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Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

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Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#151

Post by talawahdotnet »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #53
talawahdotnet wrote: post #28

Interesting, but what I really, really want them to do is EOL IE 11 so that the web can move forward without feeling guilty about the X% of users still on it. IE 11 has unfortunately become the new IE 6. As it is right now I believe the IE 11 EOL is tied to the Windows 10 EOL...which is not happening anytime soon. Many frameworks are dropping support for it anyway so I guess it will end up being defacto desupported.

As someone who has (luckily) only had to support Firefox/Edge/Chrome, can you go into why IE11 is so bad? In the very small amount of testing I've done, everything seems to render just fine (especially compared to IE6/7/8)

IE 11 is the last browser with any substantial share that is no longer being actively developed (and automatically updated). As such the are a number of new features that get broad support in "evergreen" browsers that IE will never support. Most frameworks and developers end up bending over backwards to polyfill these features leading to more complex code and larger file sizes. Here are a few examples:

ES6/ES2015 - https://caniuse.com/#search=ES6

Every other major browser supports this natively aside from IE, but most people still transpile their modern code down to ES5 + polyfills for compatibility

CSS Variables - https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-variables

Again, widely supported, but instead we use tools like SASS/LESS

Web Components[1] (Shadow DOM[2] and Custom Elements[3])

Newer frameworks like Ionic 4 rely heavily and web components and see it as the future of all UI frameworks and the end of framework churn[4]. Once again IE 11 holds back the pack and has to be pollyfilled[5]

1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components

2. https://caniuse.com/#feat=shadowdomv1

3. https://caniuse.com/#feat=custom-elementsv1

4. https://blog.ionicframework.com/the-end-of-framework-churn/

5. https://blog.ionicframework.com/october-2018-a-big-month-for...

Proxy - https://caniuse.com/#feat=proxy

Vuejs is completely rewriting its observation mechanism[6] to be proxy-based in version 3, however it appears that cannot be polyfilled and so they will be providing a second, optional, not-fully-compatible build, specifically for IE 11[7]

> Most of the ES2015 features used can be transpiled / polyfilled for IE11, with the exception for Proxies. Our plan is to implement an alternative observer with the same API, but using the good old ES5 Object.defineProperty API. A separate build of Vue 3.x will be distributed using this observer implementation. However, this build will be subject to the same change detection caveats of Vue 2.x and thus not fully compatible with the “modern” build of 3.x. We are aware that this imposes some inconvenience for library authors as they will need to be aware of compatibility for two different builds

6. https://medium.com/the-vue-point/plans-for-the-next-iteratio...

7. https://medium.com/the-vue-point/plans-for-the-next-iteratio...

Imagine the number of hours that could be saved globally if all this work and testing didn't have to happen anymore.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#152

Post by viraptor »

cortesoft wrote: post #135
kibwen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what this is attempting to refute. Your comment is about why monocultures are bad for competition, which I happen to agree with. My comment is about why Chromium being open-source doesn't alleviate any concerns about monoculture.

How is the situation better if there are two browsers with 50% market share? You still can’t add a new feature the other side doesn’t want, because 50% of users won’t be able to use it. Any feature that requires a site owner to do something to support it isn’t going to be added.

> You still can’t add a new feature the other side doesn’t want

That's not quite true. This happens all the time with things not standardised (yet). With time those either get wide adoption because people want them, or get dropped, or get standardised in a different widely agreed form.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#153

Post by jayd16 »

kibwen wrote: post #93
samspenc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that they'll be using the Chromium engine underneath, but still their own Edge "browser" and UI on top. IMHO, I personally think it's a good thing to consolidate on one engine to render HTML cross-platform for these two reasons: 1. Web developers no longer need to worry about supporting CSS and other edge-cases across various browser engines. 2. The Chromium engine itself is open source. There are…

> The Chromium engine itself is open source Being open source is a red herring in this instance. Say that Chrome implements a web feature you don't like. You fork the browser and remove that feature. But websites expect Chrome, and they use that feature, so your fork doesn't work with those websites. Say that Chrome refuses to add a feature you want. You fork the browser and add the feature. But websites expect Chrom…

Microsoft using Chrome only somewhat reduces Microsoft's power in this regard. In no way does that change your ability to project your will on the internet through Chrome forks. Small devs have little power now and that will stay unchanged if Edge goes Chrome.

Web devs will have to build for the lowest common denominator so this change improves that slightly.

An actual downsides is it increases the power of the Chromium team to make defacto changes.

It might also reduces innovation but I can't really see Microsoft deciding to drop a feature because it would take them further from the chrome trunk.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#154

Post by morpheuskafka »

This definitely makes sense from a business standpoint. MS gets two big things from Edge/IE: one, people using Bing by default, and two, tight integration with Windows/Office/MS Cloud services. All of that has nothing to do with engines, very little to do with even UI design.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#155

Post by cjbprime »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #136
cjbprime wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly having trouble making a coherent strategy out of those words, despite knowing what all of them mean. Seems like at the least it is written with way more confidence than could possibly be appropriate.

I think it's referring to Microsoft's own Electron-powered apps, like VSCode. There have been rumblings in the past about MS wanting to fork Electron and replace Chromium with EdgeHTML in their fork, but it sounds like the strategy has changed to forking Chromium and using that in their future Electron fork instead. I have no idea if this correctly interprets the SwiftOnSecurity tweet, but that's the best I can make…

That sounds fine, it just sounds unrelated to a decision to kill off Edge. You can maintain Edge as a web browser while using Chromium Electron. If you're Microsoft, your decision on whether or not to maintain Edge as a web engine is unlikely to completely pivotally depend upon whether you end up choosing Chromium Electron or Edge Electron. So the tweet doesn't make sense to me.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#156

Post by Spivak »

vbezhenar wrote: post #126
chiefalchemist wrote: post #56

A number of the comments mention monoculture. But where does monculture end and a solid reliable and honest standard begin? For exampke, at some point the power grid and gasoline formulations were standardized, yes? TV screen sizes, tin cans and shipping containers. Is the browser not the shipping container of our time? To call W3C a standard and then have different implementations is no standard at all. That is the…

Standard is an interface with multiple implementations. Shipping container standard with certain dimensions is good. Shipping container standard “from evil Google” is bad.

Standard can also be a ubiquitous implementation: OOXML, PDF, CUDA, Linux, glibc, pulseaudo, ffmpeg, imagemagick, tensorflow, systemd, Windows, MySQL, React, Java, QT, Electron.

Since standards bodies these days are really documentation effots it seems silly to say that implementation defined standards aren't. It's practically where any 'proper' standard comes from these days where the market leader is essentially the reference implementation.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#157

Post by kibwen »

cortesoft wrote: post #135
kibwen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what this is attempting to refute. Your comment is about why monocultures are bad for competition, which I happen to agree with. My comment is about why Chromium being open-source doesn't alleviate any concerns about monoculture.

How is the situation better if there are two browsers with 50% market share? You still can’t add a new feature the other side doesn’t want, because 50% of users won’t be able to use it. Any feature that requires a site owner to do something to support it isn’t going to be added.

You've just illustrated the advantage of a polyculture: changes to the platform are not unilateral decisions, and therefore require discussion, communication, and documentation. Furthermore, if one actor tries to do something out of blatant self-interest that would be a detriment to the platform as a whole, that action can be blocked. With a Google monoculture, at the end of the day, the web will be whatever the CEO of Google allows it to be. Imagine how little control users have over the Android platform; envision a future where that's the web's model as well.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#158

Post by morpheuskafka »

tambourine_man wrote: post #57

Interesting theory and thread: https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/10697763353362923... “This isn’t about Chrome. This is about ElectronJS. Microsoft thinks EdgeHTML cannot get to drop-in feature-parity with Chromium to replace it in Electron apps, whose duplication is becoming a significant performance drain. They want to single-instance Electron with their own fork”

I don't even see why it would have to be a full fork, could just be a drop-in replacement for whatever npm modules builds them into Windows installers/EXEs. But it would definitely make sense. It would be another great way for MS to emphasize cross-platform, because the Linux/Mac support would already be there and be left completely alone.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#159

Post by Spivak »

Groxx wrote: post #17
h1d wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do what with it?

learn, if nothing else. surely there are some valuable pieces in there.

Seriously there must be, if nothing else, some Windows black magic in there to make Edge so responsive.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#160

Post by belltaco »

interesthrow2 wrote: post #82
tambourine_man wrote: post #57

Interesting theory and thread: https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/10697763353362923... “This isn’t about Chrome. This is about ElectronJS. Microsoft thinks EdgeHTML cannot get to drop-in feature-parity with Chromium to replace it in Electron apps, whose duplication is becoming a significant performance drain. They want to single-instance Electron with their own fork”

The irony. They had HTA apps (running on IE engine which still work more or less, I replaced most default Win10 apps like the image viewer and the "groove" music player with a version of them built with HTA since they were slow as hell to start up) for 20 years already, they did barely anything with it, they didn't really invest seriously in a good browser engine (Edge isn't) and now all they can do is use Google's?…

>now all they can do is use Google's

Wasn't WebKit Apple's first? And before that KDE's KHTML and KJS. Funny how the narrative has changed.

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