8 ms·

Microsoft Presenter Gives Up on Edge, Installs Chrome

135 points by phr4ts 9y ago

crabasa 9y ago
To be clear, this isn't a product called "Presenter", this is a person who works for Microsoft who switched to Chrome during a presentation. Nothing to see here.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  It's a little embarrassing though. Had they at least chosen Firefox which isn't a major competitor of theirs across multiple markets, it wouldn't be nearly as bad.
  - samfisher83 9y ago
    Why didn't he use firefox?
  - ballenf 9y ago
    Showing that your product works flawlessly on the market-leading browser is not "bad" in my opinion. If he'd tried it in Firefox next I think everyone would have been distracted by the question in their heads of "does it not work on Chrome?".
    - josteink 9y ago
      > I think everyone would have been distracted by the question in their heads of "does it not work on Chrome?". Or maybe be they would had thought “Wow. Finally someone who does proper cross-browser testing and not just defaulting to Chrome. How refreshing. Maybe there’s hope for the web after all?”
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Nothing to see? Rather embarrassing and does not speak well for Edge?
  - klodolph 9y ago
    Or reflects maturity... it's a bit embarrassing that Edge doesn't work, but it would be 100x as embarrassing if they let a problem with Edge interfere with other parts of the business just because they want to use 100% Microsoft stuff. It's a good change from the Microsoft we knew in the 1990s and 2000s, which would have made their web apps with DHTML, ActiveX, or Silverlight. Sure, DHTML is now just "the way things are done" (and not even called DHTML any more) but at the time it was IE's quirky way of making interactive web pages.
MR4D 9y ago
It’s exactly this attitude of just get it done that has reignited Microsoft. They probably get flack for this, but it shows they’re focused more on results.
- ducttape12 9y ago
  A lot of people in tech (myself included) would benefit greatly from this attitude. How many people get caught up arguing over minutia in tech, such as which distro to use, or which editor to use, or which way to do something when all options are perfectly fine? I'm not saying cut corners, but instead keep your focus on what's important.
  - davehtaylor 9y ago
    I think there's a massive problem in recent times of an over-zealous focus on procedures and the "how" of a particular process. I think process-driven management results in micro-managing tyrants, over-stressed, over-worked employees, poor efficiency, and poor results. We need to focus on results. Who cares about the process, as long as it works, and the people doing it are happy?
- Klathmon 9y ago
  I've talked to some people on the team who works on Edge, and they are a fantastic group of people. They know they are in an uphill battle, and everyone is writing them off, but they are doing damn good work. Edge's performance is getting leaps and bounds faster every update, they are doing incredible things for battery life on many devices, they are catching up to google for web API support, and nobody is taking them seriously. I know nothing about what it's like to work at microsoft, but whatever they are doing with the Edge team is working. They know their product isn't perfect (what is?), and they are just trying their damn hardest to make it better.
  - revmoo 9y ago
    > nobody is taking them seriously Because it's 2017 and I'm STILL having to write workarounds for IE.
diego_moita 9y ago
He was presenting Azure and the browser was enable to parse a XmlHttpRequest. It could be an error on the browser or on the server side application. Because he is on the server side team he blamed the browser. Rule #1 of pointing fingers: it's always someone else's fault.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  From the comments on the article, it could also have been a beta version of Edge
  - ixxivvix 9y ago
    Which is kinda odd to use on a device for presentations, no?
  - blinkingled 9y ago
    The presenter said it could be because the work laptops are locked down quite a bit. (GPOs to disallow some browser features is not uncommon in corporations at all.)
- Sylos 9y ago
  Well, he did swap out the client-side and it worked, so that's rather indicative of it not being a server-side problem. Not entirely given, it could be that Chrome happens to implement erronous or non-standards-compliant behaviour which just so happens to match up with the erronous or non-standards-compliant behaviour of the server, but that's starting to get a little far-fetched.
mattimo 9y ago
I wish I could give up on Edge, but my end users won't let me.
- dictum 9y ago
  > I wish I could give up on Edge Why?
  - Spivak 9y ago
    For the same reason it's easier to target just Linux or just Windows or just OS X. The fewer platforms you need to support the less time/work needs to be spent porting.
  - manigandham 9y ago
    Just 1 example of a missing feature among many: https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge-developer/suggestions/6263825-server-sent-events-eventsource https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge-dev...
MattSteelblade 9y ago
From the presenter's comments, it sounds like a GPO locked down Edge. In that context, it makes sense to immediately install another browser and Chrome is the market leader.
- nvr219 9y ago
  If GPO is locking down Edge, but not preventing you from installing another browser, it's a bad GPO...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
GrumpyNl 9y ago
He handled it impressively and was focused on the presentation. Hats off sir.
crankylinuxuser 9y ago
Ugh.. Ive been exactly in his shoes. He's trying to demo an area, and dogfood an unrelated area (browser). I know when Ive done Azure work before, it'll work in Chrome and firefox. But that's about it. Or it could be some goofy problem with the browser, or how MS handles what browser it thinks you're running, or a million other possibilities. Who knows. But the best way to continue a demo, is just to get the demo done. And frankly, that someone from MS can install and get to work with Chrome/Google, cool. Get it done, then get it right. Tl;Dr. The hotseat of live demos can suck. Really suck. Don't diss till you do one, and it falls apart. There really is nothing worse than having big yuckity-yucks sitting there, tut-tutting you because the "Thing" you're showing off falls flat. You feel about "." this tall.
- CapacitorSet 9y ago
  >The hotseat of live demos can suck. Really suck. Don't diss till you do one, and it falls apart. Nobody is picking on the presenter himself for what happened; in fact, he "saved the day" by quickly switching to Chrome and continuing the presentation. It is Microsoft that is taking the ridicule for not testing their interfaces on Edge, their own browser.
dman 9y ago
Any estimates on what the economic cost of entry is for developing a competetive browser? As someone who has no background doing web development, would also like to hear from web devs on what proportion of a project is spent building features vs handling edge cases in browsers (like the one that was hit here in the article).
- Gaelan 9y ago
  Blink wrapper or new engine? If you want chrome clones, they’re a dime a dozen.
  - dman 9y ago
    New engine.
- kbyatnal 9y ago
  Well considering that Chrome/Firefox have more lines of code than the Mars Rover, Large Hadron Collider, Hubble Space Telescope, Linux Kernel, and US Military drones, I'd say the cost is pretty significant. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/ http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million...
- Sylos 9y ago
  > Any estimates on what the economic cost of entry is for developing a competetive browser? I doubt you're gonna get numbers, but I can give you two rough reference points: 1) All popular modern browsers use browser engines that started out their lives in the last millennium: - Edge uses EdgeHTML, which was forked from IE's Trident, which was first released in 1997. - Firefox uses Gecko, which started development in 1997. - Chrome/Opera/Vivaldi use Blink, which was forked from WebKit (which Safari uses), which in turn was forked from KHTML, which started development somewhen around 1998. So, all of these had their architecture laid out before multi-core CPUs were a thing in desktop PCs and before the web became more than just text with the occasional image thrown in. As a result, all of them lack severely in parallelism and use of the GPU, and writing a browser engine from scratch would allow you to get these things right and give you ridiculously better performance than all other browser. But no one's done it yet, because of this insanely high cost to redevelop everything. Which brings us to reference point 2), Mozilla has actually started work on writing a browser engine from scratch in 2013. The project is called Servo and they even find it worthwhile to basically develop their own programming language, Rust, for writing Servo in it. And well, Servo shows off quite nicely the aforementioned potential in writing a browser engine from scratch, but it also still explodes spectacularly, trying to render out ACID3, which was released in 2008 to try to represent what a good browser should have been capable of back then. Now, Mozilla is not working on this full-pelt, but it is a big organisation with lots of browser-making know-how. They're also sort of bootstrapping Servo by including production-ready Servo components into Gecko, resulting in the maintenance work being shared. So, basically I wouldn't expect any new player to enter the market in at least the next ten years.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
senatorobama 9y ago
This reminds me that enterprise software is garbage.
hungerstrike 9y ago
I'm sure that the Azure team built their portal to work with the most popular browser and didn't concern themselves with Edge too much, just like every other web developer. Anyway, I like how he unchecked the Telemetry feature before installing Chrome so that he didn't have to "help make Google Chrome better".
red75prime 9y ago
Edge... A fine browser, but alt+shift randomly stops working and it is show stopper.
digitalshankar 9y ago
Savage!
BrandoElFollito 9y ago
This kind of state of mind is what makes me interested in a product. Being an AWS user, I will have a look right away at Azure (now that they have a free tier of sorts)

135 points by phr4ts 9y ago

To be clear, this isn't a product called "Presenter", this is a person who works for Microsoft who switched to Chrome during a presentation. Nothing to see here.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
It's a little embarrassing though. Had they at least chosen Firefox which isn't a major competitor of theirs across multiple markets, it wouldn't be nearly as bad.
- samfisher83 9y ago
  Why didn't he use firefox?
- ballenf 9y ago
  Showing that your product works flawlessly on the market-leading browser is not "bad" in my opinion. If he'd tried it in Firefox next I think everyone would have been distracted by the question in their heads of "does it not work on Chrome?".
  - josteink 9y ago
    > I think everyone would have been distracted by the question in their heads of "does it not work on Chrome?". Or maybe be they would had thought “Wow. Finally someone who does proper cross-browser testing and not just defaulting to Chrome. How refreshing. Maybe there’s hope for the web after all?”
jacksmith21006 9y ago
Nothing to see? Rather embarrassing and does not speak well for Edge?
- klodolph 9y ago
  Or reflects maturity... it's a bit embarrassing that Edge doesn't work, but it would be 100x as embarrassing if they let a problem with Edge interfere with other parts of the business just because they want to use 100% Microsoft stuff. It's a good change from the Microsoft we knew in the 1990s and 2000s, which would have made their web apps with DHTML, ActiveX, or Silverlight. Sure, DHTML is now just "the way things are done" (and not even called DHTML any more) but at the time it was IE's quirky way of making interactive web pages.

MR4D 9y ago

It’s exactly this attitude of just get it done that has reignited Microsoft. They probably get flack for this, but it shows they’re focused more on results.

ducttape12 9y ago
A lot of people in tech (myself included) would benefit greatly from this attitude. How many people get caught up arguing over minutia in tech, such as which distro to use, or which editor to use, or which way to do something when all options are perfectly fine? I'm not saying cut corners, but instead keep your focus on what's important.
- davehtaylor 9y ago
  I think there's a massive problem in recent times of an over-zealous focus on procedures and the "how" of a particular process. I think process-driven management results in micro-managing tyrants, over-stressed, over-worked employees, poor efficiency, and poor results. We need to focus on results. Who cares about the process, as long as it works, and the people doing it are happy?
Klathmon 9y ago
I've talked to some people on the team who works on Edge, and they are a fantastic group of people. They know they are in an uphill battle, and everyone is writing them off, but they are doing damn good work. Edge's performance is getting leaps and bounds faster every update, they are doing incredible things for battery life on many devices, they are catching up to google for web API support, and nobody is taking them seriously. I know nothing about what it's like to work at microsoft, but whatever they are doing with the Edge team is working. They know their product isn't perfect (what is?), and they are just trying their damn hardest to make it better.
- revmoo 9y ago
  > nobody is taking them seriously Because it's 2017 and I'm STILL having to write workarounds for IE.

diego_moita 9y ago

He was presenting Azure and the browser was enable to parse a XmlHttpRequest. It could be an error on the browser or on the server side application. Because he is on the server side team he blamed the browser. Rule #1 of pointing fingers: it's always someone else's fault.

raverbashing 9y ago
From the comments on the article, it could also have been a beta version of Edge
- ixxivvix 9y ago
  Which is kinda odd to use on a device for presentations, no?
- blinkingled 9y ago
  The presenter said it could be because the work laptops are locked down quite a bit. (GPOs to disallow some browser features is not uncommon in corporations at all.)
Sylos 9y ago
Well, he did swap out the client-side and it worked, so that's rather indicative of it not being a server-side problem. Not entirely given, it could be that Chrome happens to implement erronous or non-standards-compliant behaviour which just so happens to match up with the erronous or non-standards-compliant behaviour of the server, but that's starting to get a little far-fetched.

mattimo 9y ago

I wish I could give up on Edge, but my end users won't let me.

dictum 9y ago
> I wish I could give up on Edge Why?
- Spivak 9y ago
  For the same reason it's easier to target just Linux or just Windows or just OS X. The fewer platforms you need to support the less time/work needs to be spent porting.
- manigandham 9y ago
  Just 1 example of a missing feature among many: https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge-developer/suggestions/6263825-server-sent-events-eventsource https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge-dev...

MattSteelblade 9y ago

From the presenter's comments, it sounds like a GPO locked down Edge. In that context, it makes sense to immediately install another browser and Chrome is the market leader.

nvr219 9y ago
If GPO is locking down Edge, but not preventing you from installing another browser, it's a bad GPO...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

GrumpyNl 9y ago

He handled it impressively and was focused on the presentation. Hats off sir.

crankylinuxuser 9y ago

Ugh.. Ive been exactly in his shoes. He's trying to demo an area, and dogfood an unrelated area (browser). I know when Ive done Azure work before, it'll work in Chrome and firefox. But that's about it. Or it could be some goofy problem with the browser, or how MS handles what browser it thinks you're running, or a million other possibilities. Who knows. But the best way to continue a demo, is just to get the demo done. And frankly, that someone from MS can install and get to work with Chrome/Google, cool. Get it done, then get it right. Tl;Dr. The hotseat of live demos can suck. Really suck. Don't diss till you do one, and it falls apart. There really is nothing worse than having big yuckity-yucks sitting there, tut-tutting you because the "Thing" you're showing off falls flat. You feel about "." this tall.

CapacitorSet 9y ago
>The hotseat of live demos can suck. Really suck. Don't diss till you do one, and it falls apart. Nobody is picking on the presenter himself for what happened; in fact, he "saved the day" by quickly switching to Chrome and continuing the presentation. It is Microsoft that is taking the ridicule for not testing their interfaces on Edge, their own browser.

dman 9y ago

Any estimates on what the economic cost of entry is for developing a competetive browser? As someone who has no background doing web development, would also like to hear from web devs on what proportion of a project is spent building features vs handling edge cases in browsers (like the one that was hit here in the article).

Gaelan 9y ago
Blink wrapper or new engine? If you want chrome clones, they’re a dime a dozen.
- dman 9y ago
  New engine.
kbyatnal 9y ago
Well considering that Chrome/Firefox have more lines of code than the Mars Rover, Large Hadron Collider, Hubble Space Telescope, Linux Kernel, and US Military drones, I'd say the cost is pretty significant. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/ http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million...
Sylos 9y ago
> Any estimates on what the economic cost of entry is for developing a competetive browser? I doubt you're gonna get numbers, but I can give you two rough reference points: 1) All popular modern browsers use browser engines that started out their lives in the last millennium: - Edge uses EdgeHTML, which was forked from IE's Trident, which was first released in 1997. - Firefox uses Gecko, which started development in 1997. - Chrome/Opera/Vivaldi use Blink, which was forked from WebKit (which Safari uses), which in turn was forked from KHTML, which started development somewhen around 1998. So, all of these had their architecture laid out before multi-core CPUs were a thing in desktop PCs and before the web became more than just text with the occasional image thrown in. As a result, all of them lack severely in parallelism and use of the GPU, and writing a browser engine from scratch would allow you to get these things right and give you ridiculously better performance than all other browser. But no one's done it yet, because of this insanely high cost to redevelop everything. Which brings us to reference point 2), Mozilla has actually started work on writing a browser engine from scratch in 2013. The project is called Servo and they even find it worthwhile to basically develop their own programming language, Rust, for writing Servo in it. And well, Servo shows off quite nicely the aforementioned potential in writing a browser engine from scratch, but it also still explodes spectacularly, trying to render out ACID3, which was released in 2008 to try to represent what a good browser should have been capable of back then. Now, Mozilla is not working on this full-pelt, but it is a big organisation with lots of browser-making know-how. They're also sort of bootstrapping Servo by including production-ready Servo components into Gecko, resulting in the maintenance work being shared. So, basically I wouldn't expect any new player to enter the market in at least the next ten years.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

senatorobama 9y ago

This reminds me that enterprise software is garbage.

hungerstrike 9y ago

I'm sure that the Azure team built their portal to work with the most popular browser and didn't concern themselves with Edge too much, just like every other web developer. Anyway, I like how he unchecked the Telemetry feature before installing Chrome so that he didn't have to "help make Google Chrome better".

red75prime 9y ago

Edge... A fine browser, but alt+shift randomly stops working and it is show stopper.

digitalshankar 9y ago

Savage!

BrandoElFollito 9y ago

This kind of state of mind is what makes me interested in a product. Being an AWS user, I will have a look right away at Azure (now that they have a free tier of sorts)