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The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

blogs.windows.com

131–140 of 487 posts

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#132
post #2

I'm really curious why they released to stable with so many basic features missing. For example, your bookmarks won't sync between devices (although that was recently re-enabled in the preview channels). It sounds like they're not pushing out automatic updates right now anyway, so I'm not sure what this announcement amounts to. Why not wait until the 20H1 Windows 10 feature update (which sounds like the update that w…

I actually gave Edge Dev an honest try for a few months using it as my only browser. At some point it just stopped syncing bookmarks between my various computers (all Windows), and that was the breaking point for me. I went back to Firefox. I may give it another go if they can fix sync.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#133
post #99

I have published some of my extensions for the new Edge browser on their store [1], the submission experience was straightforward and pleasant, and the extensions were published in a couple of days after manual review. Updates were also reviewed and published in a timely manner. More importantly, during extension submissions and reviews I did not feel abused as a developer, something which I cannot say about the Chro…

>More importantly, during extension submissions and reviews I did not feel abused as a developer, something which I cannot say about the Chrome Web Store

I suspect that would change if Edge gained significant market share. I think what happens is that as these platforms grow, they get targetted by spammers, malware, and scammers and consequently their processes harden and tolerances go down.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#134
post #76

What happened with font rendering? Fonts are rendered with thinner lines in new Edge (on the left): http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-fo... Such rendering does not match rest of Windows... New Edge is definitely less readable, and Google Chrome exhibits the same problem.

Left side is actually sharp, with subpixel smoothing. Right side is awful (just like many parts of post-Vista Windows) with apparent grayscale AA.

This is something they actually got right; it's one thing that was terrible about IE and the old Edge, and that I'd bet was subconsciously turning many people off (in my case, consciously making me want to tear my eyes out). If you can't see the difference, open dev console on the screenshot and run:

  document.body.style.zoom = 1 / window.devicePixelRatio
If this doesn't work in the new Edge, try in Chrome (not sure if Edge supports this zoom mechanism). You should definitely be able to see the difference in sharpness.

Edit: Maybe also worth mentioning, Firefox's bold font rendering is one thing keeping me away from it. Lack of the above zoom mechanism is another. Not sure if I'm alone in these.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#135
post #76

What happened with font rendering? Fonts are rendered with thinner lines in new Edge (on the left): http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-fo... Such rendering does not match rest of Windows... New Edge is definitely less readable, and Google Chrome exhibits the same problem.

I'm going to take a guess that this is mostly due to the use of Skia. I think the problem is not so much with the rendering of fonts (which is still likely DWrite) but with the compositing of them onto the canvas. There, it's extremely difficult to get gamma right. I am sympathetic to this, as I've spent a lot of time at the low levels of this stuff. Unfortunately, one problem is that there is no one "right answer,"…

Is there anyone who cares about "minimal distortion" except devs or other people working on UI-related stuff? I know I don't even know what the ground truth is supposed to look like, so I'm not even sure I can notice distortion. I certainly don't care.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#137

What about the new fluent design language? Where is the fucking transparency in the tab bar MS.

Not sure why you're angry about this...

Lots of people get angry about this kind of stuff. "I'd switch to Firefox if it supported Fluent" is something I have read multiple times in discussions about browsers.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#138
This is very good news.

In my opinion, this does more to keep Google in check than had they gone with Firefox's engine, or stuck with their own. (I know not everyone agrees)

People use Chrome because they consider it a better overall experience than other alternatives, and I happen to agree. (again, I get that not everyone here agrees with that) For whatever reason, Google has the resources and talent to make a browser that is preferred to the alternatives, by most regular users.

Chromium based Edge allows users to get the best of Chrome without the worst of Google. Google knows that if they get too aggressive with decisions that are biased toward Google's bottom line (such as how they handle ad blocking and various privacy features), Microsoft can easily push back by changing these decisions in Edge. This is a very good thing.

True, there is also pressure on Google from Firefox (people can abandon Chrome for Firefox if Google is too aggressive), and there is also Brave (and others) if you want the benefits of Chrome/Chromium without the worst stuff. But moving to Firefox is simply too big a move for most users and many don't like the downsides [1]. And Brave has their own revenue model to protect, and they don't have the deep pockets Microsoft has to resist the temptation to make decisions that benefit their bottom line in the short term.

[1] In my case, I do a lot with MIDI in the browser, i.e. connecting a digital piano and using it within web sites that support it. Firefox doesn't support this yet, after years and years of talking about it. https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58 There are a ton of other things, but that one is a deal breaker for me. Works beautifully in the new Edge.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#139
post #76

What happened with font rendering? Fonts are rendered with thinner lines in new Edge (on the left): http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-fo... Such rendering does not match rest of Windows... New Edge is definitely less readable, and Google Chrome exhibits the same problem.

New Edge is more readable to me.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#140
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish they had thrown in with helping Firefox instead of handing even more web influence over to Google. A percentage of what Microsoft spent on EdgeHTML contributed to the Firefox project—ideally as employee time—would go a long way, along with the counterbalance of putting the Firefox engine and code base front and center of more Windows users.

Interesting, I thought FF being a XUL app should've been easier to customize.

AFAIK Pale Moon and Basilisk are the only XUL-based browsers left.

https://www.palemoon.org/

https://www.basilisk-browser.org/

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