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The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

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Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, there are many forms of distortion. When it comes to spacing in particular, yes, there are many people who are quite sensitive to it, others less so. You can Google "keming" for more information on that.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#162

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.

Sadly Chromium is WAYYYY easier to development on than Firefox. Had Mozilla spent effort making the base of it as a framework in the same way Chromium is, they may have considered it. There is a reason why Electron, QT etc use Chromium.

Kind of a shame.. There are a few areas where FireFox absolutely smokes Chrome. The way it reflows some heavy DOMs interactively is almost magical in comparison.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#164
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium has font rendering built into it, I am guessing Microsoft didn't ripe it out and replace it with their own as it's not cross platform.

That's why I think having multiple browser implementations is beneficial. Proposal to Democrats: to unite with Republicans in one party as Republicans have "better development tools".

I’d be afraid that they would cause politburo style politics wherein it’d be a pretty big umbrella but ultimately it’d result in the main faction always winning. At least with with Repub/Dem bipolarity there is room for movement and adjustment (to the right or to the left).

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, there are many forms of distortion. When it comes to spacing in particular, yes, there are many people who are quite sensitive to it, others less so. You can Google "keming" for more information on that.

I can notice bad kerning, that's not what I thought we're talking about. We're just talking about the distortion difference between these renderers we have, not arbitrarily terrible distortion. And awful kerning is not the kind of distortion a renderer like Chrome's has.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#168
post #35

I'm glad to see this, and I hope it's a strong competitor. Stronger competition pushes everyone and we end up with better results as users. That said, browser debates often come off like the Nintendo versus Sega arguments I remember as a kid. It's funny how people become married to one.

We have effectively lost a competitor. Microsoft is now contributing to Chrome development. The best long-term outcome for the web would arguably to have been for Microsoft to put more resources into their in-house EdgeHTML browser instead of throwing it out and reskinning Chrome.

We have gained an effective competitor and lost an ineffective one.

Just because it's the same codebase doesn't mean they're not competing.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#169
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get Chrome's large ecosystem of browser extensions, with much less Google tracking. That's how I see it at least.

But then you add Microsoft tracking which is even worse. Why not just use Chromium and have no tracking?

Why is Microsoft tracking "even worse" than Google tracking?

I'm pretty sure Google has infected more of the Internet than Microsoft.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#170
post #20

It will make me happy to be able to stop supporting ie11 at some point in the future. Sadly, it doesn’t appear that ie11 will have an end of life date as it’ll be supported as long as Windows 10 is and Windows 10 appears evergreen. Hopefully Microsoft will make edge the default browser at some point.

IE11 is unofficially dead. Microsoft considers it a compatibility platform more than a browser.
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