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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

#691

Post by jansan »

blauditore wrote: post #342
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.

I kind of agree, but there's often some double standard in place: Having a minor slip in Safari would often be totally unacceptable because some designer is Mac user and sees those. People are often extrapolating their own perspective to the whole world, which is known as a common error when designing things ("you are most likely not the average user").

I a feature is broken in any major current browser, this renders the feature unusuable. I do a lot of SVG and boy you have to be extremely careful when using advanced (and some basic) features, because chances are that one major browser implements this feature buggy or not at all. And Safari/Webkit certainly has most issues with SVG support.

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

#692

Post by ravenstine »

alwillis wrote: post #222
ravenstine wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is broken on purpose in a lot of ways when it comes to security, for better or for worse. I've had to do a lot of workarounds for Safari to compensate for the restrictions on cross-origin frames even though the host allows for the origin in its CSP, just as an example. Then of course there's the lack of support for WebRTC and virtually no support for PWAs. As Apple doesn't really view itself as a software comp…

Then of course there's the lack of support for WebRTC and virtually no support for PWAs. From Webkit.org, June 7, 2017 [1]: >Today we are thrilled to announce WebKit support for WebRTC, available on Safari on macOS High Sierra, iOS 11, and Safari Technology Preview 32. In this post, we will go through an overview of our implementation. We will have future posts that cover more best practices for developers. [1] https…

Thanks for pointing that out. Still, Safari is super late to the game with WebRTC.

Safari supports service workers but without support for the Web App Manifest, hence no "Add to Homescreen", PWAs are basically crippled on iOS.

https://webkit.org/status/#specification-web-app-manifest https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Manifest

Android Browser, Chrome, and Firefox all support this feature at this point but not Safari or anything that uses WebKit. So while service workers are supported on iOS Safari, PWAs are relegated to being mere cached webpages. The manifest is probably more important than service workers because without it all you have is a webpage that is treated no differently from other web pages. A progressive web app is supposed to share characteristics with normal apps by definition and be recognized as such by the browser, which is still not the case in Safari.

So yes, there is still virtually no support for PWAs. There would be partial support if some manifest features were implemented, but currently it's not supported at all.

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

#693

Post by seba_dos1 »

gdfasfklshg4 wrote: post #628
sametmax wrote: post #547

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. It seems very unlikely: - Mozilla has been in a far worse uderdog position before during the IE6 era, with way more incompatible sites and less funding. - Mozilla is not for profit. Fighting for the open Web is one of their goal.…

> Mozilla has the hardcore geeks on their side. Even during the V30 to v50 transition period where Firefox was, at the time, clearly an inferior product, we kept using it to support it for the sheer ideal of it. We hoped it would come back from it, and it happened: Firefox is now a fast, lean and fantastic browser again. I use Firefox. I always have. My experience is totally different to yours. Before FF57 it was a s…

The multiprocess architecture makes it run faster on newer machines, but slower on older ones. Have you tried disabling it (limiting to one process) though?

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

#694

Post by [deleted] »

criddell wrote: post #583
tracker1 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Chrome really that far off from IE on market share when the MS anti-trust talk started?

Chrome could have 100% market share and it wouldn't necessarily be a problem. If I understand it correctly, Google would have to abuse their market position in some way.

[deleted]

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

#695

Post by bzbarsky »

criddell wrote: post #583
tracker1 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Chrome really that far off from IE on market share when the MS anti-trust talk started?

Chrome could have 100% market share and it wouldn't necessarily be a problem. If I understand it correctly, Google would have to abuse their market position in some way.

Last I checked, Chrome blocks autoplay of videos with sound on websites. Except for YouTube, where they allow it.

If they were a monopoly, that would seem like a pretty clear abuse of market position.

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

#696

Post by seba_dos1 »

demarq wrote: post #678
tssva wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Firefox is now a fast, lean and fantastic browser again. This is not my experience. On my MacBook Pro it is slow and tends to cause system lockups on a regular basis. Everytime there is a new announcement about how the new Firefox has improved performance and stability I give it a try and each time am disappointed. On my phone the Firefox browser is almost unusably slow and slow enough that it can't replace Chrome.…

Same here, I see a whole lot of marketing and people saying it is fast, but 10 minutes into trying it seems to just struggle. Watching youtube in 1080p it struggles and CPU goes up, fans are on. Scrolling Heavy e-commerce sites (amazon, jumia)... CPU goes up, fans are on. Yet, run chrome on these same sites, with the same settings and no fan noises/frezes at all.

I seem to recall that there was a bug on macOS which made it eat too much CPU on non-native screen resolutions (UI scaling) for some reason, which likely explains drastic differences in how people perceive Firefox there.

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

#697

Post by ryacko »

Jyaif wrote: post #327
ryacko wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s other reasons beyond rendering engines and JS JIT compilers to fork.

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

#698

Post by JohnBooty »

aphextron wrote: post #211
JohnBooty wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is just depressing and honestly a little baffling. Seems contrary to Microsoft's interests - why let Google control this aspect of the Web? (Obviously, MS will maintain their own fork and can permanently fork away whenever they want/need to, I guess, so it's not like they've locked themselves in forever, but still) I actually wasn't aware of the problems with Edge. This is the first I've heard of them... I…

>Yeah, this is just depressing and honestly a little baffling. Seems contrary to Microsoft's interests - why let Google control this aspect of the Web? Chromium != Google. Chromium is the FOSS project that Chrome is based off of.

Google's employees make up the bulk of Chromium's contributors and leadership.

Microsoft is of course free to diverge from it as much as they like but, like any other Chromium-based browser, they are either going to be joined at the hip to Google's decisions, or they'll be downstream consumers. The bottom line is that while MS will be contributors to Chromium they won't be in the driver's seat.

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

#699

Post by JohnBooty »

cm2187 wrote: post #498
JohnBooty wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is just depressing and honestly a little baffling. Seems contrary to Microsoft's interests - why let Google control this aspect of the Web? (Obviously, MS will maintain their own fork and can permanently fork away whenever they want/need to, I guess, so it's not like they've locked themselves in forever, but still) I actually wasn't aware of the problems with Edge. This is the first I've heard of them... I…

Not that I have any insight into Microsoft but it appears to be consistent with their strategy of disengaging from the client. Why bear the cost of maintaining your own browser technology given the extraordinary complexity, a low market share and little to no associated revenues. I wouldn't be too sad if Firefox was switching to chromium either. Then developers would only need to worry about rendering into one engine…

Ah, I can see you weren't around during the days of IE6, when the web stagnated and suffered under Microsoft's stranglehold and ineptitude.

Keep in mind that, for quite a few years, developers welcomed the oncoming Microsoft browser monopoly; IE3/IE4/IE5 were generally better and faster than their Netscape counterparts and Opera was so niche as to be irrelevant. Then Netscape (the for-profit enterprise) folded and there was no viable competition to IE for a while, and the broken mess known as IE6 became a serious problem for years since it had something like 98% market share.

Trusting any company, even Google, to be the de facto sole steward of the web is insane. They are a for-profit company. That may not make them intrinsically evil, but they sure as hell aren't intrinsically good.

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

#700

Post by JohnBooty »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #181
JohnBooty wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is just depressing and honestly a little baffling. Seems contrary to Microsoft's interests - why let Google control this aspect of the Web? (Obviously, MS will maintain their own fork and can permanently fork away whenever they want/need to, I guess, so it's not like they've locked themselves in forever, but still) I actually wasn't aware of the problems with Edge. This is the first I've heard of them... I…

>I actually wasn't aware of the problems with Edge. This is the first I've heard of them... Same, but neither of us actually use Edge. Just like nearly everyone reading this comment.

Browser market share isn't decided by people like us. It's decided by people who use the default browser in their environment.
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