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Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

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Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#261

Post by rhencke »

pcwalton wrote: post #251
devwastaken wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox's internal code is a dumpster fire. I say that in the nicest way possible. Look at their 'jsapi' mailing list, they just break compatibility at will and don't properly version things. It doesn't have the same features v8 has with regards to isolation. I'm not sure if quantum is actually all that different from pre-57 minus servo, however servo isn't magic, and only a small portion of that is really rust. Over…

V8's API is also highly unstable.

So much so that the Node developers now maintain a separate project dedicated to providing a stable wrapper API around it, now dubbed N-API:

https://github.com/nodejs/abi-stable-node

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#262

Post by Phillips126 »

dak1 wrote: post #244
Phillips126 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

There's nothing in the spec that promises you a little "x" to clear the value: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/in... Chrome also frequently attempts to cover up incorrect code with what it thinks the author probably meant. Firefox tends to be much better than Chrome at following the actual spec. I tend to develop primarily with Chrome first for some different reasons (ability to disable CORS…

Fair enough about it not being in the spec. It does appear to be a part of Apples' "Human Interface Guidelines"[1], although these guidelines are pointed to native applications. It was just an unexpected regression that occurred during the rollout of iOS9 and is an example of one of the little nuances that caused me to do something different. I've had some other issues regarding scrolling and focus, but this one seemed to be easier to talk about.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#263

Post by ksec »

zuzun wrote: post #185
azinman2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I really wish Webkit, or may be Safari improve on this.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#264

Post by ksec »

threatofrain wrote: post #146
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).

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?

I am starting to think we need an additional layer that compiles to HTML and CSS, and guarantee to work across all the browsers.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#265

Post by VoxPelli »

gsnedders wrote: post #235
ash_gti wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Opera is a re-skinned Chrome.

I mean it's re-skinned in the same way as Samsung Internet and I believe Edge will be: a totally different browser UI implementation around the same browser engine.

Samsung Internet has their own implementations of quite a few web standards - calling it a reskin isn’t very accurate

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#266

Post by danmaz74 »

pcwalton wrote: post #247
pkasting wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In late 2018, using Rust is a lot more serious of a proposal. But, in practice, I don't think the case for Rust in the browser would be nearly as compelling if we hadn't shown that it can be done. That's one strong reason for browser engine diversity: different engines can try different things. I think it's fair to say that a Rust proposal would have been dead-on-arrival a couple of years ago. It'd be seen as far too…

A very nice property of open source software is that you can fork it, "show that it can be done" without having to start from scratch, and if the results are provably better, get your approach adopted.

The trickiest part is the proving that the different approach technology is enough better to warrant a switch. Very often, new approaches don't live up to expectations (not saying this is the case for the tech you're talking about).

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#268

Post by AsyncAwait »

mevile wrote: post #129
sprash wrote: post #107

Funny that minor side project of KDE is now responsible for the vast majority of today's Internet traffic. Did the original authors of KHTML ever receive a single dime for their work?

> Did the original authors of KHTML ever receive a single dime for their work? Why would they? That's not how open source works. If the KDE devs that made Konqueror wanted to capture value or do it for monetary gain they would have made a closed source browser and I doubt Apple would have then picked it to build WebKit. Apple is what made WebKit predominant, the KDE devs simply did a great job and should be very prou…

> Why would they? That's not how open source works. If the KDE devs that made Konqueror wanted to capture value or do it for monetary gain they would have made a closed source browser

Making something open-source does not mean you don't want to make money off it.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#269

Post by GordonS »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #228
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…

> f Microsoft knew that Edge in its current state is inferior, why did they try so hard to make every windows user switch to it? Because it's not inferior in all ways? Edge has far better support for anything touch (Firefox and Chrome as still awful in this respect) and the battery life using Edge is far better than any of the other browsers. I'm always forced to use Edge at times because of how much better those asp…

I agree with this. Edge isn't really inferior in terms of capabilities - the problem is market share, and Microsoft simply has no answer to Chrome on this.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#270

Post by dragonwriter »

Yoric wrote: post #229
tree_of_item wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Microsoft not capable of adding whatever they like to Chromium? I don't understand.

Why would they be? The owner of the repo is Google. Google gets last word on anything Microsoft wants to include in Chromium/Edge.

> The owner of the repo is Google

That has no impact on what MS can do downstream as long as it's an open license.

If Microsoft, or Opera, or anyone else downstream wants to pull out parts of Chromium and replace them with Rust components (including a parallel renderer), they are free to do so. It increases their maintenance cost to maintain the unique components, but so would maintaining a whole separate from-scratch project instead of being downstream.

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