Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#291

Post by bad_user » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:06 AM UTC

holtalanm wrote: post #166

bad_user wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if Microsoft is moving to Blink, wouldn't they, as well, have (as you say) influence on the project? No. 1. Chrome will remain the dominant web browser 2. the Chromium repository itself is owned by Google The only leverage Microsoft is in forking Chromium, but that does nothing to Chrome's market. Google themselves forked WebKit when they couldn't get along with Apple. And that was back when Chrome wasn't as pe…

well, if you look at it now, webkit is BY FAR not the dominant engine. So, by your own logic, if Microsoft ends up in a disagreement with Google about the direction of chromium, whats to stop them from just forking it and becoming the new dominant engine? Chrome will only remain the dominant web browser as long as its users view it as worth the hassle. If Edge is built upon chromium in the future, I'm not going to si…

No, by my own logic Microsoft cannot win in case of a fork, because Microsoft is superficial in pumping resources into browsers, as history is showing us ever since IExplorer 6.

Them switching to Chromium is essentially admitting defeat and inability in building a modern browser.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#292

Post by danpalmer » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:15 AM UTC

drenvuk wrote: post #152

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.

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 not saying that Safari is correct, just that developers often already develop for just Chrome.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#293

Post by fetbaffe » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 11:55 AM UTC

My problem with Edge is not the rendering engine, it is the application it self, it is clunky & buggy, after a while with multiple application windows with multiple tabs, shortcut keys just stop working in some windows & some windows just freezes for a while.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#294

Post by domenukk » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 1:12 PM UTC

ynx wrote: post #157

no_wizard wrote: post #118

I'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…

Google does an insane amount of very deep work all the ways down to the compiler level getting Chromium compiling on Windows and compiling on different architectures. These teams are very well staffed. It makes strategic sense to go with Chromium if they're aiming for ARM64 support if they can get a huge amount of work for free directly (as opposed to incidentally) from Google to support clang on Windows – which is a…

As opposed to Quantum? https://www.techrepublic.com/article/mozilla-and-qualcomm-un...

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#295

Post by alanh » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #118

I'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…

Shocked? Really? Everyone seems to be choosing a Chromium base lately, including Opera and Brave.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#296

Post by bunnycorn » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 3:15 PM UTC

Klover wrote: post #254

bunnycorn wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebKit is the dominant engine because it's what powers Webviews on Android.

Not since android.. 6? It defaults to the chrome browser. You can choose the other chrome browsers too (beta dev canary if installed, via the developer settings) and the web view might actually also be chrome. WebKit on android is from ages ago.

Im not talking about default web browsers.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#297

Post by forgot-my-pw » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

devwastaken wrote: post #179

no_wizard wrote: post #118

I'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…

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…

I'm pretty sure Microsoft has done their homework and evaluated the performance, portability, code base, etc. It is a big change after all, and they probably have carefully planned it.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#298

Post by oaiey » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 8:41 PM UTC

I think Microsoft made already a deal with Google about the control of chromium. It would be endless naive otherwise.

Do not forget that this is a full development stack within Windows. UWP has a JavaScript/HTML runtime and Microsoft's recent pwa visions both need to earn money.

My bet is that Google will announce in the next weeks or at the next io a foundation for dealing with chromium. The only thing which itches me with that a bit is ChromeOS. But maybe that is more a plugin thingy.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#299

Post by wubin » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 9:49 PM UTC

bunnycorn wrote: post #208

holtalanm wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, if you look at it now, webkit is BY FAR not the dominant engine. So, by your own logic, if Microsoft ends up in a disagreement with Google about the direction of chromium, whats to stop them from just forking it and becoming the new dominant engine? Chrome will only remain the dominant web browser as long as its users view it as worth the hassle. If Edge is built upon chromium in the future, I'm not going to si…

WebKit is the dominant engine because it's what powers Webviews on Android.

> Since Android 4.4 (KitKat), the WebView component is based on the Chromium open source project. (...) Webviews also share the same rendering engine as Chrome for Android. [0]

KitKat was released in 2013[1] as well as Blink in the same year[2].

Apart from Blink being a WebKit fork, WebKit itself is not "the dominant engine" anymore at least since 2014.

[0]: https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/webview/overview

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine)

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#300

Post by Klover » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 11:51 PM UTC

bunnycorn wrote: post #296

Klover wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not since android.. 6? It defaults to the chrome browser. You can choose the other chrome browsers too (beta dev canary if installed, via the developer settings) and the web view might actually also be chrome. WebKit on android is from ages ago.

Im not talking about default web browsers.

I wasn't either!

https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/webview/overview Since 4.4 it is based on Chrome, not WebKit. Since I think version 6, on all the Google phones it defaults to using Chrome for WebView instead of the "WebView for Android" browser.