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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

#731

Post by nl »

taf2 wrote: post #113
nl wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web developers no longer need to worry about supporting CSS and other edge-cases across various browser engines. So, as the OP said - back to the bad old days of IE6 dominance.

Not even close. IE6 was a browser that was set in stone. It only ran on Windows. It's legacy that we live with today is the ActiveX controls that are basically parts of Windows. MS stopped innovating on the browser part of IE6 and focused on ActiveX e.g. native Windows components that you could use in the browser. You can't talk about IE6 and not mention how embedded it was with Windows. That is what made IE6 bad. Yo…

This reaction is pretty interesting.

I was doing some webdev back then, and whilst everything you said was true it was the lack of cross browser CSS and Javascript testing which led to the real frustration.

Back in 2002/03 IE6 had over 90% marketshare, and justifying testing in anything else was a constant battle.

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

#732

Post by kapsi »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #616

FINALLY!!! The bottom line is that Chromium has won in all areas of the engine wars and Chrome has won the browser wars. Heck Chrome has even won in the testing area once it release a headless version. Everyone uses Chrome as a baseline when checking how their site renders. Like 99% of Windows users, I used Edge to download Chrome. This is a smart move by Microsoft, having the browser that is package with Windows, us…

I don't think most people know that rendering engines exist.

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

#733

Post by WorldMaker »

WorldMaker wrote: post #720

There is something really weird/off about this rumor. It doesn't make sense for Microsoft to drop EdgeHTML. EdgeHTML is doing really well. The big thing that jumps out here is the repeated use of the term Chromium rather than Blink. That might just be a non-technical writer here, but what if it is not? EdgeHTML has been working for years to be open source, and maybe even cross-platform. Could this project actually be…

I'm increasingly convinced that this rumor is about a replacement for ElectronJS that somehow got filtered through a non-technical reporter telephone game.

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

#734

Post by tracker1 »

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.

I'm not suggesting that its' necessarily a problem, except in cases where Google abuses their position to the negative effect of competitors.

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

#735

Post by tlynchpin »

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…

If you would like to customize your Firefox tab experience, install Waterfox [0] and then install Tab Mix Plus.

[0] https://www.waterfoxproject.org

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

#736

Post by mastrsushi »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #499
mastrsushi wrote: post #221

Microsoft should give up entirely on Internet browser development. I cannot see any good reason to throw their money away like this. They are a company too dependant on legacy software to bother competing with Google and Mozilla. Cloud services seem to be their brightest modern opportunity, but they really weren't prepared for the 2010's. Competing with Chrome is just chasing cars. Of course they've always had the ad…

> Microsoft should give up entirely on Internet browser development. I cannot see any good reason to throw their money away like this. If Microsoft release a low power device like Surface Go or future ARM devices then reviewers and people open up Chrome and it runs jerky and laggy then they'll blame the device. If Chrome becomes the default browser and gives you bad battery performance then people blame the device. M…

Unless there is a major breakthrough in x86 compatibility, Windows isn't coming to ARM. They tried it with RT and they supported RISC far back as NT 4. I think 10 is great, but they've come to admit they're pretty much boxed into the whole Wintel monopoly they once thrived.

You do have some good points. I was thinking how bad it would look on their part if their OS doesn't even have its own browser. Even Gnome has a browser, which is pretty much FirefoxGTK.

I can't put my finger on why Microsoft should cease browser development. But adopting Chromium is definitely a good step in that direction. It's cheaper, normal people won't notice (or care), and they can keep branding.

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

#737

Post by Endy »

int_19h wrote: post #730
Endy wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your disdain for that feature to be amusing, because one of the first plugins I've downloaded for Firefox, SeaMonkey, and Pale Moon whenever I've installed them on a computer is an EPUB reader. As much as my genuine preference would be to have a web-browser with a "Do One Thing Well" mindset, the fact is that EPUB is great because it's just a compressed and ordered set of XML files, which a web browser is very…

My disdain for that feature comes from a position of someone who reads e-books a lot. A browser is about the most useless place I can think of putting it, because it is very rare that I want to just take a peek at an ePub file while I'm surfing (unlike with PDFs, which serve as a de-facto pixel-perfect text format for the web). A proper book reader app needs e.g. library management.

Ah, see, there's the big difference. You and I have vastly different use-cases - something I've noticed seems to get disregarded lately in dev circles. I don't need a software library manager, I already have a file manager (Windows Explorer) for that, and I really can't help but read to the end of a chapter. So all I need is the XML parser and renderer. There is no such thing as 'one true way' to use a computer. I don't ask you to use my solutions to the problems you face; I just ask that if you develop one of the programs I rely on for that solution, that you don't go and break it.

Over time, I've found that (in general) Microsoft is less prone to breaking what has already worked than Mozilla or Google. I don't know about Apple beyond iOS, and I don't know about that for the backend, because on the iPad, the only non-OS Apple software I use is iBooks (hasn't changed much in terms of 'tap a book, read a book'), Notes (hasn't changed much in terms of 'open a note, type a note, it autosaves'), and Podcasts, which also hasn't undergone much change. Heck, it's the App Store itself that's most broken for me now, to the point that I've come to rely on sites like appapp.io when I want to find a program or game; and then I pop over directly to the app store page for the software. With Google, I'm glad I never used GMail in the first place because I've heard the redesign is terrible. Maps are still pretty good though there's been some new "features" that made my life more complex; but every new version of Android that I get when I change mobile devices seems to bring with it a new host of settings issues and things it doesn't allow me to do without rooting it. Mozilla, well, let's just say the downturn started when Australis was mentioned and there have been no significant bright spots (Pocket, the introduction of telemetry, & Mr. Robot being significant lows).

Sorry for going a bit sideways to the topic, but honestly, TL;DR: different strokes for different folks. I hope you genuinely like your desktop ebook reader of choice so much that you wouldn't feel a web browser can do the job as well, but I don't need the heavy-duty support of a separate reader program when the addon or built-in feature works for my needs.

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

#738

Post by Endy »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #693
gdfasfklshg4 wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

They've disabled that setting.

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

#739

Post by russdpale »

rmykhajliw wrote: post #142

Hallelujah! It's much better than maintaining a dead edge browser users use only once to download chrome. The biggest question whether people will use a new branded Microsoft browser or not because many of us remember a decade of ie6.

This is what I have been saying to my colleagues. Microsoft should not put their branding anywhere near the new browser even if it is industry acknowledged as their browser. That definitely includes any and all IE branding.

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

#740

Post by int_19h »

Endy wrote: post #737
int_19h wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My disdain for that feature comes from a position of someone who reads e-books a lot. A browser is about the most useless place I can think of putting it, because it is very rare that I want to just take a peek at an ePub file while I'm surfing (unlike with PDFs, which serve as a de-facto pixel-perfect text format for the web). A proper book reader app needs e.g. library management.

Ah, see, there's the big difference. You and I have vastly different use-cases - something I've noticed seems to get disregarded lately in dev circles. I don't need a software library manager, I already have a file manager (Windows Explorer) for that, and I really can't help but read to the end of a chapter. So all I need is the XML parser and renderer. There is no such thing as 'one true way' to use a computer. I do…

I don't have any objections to the OS having ebook reader out of the box - I just think that it would be better as a separate app, rather than a browser. Browser is for, well, browsing the web. Reader is for working with ePub files, for starters - even in the scenario which you describe. And it can still be a basic viewer app that just opens on double click, with advanced functionality (like a library) available for those who need it.

To me, it's the decision to shove that functionality into Edge that feels like a typical developer shortcut: they wanted ePub, and ePub is basically HTML, and Edge already does HTML, so let's do a reader as an extension! But it doesn't really make any sense to me UX-wise. Again, the only reason for something to be in the browser like that is if you routinely open documents of that type via links. And I just don't see people doing that with ePub - note how your scenario doesn't involve anything of a kind.

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