Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance • Hacker News Board

Re: Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance

#11

Post by vmarsy » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:42 PM UTC

Benchmarks are good but the overall experience is what matters the most. I'm really impressed by the startup time of Edge. I type some query in the Cortana search bar and press Enter, it launches Edge extremely fast. So far I really love the performance.

However to make it my main browser I'm still waiting for adblocking extensions. I browse with a few tabs opened, one of them start randomly playing an ad video, at least it shows the sound icon on the tab so I know which one to kill.

I also noticed a few UI problems: When pressing the back button with "Ctrl" on, it does not open the last page in a new tab. Surprisingly, I use this feature very often on Chrome & Firefox. Sometimes when opening a new tab, the focus is not in the address/search bar, forcing me to click on it (or pressing Tab until I get it)

Re: Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance

#12

Post by idbehold » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:43 PM UTC

pothibo wrote: post #5

joshuapants wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also been fairly impressed with Edge on a low-spec machine. Realistically, once there is extension support and I can get an ad-blocker (ideally uBlock, and since it's rumored to be easy to port Chrome extensions I'm hopeful) I would have no issues using Edge as my daily browser.

I run exactly zero extension and used an ad-blocker for maybe 1 month in my whole lifetime. With that being said, I am genuinely curious how these 2 things are necessary for you to consider a browser. Are there extensions that I don't have that is crazy for me not to have?

Why would I choose a browser that downloads things I don't want over one that provides the ability to not download those things?

Re: Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance

#13

Post by sp332 » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

pothibo wrote: post #5

joshuapants wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also been fairly impressed with Edge on a low-spec machine. Realistically, once there is extension support and I can get an ad-blocker (ideally uBlock, and since it's rumored to be easy to port Chrome extensions I'm hopeful) I would have no issues using Edge as my daily browser.

I run exactly zero extension and used an ad-blocker for maybe 1 month in my whole lifetime. With that being said, I am genuinely curious how these 2 things are necessary for you to consider a browser. Are there extensions that I don't have that is crazy for me not to have?

Yeah... mainly an ad blocker. Ads not only compete for attention with the content I want to read on a page, they use my bandwidth and increase my attack surface.

Re: Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance

#14

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:46 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #3

What I'd like to see are benchmarks that involve visiting some sample of sites out of the Alexa top 100 and performing standard tasks (reading Gmail, finding a certain thing on Amazon.com, etc.) I know that's dependent on things like network conditions, so you'd have to run it a lot of times to get meaningful results, but it'd still provide a more meaningful result than a lot of synthetic benchmarks.

[deleted]

Re: Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance

#15

Post by Someone1234 » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:48 PM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #10

bepotts wrote: post #6

I wonder how much the Edge's performance will affect the average person's decision to use it or not. Browsers one up each other all the time and I'm sure Google's next major Chrome update will show improvements over the Edge. Renaming your browser won't change peoples' memory of Internet Explorer, even if Microsoft built Edge from the ground up. The average person is still going to be thinking IE when they see it. Wi…

IE is usually very competitive at each release... the problem is they tend to sit at 2+ years between releases, and even with IE10 and 11, it hasn't gotten much narrower. The real test will be to see if IE can keep the pace set by chrome and firefox.

IE has been discontinued so won't keep pace with Chrome or Firefox. IE 11 is the last version ever.

Edge has replaced IE. Edge is set to receive continuous updates the same way Chrome/Firefox do today. It is not pinned to Windows or Service Pack releases like IE was historically.

Re: Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance

#16

Post by pothibo » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:50 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #13

pothibo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run exactly zero extension and used an ad-blocker for maybe 1 month in my whole lifetime. With that being said, I am genuinely curious how these 2 things are necessary for you to consider a browser. Are there extensions that I don't have that is crazy for me not to have?

Yeah... mainly an ad blocker. Ads not only compete for attention with the content I want to read on a page, they use my bandwidth and increase my attack surface.

The attack surface is actually a good point I had not thought of.

Re: Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance

#17

Post by partiallypro » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:51 PM UTC

bepotts wrote: post #6

I wonder how much the Edge's performance will affect the average person's decision to use it or not. Browsers one up each other all the time and I'm sure Google's next major Chrome update will show improvements over the Edge. Renaming your browser won't change peoples' memory of Internet Explorer, even if Microsoft built Edge from the ground up. The average person is still going to be thinking IE when they see it. Wi…

Extensions are coming later this year. Supposedly it will be able to run Chrome extensions.

Re: Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance

#18

Post by viggity » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

vmarsy wrote: post #11

Benchmarks are good but the overall experience is what matters the most. I'm really impressed by the startup time of Edge. I type some query in the Cortana search bar and press Enter, it launches Edge extremely fast. So far I really love the performance. However to make it my main browser I'm still waiting for adblocking extensions. I browse with a few tabs opened, one of them start randomly playing an ad video, at l…

I don't have edge, but opening last closed tab can also be triggered via ctrl+shift+t. Perhaps they have that shortcut enabled?

Re: Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance

#19

Post by liviu- » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

Are they really going the completely disregard Linux users?

Re: Examining Microsoft Edge Browser Performance

#20

Post by Klathmon » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #8

cwyers wrote: post #3

What I'd like to see are benchmarks that involve visiting some sample of sites out of the Alexa top 100 and performing standard tasks (reading Gmail, finding a certain thing on Amazon.com, etc.) I know that's dependent on things like network conditions, so you'd have to run it a lot of times to get meaningful results, but it'd still provide a more meaningful result than a lot of synthetic benchmarks.

I agree that major improvements are needed. SunSpider, Octane, and Kraken are all pure JavaScript benchmarks, very microbenchmarky (look at bitwise-and in the SunSpider suite). Oort Online is a benchmark of WebGL performance—WebGL is definitely worth benchmarking, but how common is it in people's daily browsing? HTML5Test tests whether a bunch of "HTML5" features are sorta present, not whether they actually work or a…

I hate the HTML5Test (and alternative) sites with a passion for the exact reason you say.

HTML5Test lists iOS 8 as having IndexedDB support but it's so broken it's unusable on that platform. Even Mozilla completely disabled it in their LocalForage library due to it's issues.