Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10 • Hacker News Board

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

#591

Post by bwindels » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:08 PM UTC

alimbada wrote: post #442

bayindirh wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edge is an evolution of Internet Explorer. They removed some of the quirks they have added over the years, modernized the engine, but it's Internet Explorer to its core. It's just rebranded.

No, it's a new browser built from the ground up with none of the baggage of IE.

Thought so too, but MS has apparently said it is a fork:

https://www.neowin.net/news/whats-powering-spartan-internet-...:

> The Spartan rendering engine (edgehtml.dll) is a new component and separate from Trident (mshtml.dll). The new engine began as a fork of Trident, but has since diverged rapidly over the past many months, similar to how several other browser engines have started as forks prior to diverging. The new rendering engine is also being built with a very different set of principles than Trident - for example: a focus on interoperability and the removal of document modes.

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

#592

Post by joosteto » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

canacrypto wrote: post #478

vic20forever wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Watching Mozilla align Firefox's extension API with Chromium's, I'm a little surprised that they haven't already made the move. If browser evolution continues along the current path, I predict Firefox will switch to Chromium withi…

I use Firefox as my primary browser and I don't find mainstream websites glitchy at all.

When I find a glitchy site in Firefox, I try chromium. Usually turns out it's glitchy there as well.

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

#593

Post by dx034 » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

teknologist wrote: post #551

plq wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My favorite is prompting me to restart to install an update when I open it. It's the best they can do. Windows carries a lot of baggage and bad decisions around its OS design. One of them is that when a file has an exclusive lock (eg an .exe file that's running) it can't be deleted. NTFS and Windows Kernel don't implement reference counting like a proper OS. So Firefox (or any software package with in-place self-up…

I am not an expert on this, but I believe Chrome downloads a new exe waiting to be copied over when it is launched. The Firefox updater on the other hand is a whole progress bar experience where a lot of things seem to have to happen to perform an update.

I believe the problem with Edge is (correct me if I'm wrong) that files that would need to be updated are used by Windows Explorer, so any update would need a restart of the machine.

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

#594

Post by Angostura » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

teddyuk wrote: post #564

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…

I'd like to see microsoft/mozilla/google collaborate on "THE" browser engine then all this compatibility bs goes away - they can all ship their own cruft and advertising but with a single rendering engine we can forget about multiple browsers forever

Apple and Google did that for a while with Webkit powering both Chrome and Safari. A shame they fell out.

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

#595

Post by sfink » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

glenneroo wrote: post #567

pjc50 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tab Set-aside, the thing where you can suspend tabs and then bring them back later, instead of having a browser with dozens of open tabs all using up memory. I'd never heard of this, so I thought I'd give it a go: it's not on the right-click menu but on a separate icon on the top left, where the System menu should be so I'd never looked there. It turns out to be handicapped by not being able to save/restore individ…

Firefox doesn't restore after closing either until you enable "Restore previous session" in Options. I just re-installed Windows and FF last week and this bit me the first time after a reboot. As for tab-heavy users, I find FF Quantum to be horrible in this respect, and I keep missing Chrome, which allows a ton of tabs and resizes them, albeit slightly unreadable after ~40-70 tabs, but at least I can see the icon, wh…

Why do people still use tabs on the top? Tabs on the side is so much better.

I use Tree Style Tabs.

It's a pity firefox still doesn't support it properly by allowing the top tabs bar to be hidden without userChrome.css hacking. I just ignore the top ones for now.

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

#596

Post by 13years » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

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).

1. speed. On a million+ line code base chrome starts the app in about 5 secs. Firefox over a minute. 2. Blackboxing. Easy to setup and configure in chrome and you can preserve you settings. 3. Blackboxing combined with event breakpoints. Chrome lets you set event break points and combined with black boxing will drop you right into your code on an event. This is awesome.

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

#597

Post by g051051 » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

It's unfortunate to lose another implementation...and very telling about Microsoft. They'll spend infinite money (which they effectively have) to try to take a dominance position, but will give up if they can't be the top of the heap. How much would it really cost them to keep maintaining Edge, even if it's not the most popular browser? How was that generating revenue for them, anyway?

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

#598

Post by Gruselbauer » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

keypusher wrote: post #481

pjc50 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox inevitably shutters it's in-house efforts That is Firefox. Shuttering that kills the project. It's like, I don't know, Tumblr deciding to ban porn or something.

I've got some bad news.

I just heard about that and I'm still kind of puzzled. App Store money, yeah, but isn't Tumblr like 10% SJW kids / fandoms and 90% porn? Seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot.

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

#599

Post by reitanqild » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

mda wrote: post #458

reitanqild wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chrome didn’t come to dominate the desktop browser market by forcing users’ hand, but by offering a better experience. Disagree strongly. Reasons: - Google has been extremely pushy with Chrome, including lying (IMO) about it on their front page, a place where no other ads have been shown ever (IIRC). - Their own products often don't work in other browsers. Might be an honest mistake but personally I really don't bu…

So many conspiracy theories. When did HN become this hysterical...

Please let me know where I either stated something as a fact that isn't, or didn't point out that something was my personal opinion, interpretation or how I remembered it. The closest thing I find that might resemble a conspiracy theory in my post above is probably the part about convient bugs that makes Google products lag in other browsers.

In that particular case I agree: it might just be that the front-end devs at Google are seriously unprofessional or that their QA team is really understaffed or bad or something.

But I think I pointed to that alternative, just that I didn't find it plausible.

Reasonable alternative explanations for why the search results page would keep one core on my machine spinning up, but obly in Firefox or why there's always something with Calendar (but only in Firefox) might be accepted.

But personally, even as a one man team at the moment, I try to make sure it works in all browsers.

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

#600

Post by glenneroo » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

Markoff wrote: post #513

meuk wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Opera is a good browser that no-one uses, so it can't be just that. Tbh UX just isn't Microsofts strong suite (although I really like Windows 10).

i would not trust any Chinese browser with my data

Are you not concerned with NSA or other five-eyes countries (or Israel, which had unfettered access to raw data from the US[0])? I mean, it's downright dystopian what the Chinese are doing lately in regards to privacy, but what advantage will they have over you as an individual if they have all your data? If I had to (or was able to) choose which government had my data, the NSA or the Chinese government, I might (perhaps naively) choose the Chinese.

On a related note, Microsoft gave the NSA complete backdoor access to Skype years ago[0], not to mention Outlook.com and who knows what else the NSA "needed" to build Prism and other tools, which remote contractors in Bahamas apparently have access to (thanks Snowden!).

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-...

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...