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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

#321

Post by sunaurus »

vijaybritto wrote: post #317
headmelted wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really better though - having only two real browsers is not good for open standards or the open web. This will be especially true when Firefox inevitably shutters it's in-house efforts in a couple of years due to the amount of sites that won't work with it , and starts using Chromium too. Staring into my crystal ball tells me Firefox will become "janky" in the eyes of users on account of how many sites don't…

The main reason developers prefer chrome over firefox is the devtools hands down. When firebug was amazing in the jquery era, we used firefox but now chrome's devtools is simple, fast and full featured to use. If firefox's devtools is as good as or better than chrome's maybe things can change!

What specifically do you find better in the Chrome devtools? I find Firefox devtools to be slightly nicer (but I don't really think either one has a massive edge over the other).

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

#322

Post by manigandham »

swalladge wrote: post #305
TanakaTarou wrote: post #183

What other options do they have? Even on HN you hear "I use Egde to download Chrome". Many of you here don't test your own work in Edge. At the same time Microsoft is getting the heat that Windows 10 is unstable and the last major update shows that it is. Very urgently, I imagine, Microsoft is trying to change the perception of Windows 10 by doing everything they can to make it more stable. Changing the browser engin…

No, I tell my friends and family to use Firefox. There is more than one decent browser out there. I don't like the idea of everything using the Chromium engine; monoculture _is_ bad and we shouldn't put our eggs in the one basket. That said, IE and Edge have historically been terrible both compatibility and performance-wise. It's not just websites that aren't tested in Edge - my experience with Edge is that all aspec…

Safari is leaving itself in the dirt. It's the new IE with slow, quirky, and unreliable features. They made some advancements in privacy, but so did Firefox without giving up on actual rendering and standards.

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

#323

Post by endymi0n »

headmelted wrote: post #310
swalladge wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I tell my friends and family to use Firefox. There is more than one decent browser out there. I don't like the idea of everything using the Chromium engine; monoculture _is_ bad and we shouldn't put our eggs in the one basket. That said, IE and Edge have historically been terrible both compatibility and performance-wise. It's not just websites that aren't tested in Edge - my experience with Edge is that all aspec…

It's not really better though - having only two real browsers is not good for open standards or the open web. This will be especially true when Firefox inevitably shutters it's in-house efforts in a couple of years due to the amount of sites that won't work with it , and starts using Chromium too. Staring into my crystal ball tells me Firefox will become "janky" in the eyes of users on account of how many sites don't…

While I'm with you on the variety side, lest not forget that Chromium is at least open source, permitting other vendors to do a move like this instead of being left in the cold (and in this way probably committing back to the project). The flip side here is that building a fully featured browser engine from scratch that is "just" good enough to render 80% of pages correctly is a herculean, almost impossible task in 2018. Browsers went from graphic tools to browse the Internet to a full blown Operating System with sandboxed arbitrary code execution, intricate cross-origin rules, staged caching, full vector graphics animation systems and whatnot.

Although I would have loved even more choice (or MS championing the superb Firefox rendering engine instead), I think we're already well off with two fully featured and completely open source browser engines.

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

#324

Post by sleavey »

wlll wrote: post #291
gdwatson wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... and Firefox is just not cutting it." What are your objections to modern Firefox? Most of the criticism I've heard is that it's become too much like Chrome. I'm quite happy with it personally.

As someone who switched from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago my main issues are: * No spellcheck in form fields (without a plugin, and I hate plugins). * It feels slower. There's something about it that just doesn't feel as fast. Mostly things like opening windows etc. * There's some annoying defaults. * Dev tools aren't as good. * Updates aren't installed automatically. I mean, it's close to Chrome, which is good…

Spell check just needs a dictionary installed, not a plugin. This takes about three clicks.

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

#325

Post by deno »

millstone wrote: post #319
happymellon wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can I test Edge when Microsoft don't release it for Mac and Linux? A browser for a single OS? Talk about monoculture.

It's pretty easy honestly. Download a free VM and test away: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v... In practice Chrome is not that cross platform. WebGL is an example: Chrome renders differently due to its use of ANGLE, has bad performance due to its GPU blacklist, etc. If you want to support Windows you have to test on Windows, period, regardless of browser. More generally this take was good…

> It's pretty easy honestly. Download a free VM and test away: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v....

Unless you have SR-IOV setup this doesn’t tell you if the website is slow because of lack of GPU acceleration or something you could fix.

Still at least you can see if it actually works, unlike Safari.

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

#326

Post by pjc50 »

colordrops wrote: post #257
TanakaTarou wrote: post #183

What other options do they have? Even on HN you hear "I use Egde to download Chrome". Many of you here don't test your own work in Edge. At the same time Microsoft is getting the heat that Windows 10 is unstable and the last major update shows that it is. Very urgently, I imagine, Microsoft is trying to change the perception of Windows 10 by doing everything they can to make it more stable. Changing the browser engin…

I can't quite put my finger on it but something feels wrong about blaming the general populace for Edge's failure as a browser. Microsoft is one of the wealthiest companies on Earth. They've had every opportunity to use every marketing channel and dump resources into the team to make Edge an obvious winner. But they didn't.

Edge is a terrible product: it's a poor clone of its competitors and it has no distinguishing feature. Microsoft needed to actually innovate here and they didn't. Nor did they find an unmet need. Edge exists because everyone hates IE, not because it has something new for the user.

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

#327

Post by Jyaif »

ryacko wrote: post #254
pcwalton wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An overwhelming majority of the committers to Chromium, as well as the leadership, are in the Google reporting structure.

Chromium is just a fork of WebKit, a fork of KHTML. Unless Microsoft is really planning on downsizing their web browser division, they’ll fork it instead of maintaining a rebranded patch set.

Unless MS wants to work on the browser secretly for years (the reason for the Webkit fork) or Google refuses many contributions from MS (the reason for the Blink fork), there's no need for a fork.

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

#328

Post by fragkakis »

sunaurus wrote: post #321
vijaybritto wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason developers prefer chrome over firefox is the devtools hands down. When firebug was amazing in the jquery era, we used firefox but now chrome's devtools is simple, fast and full featured to use. If firefox's devtools is as good as or better than chrome's maybe things can change!

What specifically do you find better in the Chrome devtools? I find Firefox devtools to be slightly nicer (but I don't really think either one has a massive edge over the other).

For me the FF dev tools are not as good as Chrome's. For the basics I need both browsers offer the same functionality. However, on my machine, FF has performance problems with the dev tools open. Also, when I rearrange the width of the columns in the network tab, after some seconds and without knowing why, the columns return to their original width.

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

#329

Post by alliecat »

manigandham wrote: post #322
swalladge wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I tell my friends and family to use Firefox. There is more than one decent browser out there. I don't like the idea of everything using the Chromium engine; monoculture _is_ bad and we shouldn't put our eggs in the one basket. That said, IE and Edge have historically been terrible both compatibility and performance-wise. It's not just websites that aren't tested in Edge - my experience with Edge is that all aspec…

Safari is leaving itself in the dirt. It's the new IE with slow, quirky, and unreliable features. They made some advancements in privacy, but so did Firefox without giving up on actual rendering and standards.

I hear this a lot, but I find Safari to be an entirely usable browser day-to-day - the reduction in power usage is very noticeable vs Firefox or Chrome.

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

#330

Post by bryanrasmussen »

TanakaTarou wrote: post #183

What other options do they have? Even on HN you hear "I use Egde to download Chrome". Many of you here don't test your own work in Edge. At the same time Microsoft is getting the heat that Windows 10 is unstable and the last major update shows that it is. Very urgently, I imagine, Microsoft is trying to change the perception of Windows 10 by doing everything they can to make it more stable. Changing the browser engin…

I test in Edge, and then I get shit cause it doesn't work in IE11. The only family member I tell anything about what tech to use is my wife, and she uses FF like me, which is irritating because then she logs in and out of my services and I have to do double the work.
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