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Chromium-based Edge preview builds

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Chromium-based Edge preview builds

#71

Post by rayiner »

pcwalton wrote: post #61
rayiner wrote: post #60

I liked Edge because of its fantastic battery life (for browsing, Edge was like having a 25% larger battery.) I was annoyed that many sites seemed to be Chrome-specific, including some I absolutely need to rely on. I switched to Brave, and it's amazing. Chrome-based, but somehow results in far better battery life than Chrome.

> I liked Edge because of its fantastic battery life (for browsing, Edge was like having a 25% larger battery.) For what it's worth, I suspect this is the result of using the system DirectComposition. If you look at the more recent additions to that API, they're essentially just CSS 3. Basically, Windows integrates portions of CSS deeply into its OS stack, like macOS does with Core Animation. It's sad that moving to…

Neat, I didn't even know that existed.

> Compositions and animations created by DirectComposition are passed to a built-in component of Windows called Desktop Window Manager (DWM) for rendering to the screen. Therefore, no special rendering components or UI frameworks are required on the computer.

Wow. Everything old is new again: https://nnc3.com/mags/LM10/issue/04/Berlin.pdf.

(As an aside, Berlin has somehow almost completely disappeared from Google. I had trouble remembering the name, and I searched "display server scene graph corba" and it didn't come up in the first few pages. Finally found this slashdot announcement: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/02/11/24/189226/fresco-m1-re...)

Re: Chromium-based Edge preview builds

#72

Post by pcwalton »

rayiner wrote: post #71
pcwalton wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I liked Edge because of its fantastic battery life (for browsing, Edge was like having a 25% larger battery.) For what it's worth, I suspect this is the result of using the system DirectComposition. If you look at the more recent additions to that API, they're essentially just CSS 3. Basically, Windows integrates portions of CSS deeply into its OS stack, like macOS does with Core Animation. It's sad that moving to…

Neat, I didn't even know that existed. > Compositions and animations created by DirectComposition are passed to a built-in component of Windows called Desktop Window Manager (DWM) for rendering to the screen. Therefore, no special rendering components or UI frameworks are required on the computer. Wow. Everything old is new again: https://nnc3.com/mags/LM10/issue/04/Berlin.pdf . (As an aside, Berlin has somehow almos…

Yeah, it's neat. The long-term goal is to move Firefox to use DirectComposition as much as it can, by the way, by integrating it into WebRender. I've done some work on this with the "planeshift" library. I wouldn't be surprised if Chromium eventually does the same (as it already uses Core Animation on macOS).

Re: Chromium-based Edge preview builds

#74

Post by fxbl0i »

geofft wrote: post #43
emp_ wrote: post #11

To the surprise of no one, its basically chrome. Even my google account came in logged in automatically, same recent sites etc. I wonder if the roadmap will include things like dark mode, I never used the annotations feature so can't vouch much for it. I'm yet to try to make a MS Teams call but looking good so far. The single engine world domination plan takes one step further today.

Google account integration seems pretty non-strategic for Microsoft - do we have any idea if this is intentional? (I would have assumed they'd implement all the cloud stuff backed by Live accounts.)

This new Edge seems to reuse the cookie jar, history, etc. of the real Edge, so emp_ is probably already logged in to his Google account on the real Edge. (Corrections welcome, but it's what I've noticed after trying it.)

Re: Chromium-based Edge preview builds

#75

Post by fxbl0i »

This wasn't necessary, they just had to get rid of the slow, ugly UWP UI framework. The Edge rendering engine was fine.

It looks like this new Edge uses Win32 instead of UWP, so people will actually use it, and they'll pat their own backs thinking the problem was the rendering engine. No, it was the stupid UI framework. >:(

Re: Chromium-based Edge preview builds

#76

Post by WorldMaker »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #50

I hope Microsoft makes a point of prioritizing efficiency over features in Chrome-Edge. Google has seemingly placed low resource consumption and low battery life impact as tertiary concerns (at best), opting to woo developers with a constant stream of hastily developed shiny features instead. As it is the only browser that seems to care at all about not sucking your battery life down a black hole is Safari…

The Edge team has repeatedly said that Performance/Battery Life has always been important to them. One of the reasons they've mentioned for why they are going Chromium-based is that it gives them more time to focus on Performance/Battery rather than web platform bugs, and they've definitely listed Performance/Battery as a continued "Focus Area" for the team.

Re: Chromium-based Edge preview builds

#77

Post by lousken »

saagarjha wrote: post #53
lousken wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope Apple would turn away from webkit and invested into firefox. They're both privacy focused so it seems like a logical choice.

Why would they do that when they essentially control an entire browser engine?

Because safari will sooner or later become another Edge. Apple doesn't invest enough into safari and now it's a browser which is most behind in terms of technologies.

Re: Chromium-based Edge preview builds

#78

Post by zamadatix »

fxbl0i wrote: post #75

This wasn't necessary, they just had to get rid of the slow, ugly UWP UI framework. The Edge rendering engine was fine. It looks like this new Edge uses Win32 instead of UWP, so people will actually use it, and they'll pat their own backs thinking the problem was the rendering engine. No, it was the stupid UI framework. >:(

99% of people probably never even noticed Edge is UWP based. I don't really think MS switched over because they were losing out on performance either. Seems more like they were just tired of maintaining a first class browser stack that wasn't very popular when using Google's gets them everything just about the same.

Re: Chromium-based Edge preview builds

#79

Post by kerng »

lousken wrote: post #49
fgonzag wrote: post #28

I wish they've would have gone with Firefox's Quantum, in order to try and at least balance out web market shares. MSFT no longer has any leverage in the web, so trying to keep it fair and accessible (no browser monopolies) should be a priority for them (especially since they have quite a few web platforms like office 365)

I hope Apple would turn away from webkit and invested into firefox. They're both privacy focused so it seems like a logical choice.

Stupid question probably... since I haven't had an iPhone for a couple years. Is Safari there still a thing? On my Mac I'm not using Safari at all. Havent opened it a single time since i got my latest MacBook - well I must have to download firefox but I dont remember.

I remember at one point Apple wouldnt allow any other browsers rendering engines on iOS - is that still the case?

Re: Chromium-based Edge preview builds

#80

Post by kerng »

emp_ wrote: post #11

To the surprise of no one, its basically chrome. Even my google account came in logged in automatically, same recent sites etc. I wonder if the roadmap will include things like dark mode, I never used the annotations feature so can't vouch much for it. I'm yet to try to make a MS Teams call but looking good so far. The single engine world domination plan takes one step further today.

Wouldnt this be expected that your Edge cookies continue to work? Or are you saying it uses Chrome's cookies?
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