This bit is probably the most interesting to me:
> We also expect this work to enable us to bring Microsoft Edge to other platforms like macOS.
Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
211–220 of 304 posts
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#212I'm still shocked that they went the Chromium route here. This would have been their chance to really, well, for lack of a better way of putting it: stick it to Google [0] I think it would have been far, far more impressive to use Quantum ( https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum ) or WebKit ( https://webkit.org ), with the added benefit that nw.js is already up and going for the Webkit engine (and likely would have suffice…
With a strong Microsoft voice on the Chromium project, it will probably act as a counter to the Google voice. And Quantum and WebKit are nowhere close to Chromium, they're picky to a fault about HTML and CSS, it's just annoying to develop for them. Nobody is competing on browser market share any more, that's a lost cause. With so much traffic going to mobile and apps now, it just doesn't make sense to be re-inventing…
Google forked Blink off of WebKit because they couldn't dictate the pace. I highly doubt that Microsoft is going to have much of a voice in the matter.
I imagine they'll appreciate Microsoft essentially making Chrome work better within Windows, but that's about it. They'll accept pull requests, but doubt they'll give up much of anything in the way of control.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#213What 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?
As impressive as chakra is, V8 is the same in contrast to edgehtml to blink, they don't see the value of fragmenting support, and V8 really is getting very powerful, a blink+chakra browser would likely be more of a nightmare to developers
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
There are occasional inconsistencies. Just this week I fixed a small styling issue that differed between Firefox and Chrome.
I develop for Firefox first as well.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#215What 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?
It's hard to glean technical details from the post, but "We will move to a Chromium-compatible web platform for Microsoft Edge on the desktop" indicates to me that this will be Edge based on Blink, not the full Chromium shell renamed/rewritten to be Edge. Hard to tell though
Or it could be the other way around: a Chromium shell still calling EdgeHTML render processes?
It's really not clear in this blog post. What does "Chromium-compatible web platform" mean? Which part of Chromium is the "platform" in question? This blog post doesn't have enough answers.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#216Earlier 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.
Your comment isn't too far away from accusing GP of shilling. I think probably it would be more productive to discuss any of the points he made about platform complexity or technology homo/heteroculture without going full Mozilla v. Google here.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 get that Microsoft is trying to reinvent itself, but at the core they are (were?) a software development company. It kind of looks bad when you throw your hands up and say “this is just too complicated, we’ll replace it with an OSS component”. Don’t get me wrong, there is no love lost for IE or Edge from me, I’m just baffled at this move.
I think it speaks of a maturity not common to this industry. Pick your battles and battlefields (mutables) after considering resources and the environment (immutables). Conceding Edge will doubtless let them divert focus and resources to areas that are of greater strategic value.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#218Earlier 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 created an internal application for our company to use that is essentially a directory of staff members. I do most my development in Chrome but the bulk of the users are on iOS (Safari). I always find little nuances that I need to tweak for things to be "just right" on Safari. One example is that in all other browsers (including Safari Desktop) a will show a little clear button ("X") at the end of the input. Some bug removed it from iOS Safari and we're still waiting for them to resolve the issue. It was reported in 2016 and was acknowledged by Apple [1]...
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35583503/input-type-sear...
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to glean technical details from the post, but "We will move to a Chromium-compatible web platform for Microsoft Edge on the desktop" indicates to me that this will be Edge based on Blink, not the full Chromium shell renamed/rewritten to be Edge. Hard to tell though
Or it could be the other way around: a Chromium shell still calling EdgeHTML render processes? It's really not clear in this blog post. What does "Chromium-compatible web platform" mean? Which part of Chromium is the "platform" in question? This blog post doesn't have enough answers.
Pointed out in other threads, the GitHub README has more details: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdge
I still feel like I've got a ton of questions left unanswered, but the README helps.
Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration
#220Earlier 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.
I stand corrected--this is exactly what they're going to do. Take Win32 Chromium, rename it Edge, and build it for Win7, 8, and 10. What a huge blow to everyone at MS who believes in UWP. https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128648/microsoft-edge-c...
> What a huge blow to everyone at MS who believes in UWP.
That may be so, but is there anyone outside of MS who believes in UWP? Not even stalwart MS exclusive devs seem to do so.