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The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

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Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#221

Post by ygra »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #210
scrollaway wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you got downvoted for asking a foolish question. If there were linux builds in the plans, they would have announced it. If open sourcing the whole thing was planned... well, you get the idea.

I don't see what is foolish about the question (and was taught [and believe] that there are no foolish questions). MS has opened up their flagship development platform (.NET) and even has it building on Linux. MS will also rent you Linux virtual machines. The post also talks about interoperability and running across many kinds of devices, including "try out RemoteIE which will stream our latest browser from the Azure…

First of all, the team who open-sourced .NET is a different one from that that is building IE. DevDiv has been very open-source-friendly for a few years by now.

Then there is the fact that .NET is far less tied to the platform than IE is. .NET is nothing more than a VM, runtime and GC. That's fairly easy to get cross-platform, compared to a GUI application that makes use of platform libraries for hw-accelerated drawing and text rendering.

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#222

Post by ygra »

joshschreuder wrote: post #134
jonathansampson wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have one that we can use to check future builds of IE against?

Try this: https://github.com/golang/go/commit/b986f3e3b54499e63903405c... To be fair, it's extraordinarily slow even in Chrome, but IE11 rendering on this page is pretty bad.

Impressive to see the difference between browsers there, though. IE is unusable with ~420 MiB of memory for that tab. Chrome is unusable as long as the page loads; after that only slowed down slightly, with ~540 MiB of memory for that tab. Firefox is snappy, fast and takes only 180 MiB of memory for that tab.

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#223

Post by icantthinkofone »

Encosia wrote: post #201
icantthinkofone wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed is not the mark of a good browser. If you are using speed as your mark, then you have never coded for the web and have never gone through the trials and tribulations of IE. If speed was the target, then Lynx would be the best of browsers. http://html5test.com/ http://css3test.com/

Err, Chrome's absolute #1 selling point for at least the first year or so was speed, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7VNjGuSK_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaNpWJY9SEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrDHrwLUtvk I agree that speed isn't everything, but switching to IE is often a relief these days when Chrome has managed to spin up my Surface 3 Pro's fan yet again just browsing average sites. > then you hav…

Speed is NEVER the mark of a good browser. It can be a point on a list but, if it fails to properly implement standards or work in all devices, that's a failed browser. It's not the whole picture.

But you say you agree with my point.

If your Surface 3 can't handle the computing needs of a browser, that's not a resounding recommendation for owning a Surface.

As far as developing for the web, I've own a web dev company for 10 years and, among our list of clients, we manage two web sites you have visited before, one of which you probably visit every week or so. I was also, once, invited to work at Mozilla but declined. Does that answer your question?

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#224

Post by guardian5x »

icantthinkofone wrote: post #192
Encosia wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used IE in the past few years? IE is (by far) already the fastest browser on my two Windows 10 machines right now. That was also the case when they were running Windows 8 and 8.1 in the past. The latest versions of IE make Chrome feel like Netscape Communicator 4, and they're noticeably faster than Firefox too. If it had a nice LastPass extension, Ghostery, Buffer, and a few others, I'd probably be using IE…

Speed is not the mark of a good browser. If you are using speed as your mark, then you have never coded for the web and have never gone through the trials and tribulations of IE. If speed was the target, then Lynx would be the best of browsers. http://html5test.com/ http://css3test.com/

html5test might not be the best comparison either. They test things that are not part of the official html5 spec. The scoring seems sometimes arbitrary.

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#225

Post by AndrewDucker »

gtjrossi wrote: post #179
Throwaway90283 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see some competition as well, but in my perspective, they're taking the wrong approach. This entire project seems to be about improving compatibility with older websites, by adding more algorithms and layers to the rendering process. I don't believe everyone is using Firefox and Chrome because they have better compatibility than IE. I think they should focus on cutting the fat, and making the lightest wei…

Actually, our approach is effectively yielding the results you're looking for. Removal of old IE legacy cruft is slimming Spartan's disk and memory footprint when compared with IE. Advances in the Chakra engine are pushing performance ahead. We're rearchitecting our DOM, which is yielding perf and security wins too. We're planning an extension platform also, with top add-ons like ad block being a clear target. There'…

What languages will be supported for extensions?

Any chance of C# ?

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#226

Post by Ajedi32 »

Throwaway90283 wrote: post #96
EdSharkey wrote: post #15

YES! 1-2-3-4, I declare a browser war! Finally. This is the Microsoft I've been waiting for! No more rolling over and no defeatist talk of adopting WebKit or whatever. Microsoft is going to use its muscle and position to make a truly competitive browser. We need more competition, and we need the default browser in Windows to be just as good as Chrome and Firefox. Microsoft, I hope you pull every -ms- vendor flaggin',…

I'd like to see some competition as well, but in my perspective, they're taking the wrong approach. This entire project seems to be about improving compatibility with older websites, by adding more algorithms and layers to the rendering process. I don't believe everyone is using Firefox and Chrome because they have better compatibility than IE. I think they should focus on cutting the fat, and making the lightest wei…

>This entire project seems to be about improving compatibility with older websites, by adding more algorithms and layers to the rendering process.

Uh... isn't that exactly the opposite of what they're actually doing here? Did you read the article? They're creating a new rendering engine that has all the backwards compatibility crap stripped out, so that they don't accidentally break compatibility while making changes to the layout engine they're using for legacy sites. (I.E. They're removing layers from the rendering process, not adding them.)

> Or, leave IE11 as the default now for compatibility, and spin off a new browser called IE Lightning.

Uh... they kind of did. It's called Spartan.

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#227

Post by Ajedi32 »

mattdesl wrote: post #194

For add-ons and DevTools plugins: it would be cool to have AtomIO style architecture. Easy to install, easy to develop for, easy to publish to npm, and written in pure JavaScript. IMHO it would quickly propel Spartan to the forefront of the developer community and would really help move the web forward.[1] [1] http://mattdesl.svbtle.com/motion-graphics

You mean like Vivaldi?

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#228

Post by easytiger »

EdSharkey wrote: post #15

YES! 1-2-3-4, I declare a browser war! Finally. This is the Microsoft I've been waiting for! No more rolling over and no defeatist talk of adopting WebKit or whatever. Microsoft is going to use its muscle and position to make a truly competitive browser. We need more competition, and we need the default browser in Windows to be just as good as Chrome and Firefox. Microsoft, I hope you pull every -ms- vendor flaggin',…

> Microsoft, I hope you pull every -ms- vendor flaggin', ring-0 kernel hookin', micro-optimizatin', site-specific D3D driver tweakin' trick in the book as you reach for parity. This is going to be so fun to watch.

Well that's great, but if I'm on Linux and OSX this is just a pain in the ass for devs to support YAWB

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