[HN Gopher] The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview
___________________________________________________________________
The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview
Author : MikusR
Score : 340 points
Date : 2020-01-15 17:09 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.windows.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.windows.com)
| 0xdead wrote:
| I'm not entertaining any new browsers that aren't written in
| Rust.
| FpUser wrote:
| For some reason it had decided that I am Italian. Took me a while
| to decipher and bring it back to English
| dunham wrote:
| It gave me the page in english, but the license agreement in
| Russian.
| downerending wrote:
| So you're saying that if the license was in English you would
| have read it?
| dunham wrote:
| To be honest, I paid more attention to the Russian version
| than I would English. I kinda know how to pronounce it, and
| it's fun to see if I can figure out any of the words.
| elygre wrote:
| Russian license agreement, and then menus and texts in
| Bulgarian! I ended up using the beta version I have installed
| to find the language setting :-)
| Pigo wrote:
| I'm glad to see this, and I hope it's a strong competitor.
| Stronger competition pushes everyone and we end up with better
| results as users.
|
| That said, browser debates often come off like the Nintendo
| versus Sega arguments I remember as a kid. It's funny how people
| become married to one.
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| We have effectively lost a competitor. Microsoft is now
| contributing to Chrome development.
|
| The best long-term outcome for the web would arguably to have
| been for Microsoft to put more resources into their in-house
| EdgeHTML browser instead of throwing it out and reskinning
| Chrome.
| wayneftw wrote:
| We have gained an effective competitor and lost an
| ineffective one.
|
| Just because it's the same codebase doesn't mean they're not
| competing.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| _Microsoft is now contributing to Chrome development._ And
| now everybody can benefit from their hard work. But somehow
| it 's better for them to duplicate work for their 1%
| marketshare?
| robbrown451 wrote:
| It's beyond reskinning. They can change anything they want
| to.
|
| Let's say Google says they don't like some privacy feature
| because it hurts their bottom line in terms of ad revenue. So
| they decide not to have that in Chrome.
|
| Sure, people could switch to in-house Edge or Firefox. But
| they don't want to switch, because for whatever reason,
| Google is better able to make a browser that people like.
| Attested to by the tiny market share Edge has (and fairly
| small share Firefox has, notwithstanding its popularity
| within the HN community).
|
| Switching to Chromium based Edge is a much easier move for
| users, assuming Microsoft decides to second-guess Google's
| decision, which they can do easily and have strong incentives
| to do -- keeping in mind that the number one complaint people
| have about Chrome is that they don't trust Google.
| [deleted]
| c-smile wrote:
| What happened with font rendering?
|
| Fonts are rendered with thinner lines in new Edge (on the left):
| http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-fo...
|
| Such rendering does not match rest of Windows...
|
| New Edge is definitely less readable, and Google Chrome exhibits
| the same problem.
| dubcanada wrote:
| Chromium has font rendering built into it, I am guessing
| Microsoft didn't ripe it out and replace it with their own as
| it's not cross platform.
| c-smile wrote:
| That's why I think having multiple browser implementations is
| beneficial.
|
| Proposal to Democrats: to unite with Republicans in one party
| as Republicans have "better development tools".
| pizza wrote:
| Although I don't think such a comment is appropriate for
| this thread, I'm curious as to what you mean.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It's good to have alternatives.
| jpadkins wrote:
| do you believe Democrat and Republicans have significant
| policy differences?
| mc32 wrote:
| I'd be afraid that they would cause politburo style
| politics wherein it'd be a pretty big umbrella but
| ultimately it'd result in the main faction always winning.
| At least with with Repub/Dem bipolarity there is room for
| movement and adjustment (to the right or to the left).
| mistersquid wrote:
| > New Edge is definitely less readable, and Google Chrome
| exhibits the same problem.
|
| The left render has less contrast but, to my eyes, is clearer.
| Look, for example, at the upvote and downvote buttons.
|
| The right image's buttons are faint and blurred (jaggy), while
| the left image's buttons are sharp.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| Left side is actually sharp, with subpixel smoothing. Right
| side is awful (just like many parts of post-Vista Windows) with
| apparent grayscale AA.
|
| This is something they actually got right; it's one thing that
| was terrible about IE and the old Edge, and that I'd bet was
| subconsciously turning many people off (in my case, consciously
| making me want to tear my eyes out). If you can't see the
| difference, open dev console on the screenshot and run:
| document.body.style.zoom = 1 / window.devicePixelRatio
|
| If this doesn't work in the new Edge, try in Chrome (not sure
| if Edge supports this zoom mechanism). You should definitely be
| able to see the difference in sharpness.
|
| Edit: Maybe also worth mentioning, Firefox's bold font
| rendering is one thing keeping me away from it. Lack of the
| above zoom mechanism is another. Not sure if I'm alone in
| these.
| skybrian wrote:
| Both sides of the screenshot are perfectly readable. Why make
| such a big deal about such a small difference?
| mehrdadn wrote:
| Well, to me it is a big deal. I'm not trying to make it
| one, it just is. Best analogy I can give you is probably
| the one in the sibling comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057875
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| All in all, I'd say the one on the left is more pleasant to
| read and easier on the eyes, despite being "thinner". The
| jagged edges on the right feel on my eyes like the sound of
| relentless blackboard scratching.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| That's a really nice way to put it, I could never find a
| decent way to describe it until now!
| noisem4ker wrote:
| _> Right side is awful (just like many parts of post-Vista
| Windows) with apparent grayscale AA_
|
| By "post-Vista" you mean Windows 8 and later? Vista and 7
| (its refinement) were the peak of subpixel-antialiased
| ClearType with the Segoe font. It was with Metro and its
| animated, rotation-enabled, mobile-first design language that
| antialiasing was downgraded to greyscale.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| No, I mean since Vista and later. Ever since DWM was
| introduced, anything rendered on a DWM surface (or
| something along those lines, I don't know the details) has
| been blurry. The taskbar text is an easy example. The Metro
| UI did extend that to even more places, though.
| lostmsu wrote:
| This comparison is sort of meaningless, until you tuned Clear
| Type.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| New Edge is more readable to me.
| brundolf wrote:
| I'll be honest, it took me a solid three minutes of looking
| back and forth between those pictures before I could see a
| difference
| spydum wrote:
| really? it's quite stark, especially if you examine the "y"s
| hobbes78 wrote:
| I have the opposite experience! The image on the right is
| almost pixelated; the image on the left has almost perfect
| diagonal lines!
| p1necone wrote:
| The one on the left looks _much_ better on the whole to me. It
| does seem to be making the font a little thinner though.
| sgc wrote:
| It's more readable to me. Eye doctor always tells me to
| distinguish between darker/fatter and more focused.
| raphlinus wrote:
| I'm going to take a guess that this is mostly due to the use of
| Skia. I think the problem is not so much with the rendering of
| fonts (which is still likely DWrite) but with the compositing
| of them onto the canvas. There, it's extremely difficult to get
| gamma right.
|
| I am sympathetic to this, as I've spent a lot of time at the
| low levels of this stuff. Unfortunately, one problem is that
| there is no one "right answer," and not really a lot of
| authoritative guidance on what's preferred. Some people prefer
| higher contrast, others prefer minimal distortion of the shapes
| and spacing. It's always a tradeoff.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| Is there anyone who cares about "minimal distortion" except
| devs or other people working on UI-related stuff? I know I
| don't even know what the ground truth is supposed to look
| like, so I'm not even sure I can notice distortion. I
| certainly don't care.
| raphlinus wrote:
| Well, there are many forms of distortion. When it comes to
| spacing in particular, yes, there are many people who are
| quite sensitive to it, others less so. You can Google
| "keming" for more information on that.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| I can notice bad kerning, that's not what I thought we're
| talking about. We're just talking about the distortion
| difference between these renderers we have, not
| arbitrarily terrible distortion. And awful kerning is not
| the kind of distortion a renderer like Chrome's has.
| p1necone wrote:
| Are they really not noticeable to you? The one on the
| right has clear jagged edges to me.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| Huh? No, I'm saying they _are_ clearly noticeable to me.
| Clarity /blurriness isn't the same thing as distortion as
| I see it.
| herf wrote:
| Left one (Edge?) has Cleartype enabled - you can see RGB edges
| if you zoom in.
| skierguy wrote:
| Aaaaand the EULA and menu buttons are in Italian when I download
| from the en-us version of the site. I knew there would be 90
| languages, but I didn't know I'd need to learn _all_ of them to
| use Edge!
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| It was french for me. German for a coworker. The language
| settings are all screwed up.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Just strip the query part of the URL. I guess the submitter of
| the blog post is an Italian.
| kirstenbirgit wrote:
| Tried to download it for macOS. It displayed a license
| agreement/download page in Polish (I assume.) My browser language
| is English, and I'm in Denmark. Maybe some other day.
| dmd wrote:
| The logo seems confusingly similar to Firefox's.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Definitely more similar to the explorer 'e', but I do see the
| resemblance to IceWeasel.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I don't think it evoques a flat letter 'e' at all, it is
| highly reminiscent of a blue Firefox logo though (so
| IceWeasel probably, if I remembered that logo), IMO.
| SanchoPanda wrote:
| Why save pages as mhtml by default (Android)?
| srhngpr wrote:
| Is this also susceptible to the same issues that resulted in
| developer of uBlock Origin to no longer create new versions for
| Chrome?
| Slashbot wrote:
| Is it better than Vivaldi(Chromium based) ... nope
|
| Just another shit bare bones so called browser.
|
| Its crazy to think that literately 20 fucking years ago, there
| existed browsers (like MyIE2 Trident Engine based (ie IE)) that
| had more features and customisation options than the fucking
| shite that is released to public now.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| So if I remember correctly this is another step in the history of
| KHTML -> WebKit -> Safari -> Chrome -> Edge.
|
| I'm sure much has changed internally but still, who would have
| imagined that _KDE and Apple_ would be the ones to produce the
| dominant core browser architecture for the whole world?
| ongezoutenboter wrote:
| What about the new fluent design language? Where is the fucking
| transparency in the tab bar MS.
| XzetaU8 wrote:
| https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/discussio...
| Devagamster wrote:
| Not sure why you're angry about this...
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Lots of people get angry about this kind of stuff. "I'd
| switch to Firefox if it supported Fluent" is something I have
| read multiple times in discussions about browsers.
| deaps wrote:
| So as somewhat of an outsider to the 'web game' as far as most
| people here (at HN) are concerned, but a relatively aware patron
| of web browsing software, I'll add my thoughts on the 'web
| browser' game...
|
| I feel like most people's browser of choice is chosen for reasons
| specific to their needs. For example: I _think_ that Firefox
| gives me a bit of additional privacy. I _think_ that Safari gives
| me that additional privacy as well. Some people may feel like
| Chrome just works. Some people just use what came with their OS.
|
| When I do front end work, I tend to always test it in Chrome
| first. Their devtools make that part of my job (quickly finding
| issues with the frontend) a lot easier. Once it works in Chrome,
| I'm sure that the code is working, and any problems I encounter
| will just require browser-specific tweaks.
|
| Anyway, long story short...I think that Microsoft really needs to
| pick something that Edge is best at if they want people to have a
| reason to use it (PS loading a highly browser-optimized page some
| number of milliseconds faster than the competition just doesn't
| do it for me, personally). Their niche has always just kind of
| been "well it's what comes with the OS" - and that's a fine way
| to get a userbase for sure. I'm not faulting them - but if that's
| their intended userbase, then I feel like they're putting a lot
| of effort into this whole browser game.
|
| I guess at the end of the day, I don't _trust_ IE or Edge or
| Chrome for my every day use. Whether that 's poorly placed
| mistrust or not, I'm uncertain. But in either event, that's how I
| feel.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| "The thing" for Edge is likely going to be the integration with
| rest of Microsoft ecosystem. Management tools, security tools,
| authentication etc. Of course these things matter mainly for
| organizations, who are otherwise running Microsoft stuff.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > I think that Safari gives me that additional privacy as well.
|
| Safari provides a material improvement in battery life.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Microsoft with New Edge seems to be trying to hit the same or a
| very similar "think that it gives additional privacy" spot as
| Safari. By being Chromium-based and Chrome-like it maybe is the
| "new" cross-platform Safari now that Apple retrenched and
| decided to stop bothering with making Safari cross-platform.
| blackearl wrote:
| Sometimes I'm forced to use it when administrating a O365
| tenant. That's something I guess
| pickpuck wrote:
| They are basically paying you a tiny bit to use Edge and Bing
| with their rewards program. You get points, which can be
| converted to Microsoft Gift Cards and some other stuff.
| izacus wrote:
| Previous Edge was significantly more power efficient than Chrome
| - did they tell anything about how much battery does this new
| version use?
| Jamwinner wrote:
| Of all the times I wish MS had written their own browser, this
| would be the first not in jest. The web is not open if only 2
| orgs can hope to stay functional displaying it.
| selectodude wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeHTML
|
| They already did that years ago.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| Does the android version lets you install ublock?
| Krasnol wrote:
| Great. Now give me a safe and reasonable way to uninstall it.
| retonom wrote:
| It's nice to see MS pushing for tracking protection as well.
| Firefox now takes the lead on privacy issues. Google will try to
| hold it off as not to hurt their own business. People will
| eventually migrate away from Chrome because of this and the
| tracking/ad business will go down. Now is a good time to do some
| thinking if you're in the online tracking and/or ad business.
| nattaylor wrote:
| Chrome announced it will drop support for third party cookies
| within 2 years. https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-
| more-private-web-...
| robbrown451 wrote:
| This is very good news.
|
| In my opinion, this does more to keep Google in check than had
| they gone with Firefox's engine, or stuck with their own. (I know
| not everyone agrees)
|
| People use Chrome because they consider it a better overall
| experience than other alternatives, and I happen to agree.
| (again, I get that not everyone here agrees with that) For
| whatever reason, Google has the resources and talent to make a
| browser that is preferred to the alternatives, by most regular
| users.
|
| Chromium based Edge allows users to get the best of Chrome
| without the worst of Google. Google knows that if they get too
| aggressive with decisions that are biased toward Google's bottom
| line (such as how they handle ad blocking and various privacy
| features), Microsoft can easily push back by changing these
| decisions in Edge. This is a very good thing.
|
| True, there is also pressure on Google from Firefox (people can
| abandon Chrome for Firefox if Google is too aggressive), and
| there is also Brave (and others) if you want the benefits of
| Chrome/Chromium without the worst stuff. But moving to Firefox is
| simply too big a move for most users and many don't like the
| downsides [1]. And Brave has their own revenue model to protect,
| and they don't have the deep pockets Microsoft has to resist the
| temptation to make decisions that benefit their bottom line in
| the short term.
|
| [1] In my case, I do a lot with MIDI in the browser, i.e.
| connecting a digital piano and using it within web sites that
| support it. Firefox doesn't support this yet, after years and
| years of talking about it. https://github.com/mozilla/standards-
| positions/issues/58 There are a ton of other things, but that one
| is a deal breaker for me. Works beautifully in the new Edge.
| mtgx wrote:
| > In my opinion, this does more to keep Google in check than
| had they gone with Firefox's engine, or stuck with their own
|
| We'll see. Microsoft gave up developing its own browser because
| it found it too hard to keep pace. So the question is what
| happens when Google goes in a direction Microsoft doesn't like
| with Chromium?
|
| Do they just adopt the changes as they are because they don't
| want to bother developing their very own browser once again, or
| will they create a hard fork of Chromium that they are willing
| to maintain independent of Google?
|
| I'm pretty skeptical it will be the latter, but I'd like to be
| proven wrong.
| mariushn wrote:
| Exactly. I hope MS will also take Android and release an MS
| version of it. Privacy oriented, no Google apps (that can't be
| removed either).
|
| This would put more pressure on Google than privacy fines from
| EU. Competition works best. I'm not an MS fan (using Linux at
| home, with vscode), but I'll happily switch.
|
| I wondered why MS didn't do this or partnered with Ubuntu
| instead of closing their Windows Phone business, fully giving
| up the mobile market.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| "Competition works best."
|
| Right... I mean, a certain very strategic kind of
| competition. Co-opetition? Direct competition would be simply
| offering a competing fully in-house browser or competing
| fully in-house mobile OS. This is kind of sneaky in that it
| lets Google do a lot of the heavy lifting, while still being
| able to yank the things (or add the things) that Microsoft
| wants.
|
| With regard to Edge adopting Chromium, I have to wonder
| whether Google sees this as a victory, or if they feel like
| Microsoft pulled one over on them.
| mouzogu wrote:
| I haven't looked into it but I hope that the use of the Chromium
| engine means web standards and feature support on par with Chrome
| and Firefox. They mention less fragmentation for web developers
| so I hope that that is what they are alluding to.
|
| I will "probably" never use this browser but I just hope that it
| doesn't open a new set of issues to deal with. I don't think it
| should
| vkaku wrote:
| Installed it. I use Firefox, but now I don't need
| Chromium/Chrome/Brave for any websites that do detect Blink.
| crescentfresh wrote:
| Installed itself entirely in German. What?
| dstaley wrote:
| I'm really curious why they released to stable with so many basic
| features missing. For example, your bookmarks won't sync between
| devices (although that was recently re-enabled in the preview
| channels). It sounds like they're not pushing out automatic
| updates right now anyway, so I'm not sure what this announcement
| amounts to. Why not wait until the 20H1 Windows 10 feature update
| (which sounds like the update that will include the stable
| version of Edge) is released to mark the first stable version?
| Just seems like a weird release schedule.
| _nickwhite wrote:
| I actually gave Edge Dev an honest try for a few months using
| it as my only browser. At some point it just stopped syncing
| bookmarks between my various computers (all Windows), and that
| was the breaking point for me. I went back to Firefox. I may
| give it another go if they can fix sync.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The blog posts mention that releasing it _today_ is a shot
| across the bow for Enterprise. Given Enterprises like their
| year+ efforts to "test" software before ever deploying it,
| they want Enterprise to start that process _today_ , ahead of
| 20H1 when all consumers presumably will be pushed to it.
|
| It's also a very subtle signal for several reasons to release
| it the day after Extended Support for Windows 7 _ended_. On the
| one hand, it supports Windows 7, so there is a possible mixed
| message there, which is why it is subtle. On the other hand,
| some of these Enterprises should realize that the last time the
| browser team at Microsoft did a release like this after /ahead
| of a Windows EOL they _highly_ revised their browser security
| support policy. (Back with IE11 adding support for a couple
| older versions of Windows and Microsoft immediately dropping
| support for IE <11, despite earlier "bundled with Windows
| support timeframe" promises.) It can be seen as a very subtle
| "IE is dead, move on from it, already, you dinosaur customers".
| chapium wrote:
| I use Edge (Canary) as my primary browser and appreciate how
| minimalist it is.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| llampx wrote:
| If you use the PDF or e-book functionality in Edge, you may want
| to hold off on upgrading. The PDF scrolling is not as smooth as
| on the older version.
| iotku wrote:
| Yeah, I threw a sizeable PDF (800MB textbook) at it and it's
| choking pretty hard compared to old Edge to the point where
| it's barely usable.
|
| Not a deal breaker for me because I don't have a touch screen
| and use an external PDF reader (sumatraPDF), but if I was using
| edge for heavy PDFs I would be rather disappointed
|
| Seems fine for PDFs that are a bit less extreme, but nowhere
| near as smooth as old edge.
| chirau wrote:
| 800MB textbook??? What kind of textbook is that and how many
| pages does it have? Or page dimension/image resolution???
| That is a very very large size for a pdf.
| iotku wrote:
| It's certainly not a typical PDF, but it's 1400 page
| physics textbook which seem to all be excessively large and
| unoptimized.
|
| Originally it was completely uncroped, and OCRing it seems
| to have grown it even larger.
|
| Not too familiar with details with PDFs but I suspect it's
| just a huge DPI render (maybe designed to go towards being
| printed) that could probably be reduced significantly if it
| was designed for normal consumption.
|
| All things considered it's amazing it works at all, but old
| Edge handled it a lot smoother.
| jandrese wrote:
| That's a problem the Firefox PDF viewer frequently suffers
| from as well. Give it a big complex PDF and it can choke very
| hard on stuff that Acrobat reader or xpdf open in under a
| second.
| iamaelephant wrote:
| None of the touch scrolling or gestures are as smooth as the
| old Edge, it's a real shame.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Extra sad because Microsoft briefly had their own PDF program
| (Reader) in Windows 8, but removed it in favor of making Edge
| the default program for opening PDFs.
| progfix wrote:
| Yeah, it was briefly on Windows 10 as well, it was my
| favourite PDF reader and now it's gone. Good job Microsoft.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Imagine if everything that was shelved due to marketing
| policies were compiled into a disc.
| gpvos wrote:
| And opensourced.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Microsoft <3 Open Source. I'm sure it's only a matter of
| time.
| spookyuser wrote:
| I am so sad about the fact that Edge can no longer read epubs
| and seems to have (so far) sub par pdf reading. It's been my go
| to pdf reader for a while now and I love the way it scrolls. It
| is so smooth - just like preview on a mac. I haven't found
| anything else that comes close to edge for the smoothness of
| its pdf reading on windows, so I will definitely be holding out
| on this update for as long as I can. I don't really need two
| chromium based browsers on my PC anyway.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Epubs should really be readable by web browsers. They're
| HTML, essentially.
| dtrailin wrote:
| I think generally scrolling is less smooth than in the old
| edge. That was one thing they got right and hopefully we'll see
| improvements in this area upstream in chromium.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| They are working on it.
| microtheo wrote:
| You're not wrong, but it is much faster than old edge and just
| as nicely integrated with touch. I say it's a big upgrade! :)
| boyadjian wrote:
| It's hard to compete with Chrome and Firefox, it's a fact.
| kerpele wrote:
| If someone told the young Linux freak me back in the early 2000s
| that one day Internet Explorer's rendering engine is based on the
| KDE rendering engine I would've probably died laughing and frozen
| in horror at the same time.
|
| Yeah, I realize there's probably nothing left if the old KHTML
| but it still does give me a chuckle.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Internet Explorer and Edge are two different products and co-
| exist. I wouldn't expect a Unix user to understand the
| difference though.
| loudmax wrote:
| But one wouldn't have been surprised to find out that the
| Microsoft's KHTML based browser doesn't run on any open source
| operating system.
| makach wrote:
| I love it!
| rdiddly wrote:
| Linked at https://microsoftedgewelcome.microsoft.com/en-
| us/privacy:
|
| _" We will honor your choices about browsing data and collect
| only what is needed to make your experiences better."_
| hyperdimension wrote:
| Given Microsoft's recent telemetry "features", I don't really
| think Microsoft's idea of "needed" and mine intersect...
| kgwxd wrote:
| "better" too.
| smileybarry wrote:
| And you can disable it entirely in "Settings" > "Privacy and
| services" > "Help improve Microsoft Edge".
| pacala wrote:
| Meaningless. There are people claiming with a straight face
| that targeted ads make user experience better. Wholesale
| collection and aggregation of personal user data will continue
| unabated.
| kylealden wrote:
| If you're interested in exactly what data is collected and
| what it is used for, this whitepaper is fairly exhaustive:
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/privacy-
| whit...
| tomerico wrote:
| Curious, why would targeted ads make the user experience
| worse? (putting privacy aside)
| manifestsilence wrote:
| This is an interesting debate, and one where I fear the
| young generation's attitudes seem to differ. My 16yo says
| she'd rather get targeted ads than non, because it's just
| more relevant and she might want to buy those things. She
| has zero concern about the psychological manipulation
| factor and assumes she will just say no if she doesn't want
| a product.
|
| I guess I can see where she's coming from, as I don't avoid
| physical stores when I'm not planning to buy things. Window
| shopping is fun. But still, I think all that tracking has a
| dark side that's difficult to convey to the generation that
| grew up taking it for granted. Are we just old and fear the
| new and unknown?
|
| The one thing I definitely hate is how bloated the web has
| gotten. Everything works great on my old computers that I
| switched over to linux, until I need to just google
| (duckduckgo) some simple piece of information on a forum.
| And then I find myself fantasizing about upgrading to an i7
| so I can read the same basic text that could be read online
| when 1ghz processors were a pipe dream.
|
| Edit: and this is with ad blockers and anti-trackers turned
| on. The whole browser experience is just slower, and I
| think the act of having to scan and block all that cruft
| must have an impact. Browsers used to function on Windows
| XP machines back in the day, right?
|
| Edit2: and then I see this thread on the HN front page
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054715
| skrebbel wrote:
| Why would getting shot make your life worse? (putting the
| pain and the bleeding aside)
| not_kurt_godel wrote:
| Targeted ads degrade user experiences for me because it's a
| reminder that someone or something that I don't know, knows
| about me.
|
| It's as if a stranger came up to you on the street, knew
| what brand of toilet paper you used at home, and asked if
| you wanted to buy more because you're almost out. Naturally
| you would wonder how this stranger knows these facts about
| you - do they snoop in your trash? Do they observe you in
| the bathroom through the window? Do they come in your home
| while you're away? We would consider such a world where
| this was normal to be Kafka-esque and dystopic. Anyone who
| gives an iota of care about personal privacy and dignity
| could (and arguably should) find implementation of the
| digital equivalent equally repulsive.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| You say "someone or something," and to me, that's a
| pretty big difference.
|
| I don't care if things know about me. If there is an
| actual human being who is directly looking at me,
| associating it with my face, etc, that is a lot more
| bothersome than some machine that is doing that.
|
| I understand that many people here don't make that
| distinction. I do care about privacy in some ways, but
| when you I "arguably should" find machines invading my
| privacy to repulsive, I guess I have to thank you for
| putting the word "arguably" in there, because I would
| argue that. It just doesn't bother me, and I am happier
| for not having one more thing to be bothered by.
| throwaheyy wrote:
| Advertising is a distraction and an attempt at
| psychological manipulation. That is obviously a worse
| experience, unless you're actually into being
| distracted/manipulated. The weasel words "targeted ads are
| better" imply comparison to untargeted ads and is a
| disingenuous statement.
| n4r9 wrote:
| It doesn't have to make it worse, just _not_ make it
| better. Almost no one ever says "I love using such-and-
| such a website, the adverts on the side are just so
| relevant".
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| _When I 'm looking for something_, relevant ads are
| great. Ads that were relevant to something I was looking
| for a month ago? Not so much.
| mrr54 wrote:
| If I'm looking for something I want to read trusted
| reviews of it, not ads.
| n4r9 wrote:
| When I'm looking for something, I'll usually have already
| done a thorough search around on google, ebay, amazon
| etc... and it's unlikely that targeted ads will show me
| something I've not yet seen.
| D-Coder wrote:
| You don't have a refrigerator collection???
| WorldMaker wrote:
| In addition to other answers in this thread: It's a form of
| cultural bubble.
|
| A lot of 20th Century pop culture was driven by or at least
| responded to advertising. When advertising has to hit the
| broadest demographics and speak to the largest audiences it
| has more pressure to be creative and interesting, so that
| people talk or think about it.
|
| It also lead to interesting moments of discovery when ads
| found audiences outside of what they expected.
|
| Targeted ads are more often preaching to an already sold
| choir, so they can just be lazier in almost every way. They
| break expectations of novelty in ads. They lose the ability
| to drive the discovery models that were the original
| driving force behind why ads even exist in the first place.
| They add yet another unnecessary border wall/bubble effect
| where we struggle to find shared cultural
| events/jokes/touchstones between groups of people, because
| just about no two people (even inside the same demographic
| group) are seeing the same ads these days.
| [deleted]
| slumdev wrote:
| As a kid, anytime I stayed home sick from school, I watched
| TV. I would see only advertisements for catheters and
| guaranteed-issue life insurance. They didn't occupy much of
| my conscious thought. They were annoying at worst.
|
| When I watched TV during prime time and on the weekends,
| though, the advertisements were for toys and products that
| interested me. In the blink of an eye, my entire outlook
| worsened because I needed those things and didn't have
| them. The advertisements were also a great distraction from
| homework and chores.
| anonymousab wrote:
| It's only meaningless because "only what is needed to make
| your experiences better" means anything that is useful for
| advertisers. I've never seen a company that purported to be
| more benign than that.
| sime2009 wrote:
| Regarding the topic of browser mono-cultures, I was web developer
| in the post browser war era in the early 2000s where we had a
| dominant IE6 and a stagnant browser landscape.
|
| It was bad.
|
| Real bad.
|
| But I'm actually fairly positive about MS getting into the
| chromium landscape and back into the game. Let's face it MS had
| lost all of its influence in the browser world before dropping IE
| and making this move. It is a Google/Chrome dominated world at
| the moment. But by adopting Chromium, MS can "catch up" on a
| technical level and also wield significant power inside the
| Chromium project itself. They have money and they have an
| experienced browser engine engineering team. They will be able to
| provide some balance to Google in this ecosystem. If push came to
| shove, forking chromium wouldn't be an idle threat from MS. They
| will have some power.
|
| On a technical level it looks like a move towards a mono-culture,
| but politically it looks like a chance at more balance and
| diversity to me.
| 300bps wrote:
| I agree that this is a good thing.
|
| I also called for it to happen over 5.5 years ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7909383
| microcolonel wrote:
| Chromium is open source, Microsoft has published most of their
| interesting work on Chromium itself. A monoculture is a big
| problem if the alternative is to _write a new browser to
| compete_ , less so if you can just fork and have the same start
| line.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm a noob web dev working in a small shop that sells a niche
| SaaS product.
|
| We had a customer push us to support Edge.
|
| The dev team (3 dudes) just looked at eachother and laid down
| the "No, Firefox or Chrome...".
|
| It's just so much pressure to dance around the "this one does
| this, that one doesn't" and generally we rarely run into any
| Firefox and Chrome issues. Edge, just not worth it for a small
| team.
|
| I'm glad we probabbly can direct them to the new Edge now
| (after some testing).
| dan1234 wrote:
| What are you using that Edge doesn't support?
|
| We treat Chrome/Safari/Edge/FF all as 1st class browsers and
| haven't had many problems (aside from Safari lacking U2F and
| exotic CSS props like motion-path).
| chrismorgan wrote:
| A few things I've been using without Edge support: #rgba
| and #rrggbbaa in CSS, <details>, Custom Elements v1. I have
| deliberately chosen to no longer polyfill these or change
| my process to avoid #rgba in the final CSS, so on my
| personal website various background colours are missing, I
| disable the light/dark theme switcher, and a terminal
| recording will be missing in an upcoming blog post.
| adventist wrote:
| Yeah it would be interesting to hear of the feature that Edge
| could not support.
| ken wrote:
| Last time I was doing web dev (maybe 2 years ago), I worked
| primarily in Firefox and Safari. _Chrome_ presented more
| issues for me than Edge ever did. I don 't think I ever had
| anything work in Chrome, and fail in Edge.
|
| I lived through the IE6 years, so I was never thrilled with
| any version of IE I had to support, but Edge was actually a
| good browser. Strange UI, solid engine.
| darekkay wrote:
| To be fair, Edge has a good feature support (check
| caniuse.com). It would be interesting to know what the exact
| issues your app has with the browser. Otherwise it sounds
| more like your devs like to use some vendor-specific hacks
| and blame Edge for it. I know there are some Flexbox things
| to consider, but nothing a small team can't handle.
|
| IE11 is another story, though.
| ewgoforth wrote:
| I'd also be curious to know what features that Edge doesn't
| support. I know it doesn't do everything Chrome does, but I
| haven't run into any scenarios that Edge didn't support in
| a long time.
|
| It's a pet peeve of mine that apps don't support
| Edge/Trident, Vivaldi, etc. It's easier to write cross-
| browser code than ever, but it seems like we're in the
| process of reverting back to the bad old days when IE6 was
| the only browser people supported, but it's Chrome now
| instead of IE.
| skalsk wrote:
| is this too fast
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I just wish they'd moved to Gecko instead of Chromium.
|
| It's not like Gecko is an inherently inferior engine by any
| stretch, and it would significantly bolster their marketshare
| so that developers actually have to test against it.
| thiagomgd wrote:
| At home, it's already my main browser. Love the work they are
| doing on it and it's a nice alternative to Chrome (everytime I
| try Firefox, I go back to Chrome, so...)
| mtgx wrote:
| Will this be update-able independently, or did they repeat the
| Edge mistake once again and tied its update to OS updates?
| hybrids wrote:
| I get why Microsoft did what they did.
|
| I just still wish they would have at least OSS'd EdgeHTML instead
| of just shoving it in a closet somewhere.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I don't see why they would've done that, given how much it was
| baked into other stuff behind the scenes throughout the years.
| Auditing it would be a massive undertaking that I'm not sure
| even the most well-off organization would like to try.
| techsupporter wrote:
| I wish they had thrown in with helping Firefox instead of
| handing even more web influence over to Google. A percentage of
| what Microsoft spent on EdgeHTML contributed to the Firefox
| project--ideally as employee time--would go a long way, along
| with the counterbalance of putting the Firefox engine and code
| base front and center of more Windows users.
| mook wrote:
| Unfortunately historically there was a history of Mozilla not
| being a very stable platform to develop on top of (though I
| have no idea if Chromium was worse). There had been at least
| two separate embedding APIs that have been abandoned (the
| original one in the ActiveX control era and the external one
| after they moved to Hg), at least three Electron-like things
| (prism, XULRunner, and positron), and the field of corpses of
| Mozilla-based apps (I've worked for two, there were lots
| more).
|
| Maybe they're better at API backwards compatibility now? Not
| sure; I'm unlikely to try again given previous experience.
| Which is a shame; I still use Firefox since it was called
| Phoenix...
|
| If anybody has more recent experience working on their stack,
| I'd be happy to be correctly though. Preferably with examples
| of projects that _haven't_ been burned.
| [deleted]
| faitswulff wrote:
| Cynical thought: in no way am I claiming this was the only
| reason for Microsoft choosing Blink, but it's probably easier
| to find and replace Google analytics APIs with Microsoft
| endpoints than it is to add them into a code base after the
| fact.
| rdsubhas wrote:
| Chromium is not the same as Google Chrome. Chromium is open
| source and vendor neutral. Google Chrome adds the Google
| stuff on top of it.
|
| Both chromium and Firefox can be customized and vendor
| branded (see the countless privacy oriented browsers built
| on top of Firefox).
| ndarwincorn wrote:
| > Chromium is...vendor neutral.
|
| That's pretty misleading. When you want to sync state
| across Chromium installs, you use a Google account, and
| that's really just scratching the surface.
|
| Chromium comes with quite a bit of Google baked-in.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Can you link to a Google Analytics API call in Chromium?
| It's OSS.
|
| Edit: Chromium connects to Google servers to update
| extensions and for captive portal detection. Firefox does
| pretty much the same.
| wbkang wrote:
| Search for UMA metrics.
| dubcanada wrote:
| Sadly Chromium is WAYYYY easier to development on than
| Firefox. Had Mozilla spent effort making the base of it as a
| framework in the same way Chromium is, they may have
| considered it.
|
| There is a reason why Electron, QT etc use Chromium.
| brundolf wrote:
| I was just thinking, "Why isn't there an Electron for
| Firefox?"
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I have a feeling this might change once Firefox is either
| entirely written in Rust, or mostly written in Rust.
| brundolf wrote:
| Why?
| kodablah wrote:
| They worked on it a bit [0] but it has been abandoned
| along with all the other embedding efforts over time. As
| someone who embeds Chromium (via CEF) only because it's
| easy, I would really appreciate (and have been shouting
| into the wind about) focus on the embeddability of Gecko.
|
| 0 - https://github.com/mozilla/positron
| the8472 wrote:
| Long before positron (and electron) there was XULrunner.
| [deleted]
| mactunes wrote:
| Curious, what makes Chromium better in your opinion? I have
| probably just touched the surface of the dev tools on both
| and haven't used any features that I would be missing on
| either.
| dubcanada wrote:
| It's a blank browser, has barely any "Google" specific
| stuff in it ready to go. It is easy to develop for,
| doesn't require cross language compiling (rust/c++),
| builds fast, easy to understand how the different parts
| work (at least for a browser developer it should be), has
| documentation, is meant to be used to develop your own
| browser.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Are you sure Chromium builds fast? lol, it takes my
| laptop with 12 cores and 64gb of ram over an hour to
| compile from scratch, not counting the ~20gb of git
| history to download (I maintain an internal build at
| work).
| dubcanada wrote:
| Well lol it is a rather complex piece of software, so
| maybe take that one back.
|
| Firefox is comparable in that department.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| Having compiled both: it's not. On the same hardware,
| Firefox takes ~4x less time to compile than Chromium for
| me...
| microcolonel wrote:
| Which platform were you compiling on, and when? It's been
| some years now, but Chromium used to build with MSVC on
| Windows.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Kind of a shame.. There are a few areas where FireFox
| absolutely smokes Chrome. The way it reflows some heavy
| DOMs interactively is almost magical in comparison.
| zerr wrote:
| Interesting, I thought FF being a XUL app should've been
| easier to customize.
| TheKIngofBelAir wrote:
| AFAIK Pale Moon and Basilisk are the only XUL-based
| browsers left.
|
| https://www.palemoon.org/
|
| https://www.basilisk-browser.org/
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I don't think FF is using XUL anymore or at least not as
| much as they used to.
|
| Even their docs for XUL shows it all as archived:
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/XUL...
| vtail wrote:
| Firefox is actively moving away from XUL.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I thought they finished that recently when they announced
| the UI was no longer XUL based. Is there still more work
| to go?
| aquova wrote:
| I suspect that their work in using Electron for things like
| VSCode made switching Edge over to Blink more enticing. I
| wonder if they ever considered looking at the Mozilla
| frameworks
| tcd wrote:
| They probably can't, especially if the engine interfaces with
| proprietary code or is deeply linked to the kernel for example.
| It's likely part of the reason why they never got it updating
| as frequently as the Chromeium counterpart can, as this is
| entirely userspace.
| greatjack613 wrote:
| As much as I despise chromium controlling the browser market,
| having microsoft in the game should improve the situation, so
| kudos to them.
| arbitrage wrote:
| Monocultures never improve anything.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| What about the Linux kernel? Not understanding that an open
| source software can be co-created by many actors is a failure
| of understanding.
| d1zzy wrote:
| I disagree with such a vast general statement.
|
| Yes there are problems to everyone using the same software
| but there are advantages too. One drawback is that potential
| security issues would affect "everyone" but on the other hand
| the same fix works for "everyone".
|
| If the common software is open source it serves as de facto
| standard/reference implementation so you don't have
| compatibility issues. Standardization processes try to
| address this without reference software but IMO that is a lot
| more effort (in terms of engineering hours) to get it right
| so you can have a fully featured standard that is clear, has
| no bugs and has multiple perfectly standard compliant
| independent implementations.
|
| After all software is just a tool to serve a purpose and our
| decisions in this area should be driven by pragmatic reasons
| alone. If we can serve the same purpose with much less effort
| by having everyone build on top of/use the same common base
| why not.
|
| Similarly I'd rather see everyone just use Linux instead of
| all the different popular OSes we have.
| miohtama wrote:
| Are there interviews why they based it on Chromium, not Gecko?
| From business point of a view taking a direct competitor's effort
| is somewhat blurry.
| exacube wrote:
| Presumably because Chromium and related technologies (e.g. V8)
| have far more investment by the community than Gecko and
| SpiderMonkey. MS already uses Chromium/v8 in some of their
| products like VS Code.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Installed it on my home PC and work PC.
|
| I like it. Customised the front page with some useful links and
| turned off the news. Real serene image, non-distracting new page.
|
| I like the interface overall and it has ublock origin, basically
| the one extension that is a must.
|
| This will be big for corporations too. Users wont need to have
| Google Chrome deployed anymore to use certain web apps.
|
| Ill use it as a secondary browser to Firefox when I need a
| Chromium based browser, as this is already installed in Windows
| 10 soon.
|
| Best browser for Netflix too. I am using the "Add website to app"
| function for it already, or just browse to it.
|
| Old Edge was also really good for video performance and battery
| performance in general, hope this has that too.
| toper-centage wrote:
| Unlock origin will soon be se verily nerfed though, which is a
| pity.
| theebrownieee wrote:
| Anyone know how Ad blocking works for Edge on iOS? I'm getting
| better results than Safari and while I see AdBlock Plus in edge
| settings, there's nothing to unable under Content Blockers under
| iOS settings.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| I don't get why Microsoft gets a pass here vs Google, given its
| insane mal/ad/spy/ware crap default settings in Windows 10,
| including sending MS all kinds of telemetry, logging into Windows
| via an online login etc.
|
| Firefox over this crap all day.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Their logo is really neat, soft and peace inducing. Everything
| but today's web :)
| c-smile wrote:
| Yeah, and it is close to my Sciter logo: https://sciter.com/ :)
|
| Seems like I am not alone in using Yin and Yang metaphor here.
| amyjess wrote:
| Everything I've heard is that touch support is completely
| destroyed in this one.
|
| This completely destroys my main use case for my Surface. I need
| a tablet with a web browser that's designed to be used in
| portrait mode without the Type Cover attached.
|
| Can anyone here recommend a UWP web browser I can switch to when
| the real Edge goes away for good? Or if none exists, can someone
| recommend a cheap 12"+ tablet that runs a mobile OS?
| microtheo wrote:
| Ironically it has brought a breath of fresh air to my surface
| in tablet mode. I use it everyday with touchscreen only and
| find it very satisfying.
| SBArbeit wrote:
| I've been using Edge Dev on my Surface Laptop 2 for months
| now... touch support is just as good as it's always been.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Tested it out a few weeks ago and discovered Netflix was limiting
| the streaming bitrate on it. Turns out Chrome and Edge can play
| at 1080p now, but the bitrate is reduced(much) over what I see in
| Safari and the Netflix app on Windows.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/features
|
| Says it is 4k in Netflix now
|
| * 4K Ultra HD exclusivity is limited to PCs running Windows 10.
| 4K works in both Microsoft Edge and Netflix app. Only 7th Gen
| Intel(r) Core(tm) processor or higher devices can decrypt
| PlayReady 4K DRM. Netflix Ultra HD plan required.
| dessant wrote:
| I have published some of my extensions for the new Edge browser
| on their store [1], the submission experience was straightforward
| and pleasant, and the extensions were published in a couple of
| days after manual review. Updates were also reviewed and
| published in a timely manner.
|
| More importantly, during extension submissions and reviews I did
| not feel abused as a developer, something which I cannot say
| about the Chrome Web Store [2][3].
|
| So I am happy that Microsoft has not only renewed their effort in
| this space, but they're also offering a decent alternative for
| developers who would rather not deal with Google.
|
| [1] https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/category/Edge-
| Ext...
|
| [2] https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image/issues/63
|
| [3] https://github.com/dessant/youtube-autoplay/issues/3
| tus88 wrote:
| Wonder why...
|
| Microsoft: developers, developers, developers, developers!
|
| Google: advertisers, advertisers, advertisers, advertisers!
| [deleted]
| ghayes wrote:
| Google has for its entire history had strong ties to building
| a developer community. For instance Google Summer of Code [0]
| and here's a list of Google APIs with 179 current APIs [1].
|
| [0] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/
|
| [1] https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Conveniently leaving out the hundreds of times that Google
| has randomly terminated APIs or entire products with
| minimal if any forewarning, or reduced API functionality or
| pricing without forewarning, and the complete and utter
| lack of _support_ [edit] Google provides to developers who
| don 't already have their own twitter following.
| gardnerbickford wrote:
| I like the idea of Google Developer Supper.
| csallen wrote:
| It's almost as if Google is a massive organization
| running hundreds of initiatives spanning decades, making
| it difficult to simplify things with a single
| description.
| mrr54 wrote:
| And yet when I open Edge, I get a million ads for crappy
| tabloid news websites thrust in my face, while when I open
| Chrome I don't see any ads.
| bepvte wrote:
| Chrome android features lots of tabloid ad crap in its home
| page.
| dole wrote:
| I believe this may also be dependent on whether you're on a
| personal machine or enterprise network. My Edge start page
| has a gear with the Page Layout options (Focused,
| Inspirational, Informative) and also radio buttons for Page
| Content with a choice between Office365 and Microsoft News.
| My default displayed Office365 (recent documents opened
| list) without any of the MS News agg tiles.
| localhost wrote:
| I just setup Edge a few minutes ago. There are two options
| "Inspirational" and "Focused" that show no crappy tabloid
| news websites and one that does - I didn't pick that one :)
|
| Also, happy to report that 1password has an extension for
| Edge as well - that's awesome.
|
| Only thing I'm missing is a dark mode extension. I don't
| trust the somewhat sketchy ones that I see so far on the
| store.
| techntoke wrote:
| If you enable dark mode in your Windows settings, you can
| just use the built in browser dark mode. This is also a
| setting in CSS to enable dark mode when this is enabled.
| Last, you can install extensions from the Chrome Store.
| dessant wrote:
| You can also install extensions from the Chrome Web Store
| in Edge, there's a switch to enable the feature on the
| extension management page.
| blowski wrote:
| Because they need developers more than developers need them. If
| they become as dominant as Apple and Google in their respective
| spaces, expect your experience to degrade.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Microsoft has always been developer-first, even when they
| didn't need them, and even during the Ballmer era.
|
| Google has never been about the developer experience, and is
| quite hostile to developers even when they need them. (See,
| e.g., Stadia.)
| Asooka wrote:
| One difference that stands out to me about Microsoft vs
| Google. Both are very heavy C++ shops. Both have invested
| in developing tools for enhancing developer productivity on
| their respective platforms (Windows and Linux). Yes, Linux
| is not a Google product (thank god) but it is what they
| build on.
|
| Microsoft's C++ IDE and debugger are the gold standard for
| productivity and ease of use - everyone who writes native
| applications for Windows uses Visual Studio. You can try it
| out for free and the price per developer is very reasonable
| if you want to publish a paid product.
|
| Google's C++ IDE and debugger are nonexistent. Whatever
| they've built is kept inside the Googleplex never to see
| the light of day. From time to time we see the occasional
| free software reimplementation of some facet of the beast
| (e.g. Kythe) but I haven't seen something catch on.
|
| In fact, the biggest contributors to developer productivity
| on Linux have been Microsoft (with Visual Studio Code and
| the lsp protocol) and Apple (investing in clang led to the
| development of advanced C++ indexers which were impossible
| to write using gcc due to Stallman making a conscious
| decision to not allow it)
|
| Of course there is a good reason for this - Microsoft and
| Apple make platforms. The easier they make software
| development, the more developers they get, which leads to
| more software being written, which leads to more users,
| which results in profit. Google on the other hand doesn't
| win by making development easy for others. They're
| themselves a third party and other developers are
| competition rather than partners. For Microsoft, the
| existence of developers outside the company using
| Microsoft's development tools to create software for
| Microsoft's platform is a win. For Google, the best case
| scenario is there being no developers outside Google.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Have you actually tried to use Visual Studio? It's an
| unusable piece of crap.
|
| The navigation is nearly unusable. Don't focus the
| project navigation on a tree browser if you're not going
| to integrate it into the rest of the navigation workflow.
|
| NuGet regularly fails silently to restore packages.
|
| It uses a virtual filesystem that usually maps 1:1 to the
| actual project folder.. except files created outside of
| VS are completely invisible to it, unless manually added
| to the project.
|
| The project/solution files are very verbose and aren't
| designed to be edited by humans.
|
| The migration path from .NET Framework to .NET Core seems
| to be "create a new project, copy the files over
| manually, and copy over your old settings one by one".
|
| Some of these have been fixed for new projects, but there
| is no option to migrate to the new structure. Except,
| again, starting over with a new one.
| techntoke wrote:
| What is your definition of developer-first? My experience
| working at Microsoft in 2015 was the opposite of what you
| describe. They were too focused on supporting legacy MS
| that they couldn't innovate or find and keep talented
| developers in open source because they were forced to adopt
| tools and frameworks that were crap compared to standard
| open source development tools.
|
| The only reason people went there usually was for the money
| and once they got enough to follow their passion, they left
| because none of them were passionate about Microsoft.
| jpadkins wrote:
| or put another way: when they become a target for bad actors
| to abuse extensions, expect the review process to be more
| difficult.
| dessant wrote:
| I don't think becoming a target for malicious actors is the
| reason for Chrome Web Store reviews being awful, see the
| threads I've linked to above and explore the rest of the
| links. Chrome Web Store reviewers are simply not properly
| trained and qualified to do this job, and the review
| process dictated by Google does not leave much room for
| improvement. Reviewers make an awful lot of mistakes and
| they usually do not listen to reason, the only thing that
| works is to document everything and make it public.
|
| I've had some issues during Firefox extension reviews too,
| and Mozilla employees have usually changed their opinion
| after feedback. When they've made a mistake, sometimes they
| said they were sorry, which was a decent thing to do and it
| felt right. They talked and acted like human beings whom
| are capable of compassion and reasoning.
| blowski wrote:
| Exactly. Developers are going to submit apps to Google
| regardless of how bad the process is, so there's no real
| incentive to improve the experience.
| rozab wrote:
| I don't know, I've seen plenty of abuse on the windows
| store. Being a default choice for tech illiterates makes it
| a juicy target
| moron4hire wrote:
| But Microsoft has a long history of providing good customer
| and developer support. Why would they change for _just_ this
| one product?
| macspoofing wrote:
| >More importantly, during extension submissions and reviews I
| did not feel abused as a developer, something which I cannot
| say about the Chrome Web Store
|
| I suspect that would change if Edge gained significant market
| share. I think what happens is that as these platforms grow,
| they get targetted by spammers, malware, and scammers and
| consequently their processes harden and tolerances go down.
| fbelzile wrote:
| Is this a different store from the "old" Edge?
|
| The "old" Edge store was utterly mismanaged [0]. I'm glad
| they've improved if this one is different, but they definitely
| left a sour taste in my mouth.
|
| [0] I required Native App Messaging and needed to include a 32
| bit binary to read an SQLite database. The extension was
| rejected and was only told to wait while they worked on this
| feature (which was already in a tutorial I was following).
| Nobody ever contacted me back for over a year until the news
| broke that they were moving to Chromium.
| swebs wrote:
| Phrasing it as a dichotomy like that is pretty dishonest,
| especially how Firefox is twice as popular than Edge [1] and is
| free open source software that doesn't spy on you.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...
| int_19h wrote:
| The dichotomy comes up because the new Edge supports Chrome
| extensions. So it's literally the same code being submitted
| to both stores, which makes it more of an apples-to-apples
| comparison.
| techntoke wrote:
| Firefox has the same analytics and browser feedback settings
| enabled as Chromium, and both have options to disable them.
| dessant wrote:
| Microsoft is replicating the entire browser ecosystem, so
| developers and users who prefer Chromium are no longer bound
| to Google. Firefox is my browser of choice, and their
| reviewer team is wonderful, see my other [1] comment, though
| all of this is tangential to Firefox.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057859
| sho_hn wrote:
| I think the situation invites that specific comparison
| because the new Edge is based on Chromium. I didn't read it
| as leaving out Firefox for any other reason.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| OP didn't mention Safari or Brave either, don't be so hair-
| trigger looking for offense.
| reddotX wrote:
| Linux not sported yet...
| [deleted]
| ripdog wrote:
| So... What's the value proposition over, say, Firefox?
| Scarbutt wrote:
| Not google and your web apps will work and be snappy.
|
| Not implying this is all good.
| filoleg wrote:
| And if you do webdev, chrome dev tools are still the best.
| While firefox tools keep getting better, i still find myself
| regularly launching chrome just for those.
| endemic wrote:
| I feel like I regularly see similar comments, touting the
| superiority of Chrome devtools. I haven't used Chrome in a
| few years; what do they have that others don't?
| aabbcc1241 wrote:
| The only moment I would use chrome devtools is when I
| need to debug remote devices (Android webview)
| laken wrote:
| I feel the opposite, I prefer the Firefox dev tools by far.
| The CSS Grid and CSS Animation tools are lacking hard on
| Chrome. I feel though that overall they're close to equal,
| some tools are better on one platform than the other, but
| it's personal preference at the end of the day.
| irrational wrote:
| I don't agree. I think it is just what you are used to
| using. I'm used to Firefox and find their dev tools to be
| superior to Chrome, but I'm pretty sure that is just
| because I'm just more used to Firefox's dev tools (having
| used them since the firebug days).
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Microsoft integration.
|
| Already installed in Windows.
|
| Microsoft supported = huge for corps that live in MS ecosystem.
|
| Best quality for Netflix streaming.
|
| No need to have Google Chrome installed.
| microtheo wrote:
| I love firefox. The only big difference for now is that it is
| better integrated with windows. You can swipe back on the
| trackpad to go back and use your touchscreen seamlessly (even
| the keyboard pops up correctly without screwing the size of the
| window) Firefox doesn't do that well.
| AdmiralGinge wrote:
| I love firefox too, it's my go-to browser at work on Linux
| and at home on macOS. It really isn't as well integrated into
| macOS either though, especially compared to Chrome and
| Safari. The trackpad support (or lack of it) would probably
| have been a deal breaker when I got a mac if I wasn't already
| a long-term Firefox user and quite Google-sceptic.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| You get Chrome's large ecosystem of browser extensions, with
| much less Google tracking. That's how I see it at least.
| swebs wrote:
| But then you add Microsoft tracking which is even worse. Why
| not just use Chromium and have no tracking?
| wayneftw wrote:
| Why is Microsoft tracking "even worse" than Google
| tracking?
|
| I'm pretty sure Google has infected more of the Internet
| than Microsoft.
| d1zzy wrote:
| > Why is Microsoft tracking "even worse" than Google
| tracking?
|
| Without specifics is hard to know what the message you
| replied to meant but one thing where I find MS tracking
| worse than anything Google can do on the Internet right
| now is that MS tracks and reports my local OS use (what
| applications I install/run, how long I run them, what
| files I have) while an Internet tracker can only get
| access to what the browser allows which generally limits
| sharing the type of information I listed.
|
| EDIT: And pretty much all browsers have an Incognito mode
| or you can use TorBrowser which goes beyond that but I
| cannot similarly defend myself against my own local OS
| privacy invasion.
| wayneftw wrote:
| I use a Linux desktop and I'm looking forward to using MS
| Edge there when it is released so I guess I don't have
| that concern.
|
| I'm already using it on my Mac.
| swebs wrote:
| Because Microsoft is also collecting data from the OS
| level as well if you're using Windows. It's easy to keep
| sensitive data out of Gmail. It's hard to keep it of your
| computer entirely.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > much less Google tracking Specifically, with Microsoft
| tracking in place of Google's for initial telemetry.
|
| Whether that makes its way to Google somewhere along the
| lines or not is a different story.
| overcast wrote:
| Massive for corporate, since it supports Enterprise Mode lists
| for IE11 backwards compatibility. We can all finally use one
| single browser, with single sign on to our apps, and support
| for new technology.
| hoten wrote:
| a11y. i18n. They did a lot there.
| altitudinous wrote:
| On MacOS it requires admin privilege to install.
|
| I am done with that after all the crap that previous software
| with admin rights installed. I cleaned it up and swore I would
| not install anything that required admin rights again - for my
| own security and peace of mind. What does it need admin rights
| for?
| lucasverra wrote:
| also requires 10.12 or above
| mrpippy wrote:
| Maybe to install an autoupdater?
| alpb wrote:
| It doesn't use a TUF-like update protocol that Chrome uses?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| You can inspect (and extract) it with Pacifist[1] without using
| admin privileges.
|
| [1] https://www.charlessoft.com/
| ajacksified wrote:
| I was going to install it to try it out, but this was the
| dealbreaker for me.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seriously, that bugs the hell out of me too.
|
| Why do I need to give Adobe admin rights to install Photoshop?
| Why do I need to give Microsoft the same to install Word? And
| now for a web browser?
|
| If I'm installing something low-level like a window manager or
| a keyboard shortcut tool, _I get it_. But for a normal
| mainstream flagship consumer application, what on earth do they
| need admin privileges for?!
|
| I hate the fact I have to hand over the keys to my computer
| just to run basic industry standard software and I have no
| choice _because it 's industry standard_ and I have
| requirements to use it.
| techntoke wrote:
| So that it can be used my multiple users. There are ways to
| install as a user without admin privileges.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Well, there is an extremely simple reason: because these
| tools are installed for all users, not just your own. Doing
| it any other way would be wasteful on an actual multi-user
| machine. But some tools do support it - both Chrome and
| Firefox can be installed without admin privileges. There is
| also the fact that Office and many other products rely on
| demons starting at boot time, which can only be installed
| with admin rights. The same applies to all popular Linux
| distributions (even more than on Windows, since you can
| provide a nice current-user only installer on Windows, but
| any common program package on Linux requires admin rights
| before you can even access it).
|
| On the other hand, for most people this admin vs regular user
| separation is almost meaningless and provides little extra
| security. Sure, if I install malware as admin it will be
| harder to get rid of it, but except for that, it can hurt me
| just as much, since all of the files I really care about
| (documents, photos, game saves etc) are already accessible
| with my user, and any program running as my user can already
| connect to the internet and send information about what my
| user is doing (not to mention bother me with ads). Some of
| the really damaging ransomware that recently made the rounds
| didn't even require admin privileges, it simply encrypted
| data in some common user-owned folders, if I'm not mistaken
| (it probably did need some privilege escalation to spread,
| though, which is a big problem on office networks).
| mactunes wrote:
| Does anyone know what the UI of Edge is written in? Since it runs
| on Mac as well, have they ported some of the .Net UI frameworks
| to Mac or is it native all the way?
| dstaley wrote:
| Edge (and Chromium) both use a custom C++ UI framework. Chrome
| wrote the framework to be cross-platform, so Edge was able to
| take advantage of that to deliver the macOS version. AFAIK
| there's no WinUI XAML components being used.
| [deleted]
| baby wrote:
| Does it allow for tabs on the side like tree style tabs on
| firefox?
| scanr wrote:
| It will make me happy to be able to stop supporting ie11 at some
| point in the future.
|
| Sadly, it doesn't appear that ie11 will have an end of life date
| as it'll be supported as long as Windows 10 is and Windows 10
| appears evergreen.
|
| Hopefully Microsoft will make edge the default browser at some
| point.
| Rapzid wrote:
| IE11 is unofficially dead. Microsoft considers it a
| compatibility platform more than a browser.
| CheckBlanket wrote:
| Unfortunately, "unofficially" doesn't fly in a lot of
| workplaces. Until MS pluck up the courage and do everyone a
| favour, IE11 will continue to haunt developers. Now we got
| Legacy Edge too, whoopee.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| This new edge replaces the old one.
| irrational wrote:
| 2025 is the official end of life year. You can find a page on
| MS's website with all the end of life dates.
| dspillett wrote:
| I've heard the 2025 date before, but I think that is only
| based on a "time since release" metric.
|
| For IE versions the support windows have always been "X years
| since release (or perhaps X years since the next version),
| _or_ until all Windows variant released with it are EOL ". If
| Win10 is indeed evergreen, then that second part will never
| expire. Perhaps they'll count the biannual Windows feature
| updates instead of Win10 as a whole, and so count it from
| when they stop releasing install media with IE11 on them, but
| as that hasn't happened yet, we'll still be some years away
| for IE11 stopping. Even then '11 will still be around in some
| environments for a while after EOL.
|
| We only recently got rid of IE8 support for some of our
| clients as they stopped using it. That was mainly because of
| the then upcoming EOL of IE8 in sync with the EOL of
| Win7/Win2008 (the last versions released with IE8). I hear
| some are not so lucky... I expect IE11 to be a problem
| (though an increasingly small one, thankfully) for some time
| to come.
|
| In any case, can you link (or screenshot if it doesn't
| cooperate with deep linking) to an official page listing
| 2025? I'm not seeing that.
| oefrha wrote:
| 5+ more years of buggy flexbox, yay...
| butz wrote:
| ... and gapless grids.
| noahster11 wrote:
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17454/lifecycle-
| faq...
| TurningCanadian wrote:
| So scanr is right, right?
| gruez wrote:
| >2025 is the official end of life year
|
| not according to https://support.microsoft.com/en-
| us/help/17454/lifecycle-faq....
|
| >Internet Explorer is a component of the Windows operating
| system and the most current version will continue to follow
| the specific lifecycle policy for the operating system for
| which it is installed. To find the lifecycle dates for all
| operating systems, search the Microsoft Lifecycle Database
| here.
|
| It's unknown how long MSFT will continue to include IE in
| Windows, but at the very least it will be supported until
| January 2029, according to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_version_history.
| amanzi wrote:
| You should see IE11 usage drop significantly now as big
| corporates adopt Edge as the default. Edge can seamlessly
| switch over to the IE11 rendering engine for predetermined
| lists of legacy sites, so there's no reason for corporates to
| force IE11 as the default browser any more.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > Hopefully Microsoft will make edge the default browser at
| some point.
|
| If you mean over IE11, that's probably a (dumb, unhealthy)
| Group Policy decision of your Enterprise as Edge has been the
| default browser in Windows 10 since launch.
|
| If you mean Edgmium (New Edge) over Edge Classic, it already
| replaces Edge Classic (entirely) when you install it, and
| there's a slow rollout through Windows Update already
| happening, with an attempt to converge on everyone having
| Edgmium sometime this year and Edge Classic dying a final, sad
| death (RIP, good friend, you served some of us well). They say
| fresh installs of "Windows 10X" the hyped dual screen build of
| Windows will only have Edgmium, and that'll likely make its way
| into other Windows 10 images over time.
| scanr wrote:
| Dang it. It probably is our group policy. I suspect that we
| have a lot of users with similar policies as we over index
| for ie11 in our stats too.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Hopefully Microsoft will make edge the default browser at
| some point._
|
| Isn't is already for fresh Win10 installs? Or are you meaning
| "new Edge"?
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| I use Edge on my iPhone and Firefox on my laptop. Trying to
| reduce my Google footprint as much as possible.
| kxrm wrote:
| Just for clarity, iPhone browsers all use Safari, so Edge on
| iPhone will just be an Edge skinned Safari.
| blackearl wrote:
| Aren't all browsers in iOS Safari reskins?
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