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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

#301

Post by not_kurt_godel »

robbrown451 wrote: post #214
not_kurt_godel wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Targeted ads degrade user experiences for me because it's a reminder that someone or something that I don't know, knows about me. It's as if a stranger came up to you on the street, knew what brand of toilet paper you used at home, and asked if you wanted to buy more because you're almost out. Naturally you would wonder how this stranger knows these facts about you - do they snoop in your trash? Do they observe you i…

You say "someone or something," and to me, that's a pretty big difference. I don't care if things know about me. If there is an actual human being who is directly looking at me, associating it with my face, etc, that is a lot more bothersome than some machine that is doing that. I understand that many people here don't make that distinction. I do care about privacy in some ways, but when you I "arguably should" find…

I agree that there's a difference, but it's not necessarily one that the primal part of my brain cares about, regardless of what I know at a conscious/intellectual level. Furthermore, data that a machine knows is just one step away from becoming data that a human knows given sufficient curiosity or happenstance; a step into which you usually have no insight into whether or if it will occur.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#302

Post by thawaway1837 »

tracker1 wrote: post #280
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish they'd moved to Gecko instead of Chromium. It's not like Gecko is an inherently inferior engine by any stretch, and it would significantly bolster their marketshare so that developers actually have to test against it.

I think the biggest reason they went with Chromium/Blink is simply because of market share... most users at this point are using Chrome for better or worse, and MS is going with the safest bet in terms of user compatibility for today's web.

I believe the reason was NodeJS and Electron, wasn’t it? Basically, MS expects NodeJS and especially Electron to become fairly important going forward (MS’s 2 newest and highly successful apps are both Electron based...VS Code and Teams). There is no indication that either of those are moving away from Chromium anytime soon.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#303

Post by bla3 »

int_19h wrote: post #252
swebs wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phrasing it as a dichotomy like that is pretty dishonest, especially how Firefox is twice as popular than Edge [1] and is free open source software that doesn't spy on you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...

The dichotomy comes up because the new Edge supports Chrome extensions. So it's literally the same code being submitted to both stores, which makes it more of an apples-to-apples comparison.

Firefox and Safari are source compatible with chrome extensions too. Everyone copied Chrome's extension api.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#304

Post by gsam »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #276
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish they'd moved to Gecko instead of Chromium. It's not like Gecko is an inherently inferior engine by any stretch, and it would significantly bolster their marketshare so that developers actually have to test against it.

One huge advantage the Chromium has over Gecko is Google's Security Team (ie Project Zero). For most users, the web browser is one of the biggest attack surfaces and having arguably the best security team behind the browser engine is a good thing.

It's not actually clear that they prioritize their own products all that much. Certainly in regards to Project Zero, it seems the point is that they are detached from the rest of the product teams. (Correct me if I'm wrong)

Outside of the security teams, I think it's actually that Chromium is much better fuzzed and scrutinized. They just have so many more resources, including those for security.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#305

Post by robbrown451 »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #301
robbrown451 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "someone or something," and to me, that's a pretty big difference. I don't care if things know about me. If there is an actual human being who is directly looking at me, associating it with my face, etc, that is a lot more bothersome than some machine that is doing that. I understand that many people here don't make that distinction. I do care about privacy in some ways, but when you I "arguably should" find…

I agree that there's a difference, but it's not necessarily one that the primal part of my brain cares about, regardless of what I know at a conscious/intellectual level. Furthermore, data that a machine knows is just one step away from becoming data that a human knows given sufficient curiosity or happenstance; a step into which you usually have no insight into whether or if it will occur.

Yeah, I hear ya, I guess my primal brain is different than yours.

For instance, sometimes I feel a bit embarrassed by what I purchase at a store. (even if it's just that I'm buying a lot of junky, easy-to-prepare food at the grocery store) I've never once felt that way checking out at Amazon. Not even a teensy tiny bit. And that would remain true even if I suspected (or knew) that some human at Amazon was looking closely at the orders.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#306

Post by userbinator »

ken wrote: post #261
duxup wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

Last time I was doing web dev (maybe 2 years ago), I worked primarily in Firefox and Safari. Chrome presented more issues for me than Edge ever did. I don't think I ever had anything work in Chrome, and fail in Edge. I lived through the IE6 years, so I was never thrilled with any version of IE I had to support, but Edge was actually a good browser. Strange UI, solid engine.

Strange UI, solid engine

...and that's one of the reasons everyone hates Edge. I'm a long-time IE user and that stupid dumbed-down UI is absolutely repulsive. If they'd just put the Chromium engine in the normal IE UI I bet they'd get far more users naturally using it.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#307

Post by userbinator »

lostmsu wrote: post #300
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish they'd moved to Gecko instead of Chromium. It's not like Gecko is an inherently inferior engine by any stretch, and it would significantly bolster their marketshare so that developers actually have to test against it.

Or they could have open sourced EdgeHTML. It's not like it was worse, than Gecko.

Open-source IE would be even more interesting to see, mostly because the early versions ran well even on systems with two orders of magnitude less RAM and CPU power than ones today; especially when displaying static pages and not JS-heavy apps. I remember the Firefox of the time was noticeably more sluggish than IE6 and used more RAM, and know quite a few people who tried FF and went back to IE for that reason.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#308

Post by ekianjo »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #271
sime2009 wrote: post #184

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 just wish they'd moved to Gecko instead of Chromium. It's not like Gecko is an inherently inferior engine by any stretch, and it would significantly bolster their marketshare so that developers actually have to test against it.

If you look at long term investments are you confident Gecko will still be around in 10 years? Chromium is the only safe choice they had.

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#309

Post by om2 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #180
deaps wrote: post #84

So as somewhat of an outsider to the 'web game' as far as most people here (at HN) are concerned, but a relatively aware patron of web browsing software, I'll add my thoughts on the 'web browser' game... I feel like most people's browser of choice is chosen for reasons specific to their needs. For example: I think that Firefox gives me a bit of additional privacy. I think that Safari gives me that additional privacy…

> I think that Safari gives me that additional privacy as well. Safari provides a material improvement in battery life.

And memory use. And speed (at least by most public benchmarks).

Re: The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

#310

Post by petilon »

I love that I can now use Edge when using Google services such as Gmail and Chrome when accessing Microsoft sites such as Office 365. That way neither company can log me into the browser itself when I log into their sites. This should reduce abuses by both companies.

Google has an option that says "By turning this off, you can sign in to Google sites like Gmail without signing in to Chrome." But it doesn't work, which is a blatant abuse by Google. Adios, Chrome! I will now be using Edge when logging into Gmail.

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