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Goodbye, EdgeHTML

blog.mozilla.org

481–490 of 679 posts

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think it's actually two different things: I don't feel bad at all seeing IE/Edge coming to an end. It was a closed, non free, single-platform browser, who gave a lot of people a lot of headaches during the last 20 years. On the other hand, I'm worried by the fact that Google browser market share continues to grow.

Honest question, what has Edge/IE actually contributed to the web in the past decade? I understand that having one less engine is not preferable, but realistically, it always felt like they were dragging behind struggling to keep up, while Apple, Google and Mozilla kept forging ahead. By using Blink, maybe they can spend more time actually contributing to the spec and having an independent voice elsewhere?

Grid layout is the big one, but there are plenty of smaller examples.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#482
I use Firefox but I disagree with them that MS switching to chrome is a bad thing.

It eliminates from the equation a browser implementation that never really was that popular and at best sort of did what other browsers did without actually doing much different.

You have to ask what the point for MS would be to continue to fund that. It wasn't buying them much positive differentiation. They had a little, mainly in the form of some performance benefits. But mostly people ended up using Chrome or Firefox, even on Windows 10. Mostly it was differentiating negatively for them in the sense that it had its own sets of unintentional compatibility bugs that most web developers did not prioritize working around.

Several years into the windows 10, it's been largely a success for MS. Edge is the exception however. They made a few strategic mistakes with it (still under Balmer), the primary one being to make it windows 10 only. This made some sense when the plan still was windows 10 on every device but that went out of the window when Satya Nadella unceremoniously killed off windows phone. So while windows did well, Edge did not. Worse, MS now had to support pretty much everything they did on Android, IOS, and Mac OS as well. So, having their own browser engine just made that more complicated for them without offering any benefit. Porting it to other platforms would have been a serious investment, without any clear benefits or a path to success.

Arguably, already at the time you could have questioned the logic of putting vast resources into duplicating the efforts of several open source browser engines with the explicit goal to do exactly the same functionally. IMHO it was largely the not invented here syndrome that drove Balmer/MS to do this. The new found pragmatism under Nadella produces different decisions. So, they keep the UI but they swap out the internals for of the shelf OSS that works perfectly fine. Happy users, happy developers, less cost. Not the hardest decision he's had to take I imagine.

As to Firefox, they have an ongoing project to re-implement their engine in Rust that is producing clear benefits in addressing pain points in their old implementation that are also common to other C++ based implementations. They've been doing a great job staying on top of web standards and are a good contributor to them, often pioneering features such as wasm or webauthn in Firefox first. So, their implementation and focus on privacy adds value and they have lots of users that appreciate what they do and how they do it.

I get their frustration that Google is gaining more power here where MS used to provide some independent voice in e.g. standards committees. But lets be fair here, MS wasn't doing a whole lot on that front and was basically just struggling to keep up without adding much value. Few web developers will mourn the need of having to deal with Edge specific rendering issues. Most users won't be able tell the difference. And having MS scrutinize what Google does with Chromium and kicking their ass in the standards bodies might help in keeping them honest.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#483
Browser Civil War in 3-5 years?

Microsoft as a big enterprise will likely push their charm to improve things in chromium. And Google as another big enterprise with good control over chromium till now will proably not like all their changes. So how good is the chance for some friction and later an open conflict of interessts to appear?

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#484
post #480

Some thoughts.. Chrome Dev tools are way better Firefox Ui looks like 2008. Firefox would win more if it continuesd to support unity. Problem with Firefox is that it sticks to standards too much whereas others experiment and get cool features which then become part of standards and then finally Firefox gets them.. meaning in last. Bookmark manager sucks File menu and other menus are clunky They need to redo their log…

Firefox Dev tools are better for some things. Things like debugging webgl (you can live edit shaders!) But I find the UI and icon design difficult to use.

How many people live edit shaders tho

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the nightly builds and I definitely do not have that problem with around 750 tabs open on my non-retina MacBook Pro. It does suck down memory though.

Which doesn't change anything since the Macbook Pro has been sold with Retina displays for what, the last 6 years? The fact that Firefox works exclusively on ancient laptops or edge cases doesn't make anything better. All Apple devices today are sold with Retina screens and the Pro Lineup, and therefore most devs has had Retina screens for 6+ years.

Sure, it's a mid-2012 MBP with the "high res" matte screen. A six year old machine is hardly an edge case in the context of a problem you've been seeing for at least five years. I've not had problems with FF performance on the handful of retina machines I've used for work either.

If the Mozilla devs aren't paying attention to and haven't remedied the problem you're experiencing, perhaps you're the edge case?

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the nightly builds and I definitely do not have that problem with around 750 tabs open on my non-retina MacBook Pro. It does suck down memory though.

Which doesn't change anything since the Macbook Pro has been sold with Retina displays for what, the last 6 years? The fact that Firefox works exclusively on ancient laptops or edge cases doesn't make anything better. All Apple devices today are sold with Retina screens and the Pro Lineup, and therefore most devs has had Retina screens for 6+ years.

I have a colleague whose Mac has the same issue as you (2015 MBP 15" Retina). Chrome runs awesome for him, Firefox crawls. However, I have the same model and for me Firefox is as snappy as anything. You're right that this needs to be fixed, but its lame to assume that Firefox devs do not test on Macs. You're simply experiencing a bug that is hard to reproduce, that is all.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which doesn't change anything since the Macbook Pro has been sold with Retina displays for what, the last 6 years? The fact that Firefox works exclusively on ancient laptops or edge cases doesn't make anything better. All Apple devices today are sold with Retina screens and the Pro Lineup, and therefore most devs has had Retina screens for 6+ years.

Sure, it's a mid-2012 MBP with the "high res" matte screen. A six year old machine is hardly an edge case in the context of a problem you've been seeing for at least five years. I've not had problems with FF performance on the handful of retina machines I've used for work either. If the Mozilla devs aren't paying attention to and haven't remedied the problem you're experiencing, perhaps you're the edge case?

What?

I just wrote that their support subreddit is filled with posts about performance on OSX, this thread in itself already has loads of posts with people complaining about it, and my post just is getting lots of upvotes - how is that an edge case? Also all Firefox threads on Hackernews has these posts, every single one.

As i said before i have been following this for years. You having a 2012 computer is 100% the edge case - not that there is anything wrong in that, i love keeping tech for as long as possible.

Re: Goodbye, EdgeHTML

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't the case. Chrome supports multiple profiles. Mozilla's Multi-Account Container tabs isn't multiple profits. It is multiple isolated containers running under the same profile, in the same browser window. A closer analogy would be if Chrome allowed each tab to have its own profile, rather than each window, and for each one to be lighter weight than a full profile.

Your sibling comment pointed out the same thing. Other than having 2 tabs in the same window with 2 different sets of cookies, which is something I never want (but you might), is there anything Firefox's feature gets me that Chrome's feature doesn't?

Beyond minimizing being tracked everywhere you browse, separate environments for office, personal, and client accounts — Google, Fb, IG, LinkedIn, Twitter, PayPal, banks, brokers — are useful in many cases.

daveFNbuck writes [0]:

“They're also great for development. I have different containers for each user I use while working on logged-in flows. I can just go from tab to tab to test different user experiences or switch between users in a multi-user interaction.”

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18625491

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