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Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

blogs.windows.com

51–60 of 75 posts

Re: Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

#51
post #7

I believe that Microsoft not releasing versions for Linux / Mac OS X is going to not allow Edge to get maximum adoption. How am I supposed to test that my website works on Edge properly? The only option thus far is to setup a VM with Windows 10 on it so that I can run a browser to test my website. I dont even bother testing stuff on IE x for that reason.

I'm not surprised. It's clear they are using newer Windows APIs to offload 2D and 3D rendering among other things. I doubt they'd be able to release a version that didn't run on Windows for those reasons, just like Safari will never run on anything but OS X because it leverages OS X APIs.

Re: Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

#52
post #51
post #7

I believe that Microsoft not releasing versions for Linux / Mac OS X is going to not allow Edge to get maximum adoption. How am I supposed to test that my website works on Edge properly? The only option thus far is to setup a VM with Windows 10 on it so that I can run a browser to test my website. I dont even bother testing stuff on IE x for that reason.

I'm not surprised. It's clear they are using newer Windows APIs to offload 2D and 3D rendering among other things. I doubt they'd be able to release a version that didn't run on Windows for those reasons, just like Safari will never run on anything but OS X because it leverages OS X APIs.

Safari did run on Windows for years.

But it did seem like they ported a lot of OS X libraries to Windows just to get it working. If I remember correctly, it had OS X font rendering for example.

Re: Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

#53
"A broad variety of memory corruption mitigations have been devised since the mid-1990s, and in the 2000s Microsoft has lead the way with advances including ASLR, DEP, and SeHOP."

No, they didn't lead the way. PaX beat them by at least 5 years, yet they still take credit for this. They didn't even create the Windows version of ASLR in house.

"including industry leading sandboxing"

They're really going to claim that the Edge sandbox is better than Chrome, with no basis?

Re: Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

#54
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you know, new Microsoft proprietary "Microsoft Passport" authentication stuff >|

Google has its own proprietary sign in features across its offering. I think it's becoming more or less standard fare.

If you're talking about password syncing, Chrome uses the system's password store. Hopefully the Microsoft Passport the article refers to is just a password manager.

edit: unfortunately, no, it just appears to be another sign-in with company X: http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/03/17/making-w...

Re: Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

#55

"A broad variety of memory corruption mitigations have been devised since the mid-1990s, and in the 2000s Microsoft has lead the way with advances including ASLR, DEP, and SeHOP." No, they didn't lead the way. PaX beat them by at least 5 years, yet they still take credit for this. They didn't even create the Windows version of ASLR in house. "including industry leading sandboxing" They're really going to claim that t…

> They're really going to claim that the Edge sandbox is better than Chrome, with no basis?

Edge has yet to be exploited at Pwn2Own and Chrome gets exploited every year. Clearly that's a better record. ;)

Re: Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

#56

"A broad variety of memory corruption mitigations have been devised since the mid-1990s, and in the 2000s Microsoft has lead the way with advances including ASLR, DEP, and SeHOP." No, they didn't lead the way. PaX beat them by at least 5 years, yet they still take credit for this. They didn't even create the Windows version of ASLR in house. "including industry leading sandboxing" They're really going to claim that t…

This is just marketing puffery. The defense would be "Microsoft was the first to implement ASLR and DEP on Windows, and Edge's sandboxing is the best sandboxing technology available from any Microsoft browser product." Just like AT&T stating they have the "strongest" signal (which is a meaningless metric by itself), or car makers calling their car gets "40% better mileage!" and the * tells you "compared for a 1978 AMC Pacer."

Re: Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

#57
post #16

I was hoping they would open source Edge at Build, but that was a bit optimistic of a time frame. There are still core components yet to be finished. Hope it will get done soon and have a solid code base to be released as open source.

They don't seem to want to open source it. When I asked, they told me that they had no plans to and now they are hand-selecting companies to contribute code to their engine.

Re: Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

#58

"A broad variety of memory corruption mitigations have been devised since the mid-1990s, and in the 2000s Microsoft has lead the way with advances including ASLR, DEP, and SeHOP." No, they didn't lead the way. PaX beat them by at least 5 years, yet they still take credit for this. They didn't even create the Windows version of ASLR in house. "including industry leading sandboxing" They're really going to claim that t…

> They're really going to claim that the Edge sandbox is better than Chrome, with no basis? Edge has yet to be exploited at Pwn2Own and Chrome gets exploited every year. Clearly that's a better record. ;)

I will take it being sarcastic...otherwise, Edge has only been made available for less than two months.

Re: Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

#59
post #26
post #8

> MemGC (Memory Garbage Collector) is a memory garbage collection system that seeks to defend the browser from UAF (Use-after-free) vulnerabilities by taking responsibility for freeing memory away from the programmer and instead automating it, only freeing memory when the automation has detected that there are no more references left pointing to a given block of memory. Interesting; I don't think this has been announ…

What is Edge written in? I would have assumed Microsoft would use C#, which is garbage collected.

As a fork of Trident, it's written in C++.

Re: Microsoft Edge: Building a safer browser

#60
post #18

A bit off topic, but I really hope that Microsoft and Samsung have reached some sort of understanding regarding the name "Edge". A trademark dispute involving their new browser is the last thing Microsoft needs at this time. It was confusing enough when they had to change SkyDrive to OneDrive.

Well, the "Edge" actually reminds me of Lenovo Edge series, because on the laptop it marks "Edge".
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