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Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#91

Post by idle_zealot »

danpalmer wrote: post #46
tombert wrote: post #22

I'm assuming I'm not the only one who's afraid of Blink becoming the new Internet Explorer; instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible. It's still better because Chromium is open-source, but I do worry that we're going to have a problem in the future with a lot of broken sites (YTMND-style).

> I'm assuming I'm not the only one who's afraid of Blink becoming the new Internet Explorer; instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible. This is already the norm. I use Safari and find many sites have issues. Before that I used Firefox and many sites had issues. Typically the JS works, but styling often looks different (and worse) on Safari and Firefox.

I run into the cause of this issue quite a bit when writing styling. The fact is that each major browser veers from the spec in its own unique ways, so if you're testing your page in a single browser (usually Chrome, though personally I use FF) the styling will often end up working differently in other browsers. As of now, the only real solution is to pick a set of "supported browsers" and to test your page in each of them before publishing, tweaking your styles to work around each engine's quirks. The problem with a browser monoculture is that it encourages developers to only test against the dominant platform, forcing competitors to be bug-compatible in order to provide a non-broken experience. The advantage is that a true and reliable standard would emerge, making developers' lives easier. Of course, the optimal solution would be for browsers to properly conform to the existing standards so that testing across browsers wouldn't be necessary in the first place, as any deviations would be a bug that would hopefully be fixed before too long.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#92

Post by scotchio »

Some people are saying this is not good for competition.

I see it as a positive for keeping Google in check.

Chrome's marketshare is insane. Google could autoupdate Chrome overnight push out some wild update like requiring you to sign in to use their browser or something else like default rendering everything to AMP wrappers for example... who knows / tinfoil hat time.

Now there's a solid and non-disruptive quick switch default that is already installed (sorry FF, Brave) on Windows machines similar to what Apple has with Safari.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#93

Post by dazhbog »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #55
dazhbog wrote: post #6

I hope this move changes the hostile amount of google services that are baked into Chrome and Chromium. Not saying MS is any better, but at least there will be more choices for users and where before everything was hardcoded, now there will be an option to select and potentially expose more customization for us morals.

Which Google services are baked into Chromium?

There are several services and binaries. Some examples are Google host detector, Google URL tracker, Google cloud messaging, Google hotwording, Safe browsing, password saving feature naggs you to sign-in, translation etc. There are also a lot of binaries that are bundled, but im not really an expert on those.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#94

Post by weberc2 »

azinman2 wrote: post #80
danpalmer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm assuming I'm not the only one who's afraid of Blink becoming the new Internet Explorer; instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible. This is already the norm. I use Safari and find many sites have issues. Before that I used Firefox and many sites had issues. Typically the JS works, but styling often looks different (and worse) on Safari and Firefox.

Do you have examples? I use Safari and don’t find this to be true. Given Safari is what people use in iOS, id expect this to be rarely the case (most sites will test on an iPhone).

Same here; I don't know if I've ever seen a site that works in Chrome but not Safari (I don't doubt they exist, I just don't tend to come across them).

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#95

Post by oconnor663 »

egeozcan wrote: post #13

If Microsoft knew that Edge in its current state is inferior, why did they try so hard to make every windows user switch to it? I mean there was this "startup growth hacking" kind of craziness from a corporation and sudden admittance of defeat... It's very confusing. Edit: We all know why they want everyone to switch don't we, but think about all the now admittedly false marketing! It's not like they stopped the aggr…

Big companies have lots of stakeholders. The person whose job it is to grow Edge's user numbers isn't the person whose job it is to make the call on the rendering engine. I don't know if their interests really conflict in this case, but in general it wouldn't be surprising if those two people/orgs sent mixed messages sometimes.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#96

Post by munificent »

tombert wrote: post #22

I'm assuming I'm not the only one who's afraid of Blink becoming the new Internet Explorer; instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible. It's still better because Chromium is open-source, but I do worry that we're going to have a problem in the future with a lot of broken sites (YTMND-style).

I think the bad state to be in is:

* There is a number of implementations of the same platform.

* Those implementations are competing and the market encourages them to be in-compatible with each other.

You can avoid that bad state by having an explicit standard and applying pressure on all implementations to meet that standard. It usually comes at the expense of slower innovation.

But another viable way to avoid that bad state is to simply not have competing implementations. A single canonical implementation also solves the problem of ensuring all users get a compatible experience. It can come at the expense of evolving in a way that doesn't meet user needs because there isn't a competitive incentive to win users.

I don't think there are perfect solutions, but I also don't think it's the end of the world if this becomes a monoculture. There are tons of "platforms" that are effectively mono-cultures and seem to be OK. Every rechargeable tool company has its own battery pack form factor. Up until recently, each laptop company had a different port for the AC adapter.

What I think this is really showing is that the market size of the web is shrinking relative to the size of the browser standards. Mobile apps have eaten up so much user share and HTML+CSS+JS+etc. has gotten so big and complex that the desktop web market can't effectively support multiple independent browser implementations any more. It's just too much work for too little return.

There's maybe an interesting lesson here in not letting your platform get too complex. New features are always nice, but they have a cost. If you pile on too many of them, you may undermine your platform's ability to support multiple independent implementations.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#97

Post by mrpippy »

pilif wrote: post #86
mrpippy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I see zero chance that Edge will suddenly be ported back to Windows 7. And it would be almost as big of a shock if the Chromium-based Edge is not UWP.

The blog post says it's coming to all supported versions of windows. Until 2020, that includes Windows 7 and 8

In this case, I think "supported" means what Microsoft calls "Mainstream Support" (1). Windows 7 and 8.1 are both in "Extended Support", which only gets security updates.

Mainstream support for Win7 ended in 2015, for Win8.1 in January 2018. The only mainstream supported versions of Windows are various Windows 10 editions.

(1) https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14085/microsoft-bus...

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#98

Post by delfinom »

burtonator wrote: post #87

A lot of you guys are lamenting this decision. I'm insanely excited about it! I've been working on a new reader and documentation manager for PDF and cached web content: https://getpolarized.io/ It's based on Electron and targets Chromium. What I'm hoping happens here is that this means more focus on Chromium and potentially more work on Electron + Carlo. Electron is amazing but it's pretty bloated per app. If it's m…

The problem is versioning. Chromium jumps major versions in releases very very often. This often includes security updates. Microsoft isn't going to keep old versions of the browser around nor are apps totally not going to break when the chromium version gets a bump.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#100

Post by birdman3131 »

azinman2 wrote: post #80
danpalmer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm assuming I'm not the only one who's afraid of Blink becoming the new Internet Explorer; instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible. This is already the norm. I use Safari and find many sites have issues. Before that I used Firefox and many sites had issues. Typically the JS works, but styling often looks different (and worse) on Safari and Firefox.

Do you have examples? I use Safari and don’t find this to be true. Given Safari is what people use in iOS, id expect this to be rarely the case (most sites will test on an iPhone).

But if they are testing on iphone they are probably writing it as a mobile page which usually suck anyways.
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