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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

#631

Post by kakarot »

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…

Uh, no? I tell my friends and family that Chrome is the new IE and they should get Firefox or a different Chromium-based browser. Stop projecting.

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

#632

Post by Manishearth »

bunnycorn wrote: post #614
Manishearth wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the point being made is that Webkit/Safari are often the slowest of the bunch which is fine when you have three others but now each browser effectively has veto power and the expectation is that Webkit will wield it often. It's saying "oh no, now Webkit can block things", not "oh no, we don't have enough strong implementations"

Since when WebKit is the "slowest of the bunch"? WebKit's JavaScriptCore is the best performant of the big 4.

Slowest to implement things.

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

#633

Post by opencl »

glenneroo wrote: post #559
pjc50 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe one "feature" is that Edge is the only browser where Netflix runs with 1080p (1920 x 1080 i.e. full HD) streaming due to requirements of the encryption layer (within Windows?) not working with other browsers. I verify this regularly with Chrome/FF/Edge. It's unfortunate that Edge is such a horrible experience, 1080p is rarely worth it, as Edge crashes or jitters a lot, even when running on Ryzen 8-core, 64GB RA…

There are FF/Chrome extensions that make Netflix run at 1080p. It is a DRM problem but apparently the DRM is not very effective.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/force-1080p-n...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/netflix-1080p/cank...

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

#634

Post by kakarot »

vic20forever wrote: post #370
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…

> 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…

9/10 times when I encounter a bug either when doing web dev or just browsing the web, it's because of Chrome/WebKit improperly implementing standards.

It's not Firefox's fault if people aren't testing their websites on both browsers, just like it wasn't Firefox or Chrome's fault whenever people only tested their webpages with Internet Explorer and its mess of exclusive APIs and deviations from standards.

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

#635

Post by [deleted] »

jhasse wrote: post #296
pcwalton wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, how do I get the Chromium team to integrate parallel layout written in Rust? Sometimes innovation is at odds with whatever Google's Chrome team feels like doing. That is why engine diversity is a good thing.

Suggest it to them?? If it's really faster, why wouldn't they merge it?

[deleted]

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

#636

Post by pcwalton »

jhasse wrote: post #400
nordsieck wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> OK, how do I get the Chromium team to integrate parallel layout written in Rust? > Suggest it to them?? If it's really faster, why wouldn't they merge it? How many major software projects do you know of that will casually add a programming language?

It wouldn't be casually if the parallel renderer brought in some real benefits.

Every time I've suggested something along those lines to the Chromium folks I've gotten "we're doing it in C++ ;)"

I mean, it makes sense—Google has an enormous team on Chromium and they don't want to have another language to support. But that is precisely why it's important to not have the entire Web under Alphabet's reporting structure.

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

#638

Post by cztomsik »

riskable wrote: post #618
cztomsik wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem with IE box model was that they implemented it before the standard got finished (and changed) so it was impossible to fix it without breaking already existing web pages. The situation is not very different from now with Chrome implementing unfinished proposals.

The problem isn't that Microsoft implemented an unfinished API. It's that they implemented an unfinished API and didn't update it later to reflect the changes . When new APIs are in development (in a standards body) by all means implement the incomplete/early version in your browser! Just put a warning somewhere for developers that changes will happen and that they should expect to have to update their code along wit…

I'm not defending MS, but it's also not that they went and intentionally (and suddenly) introduced box-model incompatibilities, that's just not the whole truth.

BTW: I've recently found this MSDN blog with explanations on some of their decisions (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/)

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

#639

Post by deno »

millstone wrote: post #335
deno wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes Apple could do leagues more to improve testability of Safari; they're by far the worst in this area. The broader point is that applications may perform or behave radically differently even under a Chrome monoculture. So you're still on the hook for platform-specific testing, if you actually care.

I wouldn’t say radically... If it’s the same engine then platform testing becomes a nice-to-have not essential.

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

#640

Post by pythonaut_16 »

insulanus wrote: post #253
Osiris wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting, I don't see this argument made against other open source projects that are dominant, such as the Linux kernel. I rarely see people saying that there need to be competing kernel projects with completely separate code bases but all trying to conform to the same ABI, etc. (Yes, I know there are other kernels out there, but my point is that people don't complain that Linux is so dominant like they do ab…

It comes down to who's in charge, and what their motivations are. Google's motivations include learning everything about you, and how to serve you more ads. Linus' motivations include writing solid code and flipping people the bird. It's not just about the current situation, either. When Linus finally goes to the bitbucket in the sky, there are so many companies, organizations and private individuals with an incentiv…

Perhaps Microsoft adopting Chromium will be healthy for Chromium too then. I don't expect Microsoft to immediately keep pace with Google's browser teams but they should be able to contribute significantly to Chromium and help balance out the direction of the project.
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