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Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

blogs.windows.com

41–50 of 304 posts

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#41

If Microsoft knew that Edge in its current state is inferior, why did they try so hard to make every windows user switch to it? I mean there was this "startup growth hacking" kind of craziness from a corporation and sudden admittance of defeat... It's very confusing. Edit: We all know why they want everyone to switch don't we, but think about all the now admittedly false marketing! It's not like they stopped the aggr…

If your product is inferior, what do you do until you can make it better? Shut down your company?

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#42

If Microsoft knew that Edge in its current state is inferior, why did they try so hard to make every windows user switch to it? I mean there was this "startup growth hacking" kind of craziness from a corporation and sudden admittance of defeat... It's very confusing. Edit: We all know why they want everyone to switch don't we, but think about all the now admittedly false marketing! It's not like they stopped the aggr…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#43
Wasn't an original idea of Edge that it would have several different quirks modes where it would use the old IE renderer to work with old corporate websites and such to be extremely backwards compatible? Could this break things for some companies with old IE-only internal websites etc? (Not that I don't think these should have all been made to work with chrome long ago.) If they are going to try to maintain some kind of quirks mode, would that be open sourced?

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#44

What I find a bit curious is that's a fully Chromium based browser, it's not simply based on the Blink rendering engine. So, it will be much closer (probably) to Chromium/Chrome than other blink-based browsers like Brave or Opera. I'd really like to understand the rationale behind this choice. What they'd like to leverage from Chromium that Blink alone wouldn't have?

It's likely because of Electron. Microsoft already creates applications for Electron (which is Chromium) so maintaining that compatibility is likely a high priority.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#45
post #18
post #2

In short. Edge engine is dead. Based on Chromium. Not an UWP. Will be on Windows 7 and Mac.

This is hilarious to me. When Edge was just a rumor and before Windows 10 was released, I said here that I hope Microsoft will not repeat the mistake of tying this new modern browser to Windows 10 like it has done in the past with Internet Explorer and prior Windows versions. Microsoft, in its short-sighted way, thought that tying the browser to Windows would be an "advantage," because of things like "better integrat…

>"- It would mean Edge would not be cross-platform, a huge strategic mistake on Microsoft's part. People want to use the same browser across devices"

Realy? Id prefer different browsers optimised for the device. I don't even think theres much similarity between the desktop and the mobile browser anyway.

Any benefits other than bookmark sharing etc?

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#46
post #22

I'm assuming I'm not the only one who's afraid of Blink becoming the new Internet Explorer; instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible. It's still better because Chromium is open-source, but I do worry that we're going to have a problem in the future with a lot of broken sites (YTMND-style).

> I'm assuming I'm not the only one who's afraid of Blink becoming the new Internet Explorer; instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible.

This is already the norm. I use Safari and find many sites have issues. Before that I used Firefox and many sites had issues.

Typically the JS works, but styling often looks different (and worse) on Safari and Firefox.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really get this. Edge was only available to Windows users. This is only a loss to those users. On the other hand Chrome and Firefox are available on all major (for some subset of all) platforms. (Yes, I’m aware iPhone Firefox is hobbled bc of Apple policies). If you want to push competition and choice, encourage everyone to use Firefox (or Safari if they only use macOS).

> Edge was only available to Windows users. And still, it was some competition to Chrome and Firefox. > encourage everyone to use Firefox. Which can be done while also lamenting the loss of a Firefox competitor, especially when said loss gains Firefox nothing.

MS could have chosen to base their platform on Firefox, but they chose to go with Chromium.

We can lament the passing of Edge, but I wonder how people would have felt if instead of Edge they just had this announcement as the replacement for IE. Would we have cared? No one seems to miss IE.

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#49

If Microsoft knew that Edge in its current state is inferior, why did they try so hard to make every windows user switch to it? I mean there was this "startup growth hacking" kind of craziness from a corporation and sudden admittance of defeat... It's very confusing. Edit: We all know why they want everyone to switch don't we, but think about all the now admittedly false marketing! It's not like they stopped the aggr…

They still want you to switch to Edge - they just are admitting that having a NIH syndrome is from a business use case not useful here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here

Re: Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration

#50
post #8

EdgeHTML is also used for embedding HTML into UWP, and controls have been released for WPF and Win32. I wonder what will be the story of that. Will that be transparently changed to Chrome, can it be changed to Chrome or will EdgeHTML be used only for that?

I'm doubtful they would/can change the controls over transparently. My guess is that once the Chromium engine is ready, binaries built against new Windows SDKs will use Chromium, and existing binaries will continue to use EdgeHTML.
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