever before. Let's encourage that.

Lets encourage that if it is due. It looks like Edge is still proprietary. If they opened it up, I'd give it a shot. As it is still closed off, I'm personally not interested.

Re: Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher

#149

Post by mintplant »

yesimahuman wrote: post #144
mintplant wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Because that would leave Google with near-total power to drive the evolution of the web, via their control of Blink's development. - Gecko was around before either of WebKit or Blink, so targeting this toward Firefox is getting history backward.

1) They could fork it, adopt standardized changes, but continue to innovate on it if they like 2) That wasn't my point. WebKit derivatives clearly won. Does Firefox even need to also own an engine when their goals seem to be entirely around the browser product ?

A fork that tracked Blink upstream would still leave Google with control over the direction of development. A fork that diverged from Blink would end up equivalent to an independently-developed engine.

Adopting Blink would, furthermore, impose a set of design and architectural constraints not necessarily in line with Firefox's priorities as a project. With Gecko they're investing in parallelism and pulling in more and more components from Rust/Servo, for example.

Firefox has been something of an underdog from its inception, releasing at a time when IE had already "won". Chrome taking that spot won't make Mozilla scrap everything and start over—this is familiar territory.

Of course, this is all ignoring the absolute upheaval and loss of momentum a total rewrite on top of Blink would wreak on Firefox as a project.

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