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The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

blogs.windows.com

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Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#231

On MacOS it requires admin privilege to install. I am done with that after all the crap that previous software with admin rights installed. I cleaned it up and swore I would not install anything that required admin rights again - for my own security and peace of mind. What does it need admin rights for?

Seriously, that bugs the hell out of me too.

Why do I need to give Adobe admin rights to install Photoshop? Why do I need to give Microsoft the same to install Word? And now for a web browser?

If I'm installing something low-level like a window manager or a keyboard shortcut tool, I get it. But for a normal mainstream flagship consumer application, what on earth do they need admin privileges for?!

I hate the fact I have to hand over the keys to my computer just to run basic industry standard software and I have no choice because it's industry standard and I have requirements to use it.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#232

Regarding the topic of browser mono-cultures, I was web developer in the post browser war era in the early 2000s where we had a dominant IE6 and a stagnant browser landscape. It was bad. Real bad. But I'm actually fairly positive about MS getting into the chromium landscape and back into the game. Let's face it MS had lost all of its influence in the browser world before dropping IE and making this move. It is a Goog…

I'm a noob web dev working in a small shop that sells a niche SaaS product.

We had a customer push us to support Edge.

The dev team (3 dudes) just looked at eachother and laid down the "No, Firefox or Chrome...".

It's just so much pressure to dance around the "this one does this, that one doesn't" and generally we rarely run into any Firefox and Chrome issues. Edge, just not worth it for a small team.

I'm glad we probabbly can direct them to the new Edge now (after some testing).

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#233
post #208
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder why... Microsoft: developers, developers, developers, developers! Google: advertisers, advertisers, advertisers, advertisers!

And yet when I open Edge, I get a million ads for crappy tabloid news websites thrust in my face, while when I open Chrome I don't see any ads.

I believe this may also be dependent on whether you're on a personal machine or enterprise network. My Edge start page has a gear with the Page Layout options (Focused, Inspirational, Informative) and also radio buttons for Page Content with a choice between Office365 and Microsoft News. My default displayed Office365 (recent documents opened list) without any of the MS News agg tiles.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#234

Are there interviews why they based it on Chromium, not Gecko? From business point of a view taking a direct competitor's effort is somewhat blurry.

Presumably because Chromium and related technologies (e.g. V8) have far more investment by the community than Gecko and SpiderMonkey. MS already uses Chromium/v8 in some of their products like VS Code.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 consol…

Both sides of the screenshot are perfectly readable. Why make such a big deal about such a small difference?

Well, to me it is a big deal. I'm not trying to make it one, it just is. Best analogy I can give you is probably the one in the sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057875

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they need developers more than developers need them. If they become as dominant as Apple and Google in their respective spaces, expect your experience to degrade.

Microsoft has always been developer-first, even when they didn't need them, and even during the Ballmer era. Google has never been about the developer experience, and is quite hostile to developers even when they need them. (See, e.g., Stadia.)

What is your definition of developer-first? My experience working at Microsoft in 2015 was the opposite of what you describe. They were too focused on supporting legacy MS that they couldn't innovate or find and keep talented developers in open source because they were forced to adopt tools and frameworks that were crap compared to standard open source development tools.

The only reason people went there usually was for the money and once they got enough to follow their passion, they left because none of them were passionate about Microsoft.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they need developers more than developers need them. If they become as dominant as Apple and Google in their respective spaces, expect your experience to degrade.

Microsoft has always been developer-first, even when they didn't need them, and even during the Ballmer era. Google has never been about the developer experience, and is quite hostile to developers even when they need them. (See, e.g., Stadia.)

One difference that stands out to me about Microsoft vs Google. Both are very heavy C++ shops. Both have invested in developing tools for enhancing developer productivity on their respective platforms (Windows and Linux). Yes, Linux is not a Google product (thank god) but it is what they build on.

Microsoft's C++ IDE and debugger are the gold standard for productivity and ease of use - everyone who writes native applications for Windows uses Visual Studio. You can try it out for free and the price per developer is very reasonable if you want to publish a paid product.

Google's C++ IDE and debugger are nonexistent. Whatever they've built is kept inside the Googleplex never to see the light of day. From time to time we see the occasional free software reimplementation of some facet of the beast (e.g. Kythe) but I haven't seen something catch on.

In fact, the biggest contributors to developer productivity on Linux have been Microsoft (with Visual Studio Code and the lsp protocol) and Apple (investing in clang led to the development of advanced C++ indexers which were impossible to write using gcc due to Stallman making a conscious decision to not allow it)

Of course there is a good reason for this - Microsoft and Apple make platforms. The easier they make software development, the more developers they get, which leads to more software being written, which leads to more users, which results in profit. Google on the other hand doesn't win by making development easy for others. They're themselves a third party and other developers are competition rather than partners. For Microsoft, the existence of developers outside the company using Microsoft's development tools to create software for Microsoft's platform is a win. For Google, the best case scenario is there being no developers outside Google.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#238
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet when I open Edge, I get a million ads for crappy tabloid news websites thrust in my face, while when I open Chrome I don't see any ads.

I just setup Edge a few minutes ago. There are two options "Inspirational" and "Focused" that show no crappy tabloid news websites and one that does - I didn't pick that one :) Also, happy to report that 1password has an extension for Edge as well - that's awesome. Only thing I'm missing is a dark mode extension. I don't trust the somewhat sketchy ones that I see so far on the store.

If you enable dark mode in your Windows settings, you can just use the built in browser dark mode. This is also a setting in CSS to enable dark mode when this is enabled. Last, you can install extensions from the Chrome Store.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#239
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet when I open Edge, I get a million ads for crappy tabloid news websites thrust in my face, while when I open Chrome I don't see any ads.

I just setup Edge a few minutes ago. There are two options "Inspirational" and "Focused" that show no crappy tabloid news websites and one that does - I didn't pick that one :) Also, happy to report that 1password has an extension for Edge as well - that's awesome. Only thing I'm missing is a dark mode extension. I don't trust the somewhat sketchy ones that I see so far on the store.

You can also install extensions from the Chrome Web Store in Edge, there's a switch to enable the feature on the extension management page.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#240
post #208
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder why... Microsoft: developers, developers, developers, developers! Google: advertisers, advertisers, advertisers, advertisers!

And yet when I open Edge, I get a million ads for crappy tabloid news websites thrust in my face, while when I open Chrome I don't see any ads.

Chrome android features lots of tabloid ad crap in its home page.
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