8 ms·
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 wri
by 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.
- manigandham 9y agoThis is absolutely valid criticism. Of course the devteam is "good people", but the issue remains that Edge created yet another browser fork while IE11 is still around and actively used. Also Edge is still behind with several features (like server-sent events). For those saying Edge is different than IE, is there even an IE team anymore or did they just become the Edge team now? Either way the development strategy is not great.
- rk06 9y agoAnd let's not forget the worst thing about this: __Edge can't be installed on windows 8.1 or less__ By far, this is stopping most users from leaving IE.
- WorldMaker 9y agoNo one is using Windows 8.1, statistically speaking anymore, and Windows 7 only has 3 years left of security fixes remaining.
- leeoniya 9y agowe have 7.5% IE11 traffic on our ecommerce site (US, diy home remodeling). more than Edge which is ~5%. 7.5% is a huge number.
- WorldMaker 9y agoIE11 traffic includes Windows 7 users. Windows 8.1 users is a tiny fraction of that 7.5% as most of that is likely Windows 7 since that's the new Windows XP that corporations will use for as long as it has security support because they are afraid of change. ETA: Plus the people that missed the Windows 10 free upgrade for Windows 7 (intentionally or accidentally).
- bsder 9y agoWell, if Microsoft would quit spying on people and quit intentionally breaking things they might not have to fight to get people to upgrade. As things stand, Windows 7 is probably the last Windows several companies I know are going to use unless Microsoft coughs up something before they get forced to upgrade. Win 10 is sufficiently different that they are actually considering Linux. And, with the fact that everybody is moving to WebApps (hack, spit), it probably doesn't matter.
- WorldMaker 9y agoThe Ghost Stories of Windows XP we will tell around the campfire for decades to come seem to indicate that companies will always hard-headed stick with Windows versions beyond their useful lifetime. "Quit spying" seems like a red herring in that regard, because if that wasn't the easy excuse there are more right behind ("our apps don't work"; "the new app system is hard"; "we hired a VB6 programmer once in 1999 and we know this app is critical to our business but we don't expect to put our money where our mouth is and hire someone to update it for 2017"; etc).
- WorldMaker 9y agoThe way Microsoft likes to shuffle project teams, it's a bit of a ship of theseus. It's a very strange philosophical debate if the Edge team is the "same as" the IE10/11 team. The Edge team is definitely not the IE7/8/9 team, that I'm sure of. The Edge team can't possibly be the IE6- team, because that team was entirely disbanded. The IE10/11 team inherited the mistakes of the IE6- team by way of a need for backward compatibility and the backward compatibility plan put together by the IE7/8/9 team. Does that backward compatibility arc define what was the IE team? If so, then the Edge team is definitely not the IE team, having for finality killed the backward compatibility story of IE7/8/9.
- manigandham 9y agoThe point is that the criticism applies regardless of which specific product or people because it is all the "microsoft web browser" group.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- josteink 9y agoBut IE is not Edge.
- tyingq 9y agoEdge for Android and iOS is an interesting move: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/10/05/announcing-microsoft-edge-for-ios-and-android-microsoft-launcher/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/10/05/annou... I like the role reversal where an MS browser on a Google OS might have merit...like being able to run ad blocking extensions.
- schlipity 9y agoIt's a good bit ludicrous that they are providing Edge for IOS / Android but not for previous versions of Windows. My life as a programmer would be better if I didn't have to support IE11 / Windows 7, but instead of doing that, they spent some time getting it running where no one wants it.
- Klathmon 9y agoEdge for android and iOS use the built-in rendering engines on each platform. Edge for Android is using Blink, Edge for iOS is using Webkit. They could give you "Edge for windows 7" but it wouldn't be the same rendering engine from Edge on windows 10.
- earenndil 9y ago...except that they could? It would probably be simple to port the engine from win10 to win7, in a way that it wouldn't be to port it to a completely different os that is also mobile.
- tw04 9y agoMainstream support for Windows 7 ended in 2015. Do you also want them to support edge on Android 4.3? Or are you a little more pragmatic in expecting users to update more than once every 7 years?
- MagnumOpus 9y agoIf you refuse to make your app installable on your own OS that half of the world's desktop computers are running, you don't need to wonder that it is not gaining market share.
- jrs95 9y agoI wish I could actually take advantage of the great stuff they're doing, but it's still just too unstable and I have issues on too many websites. Every time I try to use Edge I end up switching back to Chrome within a week.
- forgot-my-pw 9y agoIf only Microsoft lets older Windows to install Edge. Yet they are stuck with IE. The only way to use Edge is to upgrade to Windows 10.
- Klathmon 9y agoIIRC it's because the APIs that Edge uses are only in 10.
- notl4wy3r 9y agoThat's all well and good, but somehow every other browser manages to run on Windows versions before 10. It's kinda bad that Edge cannot.
- Klathmon 9y agoBut it's a goal of those browsers to run cross-platform, it's explicitly not a goal of Edge. Just like how it's not a valid criticism to say that it's bad that Boeing can't make cars. They aren't trying to...
- magicalist 9y ago> If only Microsoft lets older Windows to install Edge. > But it's...explicitly not a goal of Edge. No criticism sticks if we just define it as a non-goal :P I think the criticism was for that decision itself.
- Klathmon 9y agoAnd if you get to define what someone else's goal is you can stick any criticism.
- nogbit 9y agoIt's kinda bad that Edge cannot run on multiple platforms, until that happens it will keep getting the same (or less) use.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoI would take them significantly more seriously if they open sourced the browser. All of their accomplishments may be impressive but it's a moot point if they're all being kept to themselves.
- Klathmon 9y agoThey are getting there. They already open sourced their js engine [0] and some parts of the rendering engine like the WebGL stuff [1]. I remember reading that it's a goal of them that they want to open source it, but it's not an overnight process. [0] https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore [1] https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/WebGL https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/WebGL
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoChakraCore is definitely a step in the right direction. Kudos for that. Their WebGL thing isn't, though. That's just a code dump, a year outdated, with no history. It's still developed in private and isn't getting updates.
- jeromenerf 9y ago> nobody is taking them seriously Chrome and Firefox run on Mac and various unices. Edge is just a pain to take seriously for me, a « various unices » user.
- zamalek 9y ago> they are doing damn good work. I've been using it for a while. Overall, it feels significantly faster than any Chromium-based browser I've used. Chrome, Brave, etc. are simply no longer good enough. That being said, I'm considering switching to Quantum. Edge breaks the 1Password plugin[1] and Microsoft is closing the bugs "as designed" or they have lost all traction. Breaking a password manager relegates the entire browser to non-starter, it doesn't matter at all how good your other features are. [1]: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/issues/13031516/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor... , https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/issues/11320212/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor...
- TylerH 9y agoWas Brave ever good enough? I thought it was just Brendan Eich's swan song
- zamalek 9y agoI used it for a very long time and loved it. It's perceptually faster/more lightweight than Chrome, I think that's a goal? The adblocker was workable, but nowhere near uBlock. It's close but noticeably slower than Edge. Firefox on mobile is an utter trainsmash, so I use it there out of necessity (Chrome doesn't have add-ons/adblockers).