They could've chosen to go with Safari webkit. Since on the desktop it's pretty standards compliant. & it's pretty fast & power efficient too. But they chose Chromium, because they now own Electron. Also fuxk apple for having Safari on iOS being shitty, but good at protecting privacy
Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
191–200 of 304 posts
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is probably going to get a bit "rant-ey", it's not directed at you, but at the ecosystem at large (and kind of at myself). Everyone keeps saying this, but nobody is actually doing anything about it. People (myself included) talk about how a monoculture is bad, but we still don't use Edge. We talk about how more competition in the browser space is a good thing, but we still complain when the latest features or se…
> (i'm used to chrome, my information is in chrome, I'm used to the dev tools in chrome, and I personally and selfishly have no reason to switch to Edge, even if it's technically better) Yep, the same can be said for Firefox. There are hundreds of threads with hundreds of comments on places like Hacker News and Reddit and Ars Technica, all grousing about how Google is the behemoth that is taking over, Chrome is bloat…
It's also hard. Despite the complaints of Google dominance, Chrome is just a really good browser.
I tried to switch to Firefox Quantum earlier this year as my daily driver. I had some minor annoyances, but I ended up switching back to Chrome for the devtools.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't people follow standards-compliant HTML/CSS/JS and compile to the browser of their choice? How often does a standards-compliant site work on Chrome but not on Firefox, assuming that all the targeted features you want are there?
In reality, none of the browsers are quite standards compliant, and developers don’t know the standards by heart, so they often go with what works on their setup, which usually means Chrome.
Any self-respecting and experienced developer who is worth his salt writes his code towards the standards and not toward a browser. If one needs to adjust his code because it doesn't work in a particular browser, then he's adjusting for the browser, not the standard.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#194Whilst this basically declares the Browser wars over and crystalizes Chromium as the Web's browser engine it's reassuring it's in the hands of the company with infinite resources, talent and a vested interest in seeing the web platform succeed with Google benefiting when more people spend more time on the Web (essentially the business case in starting Chrome to push the web forward, quicker). The only rendering engine that stands a chance at competing against Chrome is Safari/WebKit (thanks to iOS) and Apple would rather see native iOS Apps succeed to re-enforce their walled garden they have complete control over.
So whilst it's a dark day for browser engine diversity, I don't see it as a blow against the Web overall (i.e. as a popular platform to develop for) as Google/Chrome is the driving force behind making Chromium more powerful to close the experience vs native Apps with initiatives like PWAs of which a side-effect is we'll be able to use new APIs sooner and increase web developer velocity by having 1 less browser engine we need to test against.
A lot of people see browser wars as a gauge for the health of the Web but I consider the biggest threat to the "open web" is native mobile Apps which needs to become more capable in order to be able to deliver the same integrated experiences. In that light I don't see the competition of more browser engines making the Web better. Chrome wasn't created in reaction to competition, it was created because there was none left with MS leaving IE6 (and the main interface into the Web) to wither and die. IMO competing browser engines are holding the Web back with not being able to use new APIs as they're available, needing to cater for the lowest common denominator and having to test and support against a matrix of different browser engines and versions.
It would be a different story if I thought Google would pull back investment in Chrome after they achieve total dominance, but I don't see that, their current strategy is winning where they benefit in a faster, stronger more popular Web and have been lifting the state of the art browser development since Chrome/V8's inception. Of course we now have to worry about Google thwarting the direction of Chromium to their benefit to the detriment of their users, the best way to minimize that is to have multiple collaborators committing to the Chromium project like MS Announces suggests they're doing. IMO it would be in Firefox's best interest to also switch to and collaborate on Chromium as well. Their market share is fading into irrelevance and after Edge/Chromium I see less developers investing their time to test on FF. I believe their efforts would be best spent on innovating on the browser's UI and function as I don't see how maintaining an alternative browser engine is a competitive advantage, IMO it's one of the reasons for their decline in market share. They should still be able to achieve their objectives the same way Vivaldi and Brave are doing with their added privacy protections in their Blink forks.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#195Earlier 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.
I can say wholeheartedly that it's Safari that's the problem, not Firefox or Chrome. I develop for Firefox first and have no issues with Chrome but Safari is requires some special tricks repeatedly.
I'm the same way. Firefox first, then Chrome. If it works on Firefox, it will work on Chrome (and least that has been my experience).
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#196Earlier 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?
Our team is staffed by engineers. We respond well to discussions of tradeoffs. If you'd like to present a proposal for writing parts of Chromium in Rust and speak in depth to the exact costs and benefits, we'd absolutely consider it. I know this because we _have_ been doing some of this consideration; a number of people on the team have floated the idea of using Rust for some parts of Chromium.
But a real plan to do this requires a great deal of thought and serious consideration about how you get from here to there, whether there are long-term engineering velocity costs, etc. You don't just say "Rust is more memory-safe" and let that phrase alone mean "so obviously you're a dinosaur if you don't switch to it".
Even Mozilla is taking a lot of time and effort to introduce Rust-based components to Firefox. Making big changes to enormous projects used by huge numbers of people is not something you do lightly.
Still, though, we'd happily consider it.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#197If 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…
Microsoft is trying to drive traffic to Bing (and their other services). The rendering engine doesn't actually matter. Microsoft could just bundle Chrome with Windows but instead they are specifically taking the Chromium engine and putting it in an Edge shell. The only reason for that is to maintain control over the user to drive them to Microsoft properties.
I'm sure they'd also prefer not to give a competitor too much influence and, for example, be able to make Google Docs work better than Office 365.
(Not saying that Google will necessarily do such a thing, but I think Microsoft would prefer them not even having the option.)
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#198If 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…
Remember when Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel?
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is probably going to get a bit "rant-ey", it's not directed at you, but at the ecosystem at large (and kind of at myself). Everyone keeps saying this, but nobody is actually doing anything about it. People (myself included) talk about how a monoculture is bad, but we still don't use Edge. We talk about how more competition in the browser space is a good thing, but we still complain when the latest features or se…
> (i'm used to chrome, my information is in chrome, I'm used to the dev tools in chrome, and I personally and selfishly have no reason to switch to Edge, even if it's technically better) Yep, the same can be said for Firefox. There are hundreds of threads with hundreds of comments on places like Hacker News and Reddit and Ars Technica, all grousing about how Google is the behemoth that is taking over, Chrome is bloat…
Chromium is open-source too, so if there's problems with it, our hope is that people come contribute and fix them.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 tha…
So whether the Web can run on Rust-based parallel engine components should be beholden to the reporting structure at Google? Let's be clear: that is the future you are advocating.
Is Microsoft not capable of adding whatever they like to Chromium? I don't understand.