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Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#181

Post by notatoad »

alanfranzoni wrote: post #11

What I find a bit curious is that's a fully Chromium based browser, it's not simply based on the Blink rendering engine. So, it will be much closer (probably) to Chromium/Chrome than other blink-based browsers like Brave or Opera. I'd really like to understand the rationale behind this choice. What they'd like to leverage from Chromium that Blink alone wouldn't have?

Opera and Brave are both chromium-based, rather than just using the blink engine. The official webdriver plugin for opera [1], published by opera, refers to their browser as "chromium based". The brave browser [2] is open source and you can see it syncs from Chromium

[1] https://github.com/operasoftware/operachromiumdriver

[2] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#182

Post by sureaboutthis »

Yoric wrote: post #163
simonsarris wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible The browser vendors taking the lead over standards committees is how we got this far into HTML5, especially including Apple's/Safari's decision to ditch flash, and the WHATWG actually moving us forward vs the W3C. Unless Blink has a history or an expectation of deprecating serious functionality in the future, is it really so bad if…

This is a good question. Let me give you an example. Let's imagine for instance that Google develops something called "Google Pay". Let's now imagine that WHATWG works on something called "WebPay". In a multiple-engines world, there would be pressure for Blink to support (and keep supporting) most major credit cards & payment mechanisms to let users pay using WebPay. In a single-engine world, one single manager at Go…

Let's not get confused. Blink is a rendering engine and not an API server.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#184

Post by vatueil »

negativegate wrote: post #19
MikusR wrote: post #2

In short. Edge engine is dead. Based on Chromium. Not an UWP. Will be on Windows 7 and Mac.

I didn't see any mention of Windows 7 or that it won't be a UWP on Windows, are there more details somewhere?

The GitHub readme is more explicit:

https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdge

> We will evolve the Microsoft Edge app architecture, enabling distribution to all supported versions of Windows including Windows 7 and Windows 8, as well as Windows 10. We will also bring Microsoft Edge to other desktop platforms, such as macOS.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#185

Post by zuzun »

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).

In my experience it's easy to brick Safari and other WebKit-based browsers with CSS animations that run at 60fps and <10% CPU on Chromium and Firefox.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#186

Post by fbelzile »

vezycash wrote: post #177

When Microsoft released Edge, they claimed bugs plagued IE because they couldn't update IE without OS updates. Edge as a "store app" would receive frequent updates, independent of Windows OS updates. They ended up tying Edge to Windows. And kept promising but never delivered. Instead of small frequent browser updates, we got large frequent OS updates. Maybe now that Edge's dead, they'll slow down the frequency of Win…

> MS also decided to tie Edge extension to the Windows store.

I think this was a big mistake. I hope they mirror what Google is doing with the Chrome store. As a developer, I had to: 1) Port my Chrome extension into a UWP app 2) Embed another win32 exe to read/write SQLite databases because UWP don't do that. 3) Pay $100 to open a developer account 4) After compiling the extension, reading blogs to figure out how to even upload the correct files 5) Have Microsoft deny my extension because it required special permissions (the win32 exe) 6) Still no extension uploaded.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#188

Post by sureaboutthis »

pcwalton wrote: post #174
holtalanm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but if Microsoft is moving to Blink, wouldn't they, as well, have (as you say) influence on the project? What, really, is a downside to having an open-source web engine that all browsers use? I'm failing to see one. The web would become less fragmented; the web standard would be (only slightly) irrelevant, and we would move forward without having to deal with browsers interpreting the spec/standard differently, which…

How do I convince Chromium to adopt parallel engine components written in Rust, in this world? They won't do it, because the entire team at Google is staffed by C++ folks. How is that a better outcome?

The same way you would convince any other browser vendor to do the same thing. Good luck with that. But let's not forget that Firefox, Opera, et al, are not going away and no one is forcing you to use Chrome or chromium and there probably won't be any real downside either.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#189

Post by lowkeyokay »

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).

I have seen this many times during development. Noteworthy sites that cause problems are, well, Microsoft sites: portal.azure.com - problems downloading publish profiles. SharePoint - too many to mention

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#190

Post by vatueil »

There's a new GitHub repository for Microsoft Edge:

https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdge

The readme goes into more detail than the blog post announcement, including emphasis on Windows on ARM, information about WebRTC for UWP, and explicit confirmation that they plan to bring Edge to Windows 7 and 8 as well as macOS.

Also, looks like they're using the MIT license.

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