6 ms·

Microsoft Edge

145 points by rakibtg 8y ago

dao- 8y ago
duplicate from five days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18621136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18621136 related MS blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18619774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18619774
mscasts 8y ago
Google has won the browser battle (for now) and it sucks for all of us. Competition is a good thing.
- kmlx 8y ago
  i disagree. in my opinion we don't need more browsers. what we need is a single browser/platform where companies and individuals can compete while developing various features. think of it like this: instead of a browser vendor implementing a feature and then the rest playing catch-up, that same feature will now be available for most users, no matter who has developed it. edit: spelling
  - stjohnswarts 8y ago
    It's a good thing that you don't run the world then :) . I prefer choice to dictatorships. I certainly don't want google to be my dictator because lazy developers want it easy :).
  - Yoric 8y ago
    What you say would definitely work for front-end features – the kind of things that could more or less be implemented by extensions already. It would not work for back-end features, such as WebVR or WebAR, for instance, or WebPay, or WebGL, or wasm. All these features need low-level support and low-level patches that only Google may decide to accept or reject. For the moment, Google doesn't seem overly interested in WebVR/WebAR, for instance, so it doesn't seem that any of the Chromiumlings will be competing on that field.
- criddell 8y ago
  > it sucks for all of us Can you remember a time when we had better web browsers than today? For sure there's some anxiety about the future, but isn't the browser situation today better than it's ever been?
  - ric2b 8y ago
    > isn't the browser situation today better than it's ever been? No? Opera is gone, all we have now is Firefox, Chromium and a bunch of Firefox and Chromium skins. Some of them also bundle extensions for extra features.
    - criddell 8y ago
      You think Opera of a few years ago was better than Chromium and Firefox today?
    - auiya 8y ago
      Pretty sure opera.com still allows you to download recent versions of their web browser for most major platforms. How is it "gone"?
      - beatgammit 8y ago
        Have you used Opera before and after they switched to being a chromium clone? I used Opera back when it was good (10-12), and when they decided to sell out, I returned to Firefox. Opera was great because it had lots of conveniences built in to the browser as well as bleeding edge features. They often beat other browser vendors to implement features, and they had a pretty good developer tool stack. Now it's a shell of what it once was.
  - mscasts 8y ago
    Not really, I can choose between Chromium and Firefox. It's like choosing between an iPhone and Android. Sure you technically could use an older phone but that is becoming an issue for everyday life, at least where I live. Before there was Firefox, IE, Chrome and Opera which all had their own rendering engines.
frederikvs 8y ago
Phase 1 : embrace. Next phases : extend, extinguish.
- jboles 8y ago
  You’re getting downvoted because you clearly didn’t read the article.
- Valmar 8y ago
  Uh... Microsoft can't really win against Google with tactics like this. Google is the one creating a web essentially bound to whatever Chrome does, supports, or doesn't support.
  - tree_of_item 8y ago
    > Google is the one creating a web essentially bound to whatever Chrome does, supports, or doesn't support. Why do you think this? What is stopping Microsoft from changing the code?
    - ToFab123 8y ago
      What is stopping Google from rejecting the pull request?
      - singularity2001 8y ago
        what is stopping Microsoft from forking?
        ToFab123 8y ago
        Nothing, but Edge has 2% markedshare so what effect will that have?
        singularity2001 8y ago
        There are still millions of Windows boxes so in the future there could be millions of Edge users. If Microsoft doesn't completely fuck up privacy again there won't be any more reason to switch to Chrome.
Beltiras 8y ago
Microsoft waves the white flag. Finally!
- Ygg2 8y ago
  I, for one, I welcome our new ad tech corporate overlords!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
expertentipp 8y ago
Long life Firefox, others passed away by now. Web with only Google backed browsers is doomed.
- dana321 8y ago
  I still use Firefox 99% of the time, i guess most people haven't heard about the Quantum update and got burned by the slower, older version.
  - Ope191 8y ago
    Agree. Most folks, especially outside of tech circles fail to realize the exponential strides Firefox has made in terms of being a robust competitor to Chrome.
  - p49k 8y ago
    I recently switched to Firefox Quantum and am really, really trying to love it because I want Mozilla to succeed, but it’s still infuriatingly slow on Mac.
    - stjohnswarts 8y ago
      I have read about a problem on some mac laptops where turning off the hardware acceleration for rendering leads to significant increases in responsiveness. Turn that off under settings and see what happens.
      - p49k 8y ago
        Tried changing that and have been browsing for 30-40 minutes, doesn't seem to help at all, sadly.
    - WebDanube 8y ago
      Android user here. Firefox Quantum has been my main driver since dethroning Chromium-based 'Brave' last November, although the interface looks super dated and clunky. Aside from the fact that the main browser has entered into what Mozilla calls 'Maintenance mode,' so there aren't any new features getting integrated. That said, I'm super excited for 'Fenix' browser which should be out sometime next year. Hope Fenix gives Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers some robust competition and loosens their stranglehold on the browser market. [0] [0] https://www.androidheadlines.com/2018/07/mozilla-developing-new-android-internet-browser-fenix.html https://www.androidheadlines.com/2018/07/mozilla-developing-...
tannhaeuser 8y ago
I had hoped MS dumped Edge onto github.
- userbinator 8y ago
  EdgeHTML, to be precise. I couldn't care less for the Edge UI (IMHO it is a poor clone of Chrome) but seeing MS's browser engine open-sourced would've been far more interesting --- even if it's only IE6.
  - ollie87 8y ago
    Would be interested to see how much of Mosaic was left in IE6.
  - wluu 8y ago
    While it’s not EdgeHTML, they do have the code for ChakraCore out there. https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865 https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865 I think EdgeHTML will continue to be used by Microsoft for various scenarios, just not in their Edge browser. These scenarios include usage in WinForms and WPF apps https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/05/09/modern-webview-winforms-wpf-apps/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/05/09/modern-webvie...
- WalterGR 8y ago
  I had hoped MS dumped Edge onto github. Last week: “If Microsoft really cared about open source, they’d deprecate Edge, adopt an open-source browser, and work to get improvements pushed upstream.” Today: “If Microsoft really cared about open source, they’d release the source for Edge.”
phkahler 8y ago
>> our unique web-platform codebase still faces occasional compatibility problems as web developers focus less on HTML standards and rationally focus on widely used platforms like Chrome to develop and validate experiences for their customers IMHO this is not rational on the part of web developers. If they've forgotten the lessons of IE-6 they need to have a refresher and stick to standards. If that means sticking to a subset of the standards that are supported by all browsers then so be it - stop thinking about yourself and your immediate desire (it's not a need after all) and think about the future and your users.
- Timpy 8y ago
  I think it's becoming clear that chromium is the future. https://xkcd.com/1726/ https://xkcd.com/1726/
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > IMHO this is not rational on the part of web developers It's quite rational. > If they've forgotten the lessons of IE-6 they need to have a refresher and stick to standards. I think you have an unreasonable view of what “the lessons of IE-6” for web developers are.
  - nirvdrum 8y ago
    > I think you have an unreasonable view of what “the lessons of IE-6” for web developers are. I agree with the OP. Perhaps you can elaborate on why you think we both have unreasonable views.
    - mnd999 8y ago
      +1
    - scrollaway 8y ago
      Some of the lessons of IE6: - Open source is important. - Web standards are important, especially living standards. - Continuous updates are extremely important. - Bundling browser updates with OS updates is an awful idea. - Plugins are a bad idea, let's not do those anymore. Am I missing any? I know people are afraid of a "browser monopoly" developing around Chrome and I think the fear is very legitimate, but I don't believe this is one of IE6's lessons. There has always been either a monopoly or a duopoly in browsers ever since… well, ever since web browsers were a thing. The web got as far as it did because there was very little fragmentation. In fact, the times where fragmentation was the highest (= when IE versions were legitimate separate browsers and auto-updating wasn't the norm) were the times with the least meaningful progress.
tree_of_item 8y ago
I really think the alarm about Edge adopting Chromium is silly. Microsoft is more than capable of forking the project, so using it does not give Google more control over the web. What exactly do people think is going to happen? If Google starts doing strange things thinking they can because "everyone uses Chromium", then downstream just won't adopt those changes, and then there will be two Chromiums. All the panic about a Google "monopoly" of the web is absurd. Google lost the ability to do anything like that the moment they open sourced the project.
- codezero 8y ago
  I think the gist is that Mozilla and Firefox are in peril. This worsens that peril at a time when MS could become a patron of Mozilla and Firefox and have a chance at launching a shot across Google’s bow. All that said, I’m surprised nobody is talking about Apple in all of this as they have a huge portion of the mobile browser share.
  - tree_of_item 8y ago
    In peril how? Google is the one giving Mozilla money. What is perilous about more people adopting an open source Google project? I really do not get it, Edge moving to Chromium changes absolutely nothing wrt Mozilla's "peril".
    - leeoniya 8y ago
      > Google is the one giving Mozilla money. because they want Mozilla's users to use google search / services, not out of the goodness of their hearts. what if mozilla had 5000 users left tomorrow? think big G would still write that check?
    - Ygg2 8y ago
      Right now Mozilla is in a deal with Google. If Firefox numbers drop below a threshold, we can only pray, Google doesn't alter the deal any further. Not to mention Google gets carte blanche to basically control Web Standards as they see fit, since they are the only implementer (that counts). - Don't want PNaCl? Too bad. - Dart on the Web? You can't remove it even if you want it. Oh and you better support it, cause if your browser doesn't have feature parity with Chrome, you are doomed. - Rust in browser? You can only dream. - Browsers that use more GPU and SIMD? Too much of a hassle.
Santosh83 8y ago
>Outside the Microsoft Edge browser, users of other browsers on Windows PCs sometimes face inconsistent feature-sets and performance/battery-life across device types. Some browsers have had slower-progress to embrace new Windows capabilities like touch and ARM processors. As you know, we’ve recently started making contributions that provide these types of hardware support to Chromium-based browsers, and we believe that this approach can be generalized: we think we can help to accelerate the web and users’ experience of it by contributing new capabilities to Chromium open source for the benefit of all these browsers and users. Disappointing that all big players want to contribute to Chromium code base but not Gecko, which is left solely in the hands of Mozilla and presumably is going to find it tougher and tougher to simply keep up with Chromium/Skia/Blink etc.
- rubber_duck 8y ago
  At the same time I see they are doing a lot of experimentation with Rust and Servo - the way I see it - it would be harder to do that kind of experimentation across companies. They have the chance to do radical stuff and show that Rust/Servo investments actually pay off in the real world.
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  I believe Mozilla is not going to attempt to play catch up, as if they need to catch up to others, but to become more resilient, unique and dependable. They won't concern themselves with what others are doing and, instead, concentrate on technical proficiency and usability (and privacy). Firefox will not be going away. While market share may be lower, they will always have millions and millions of users who will continue to love it.
  - pointillistic 8y ago
    I tried using Mozilla year after year and always surprised how little attention they pay to graphic design and how unpolished it looks visually, a deal breaker for me.
    - Yoric 8y ago
huyzz 8y ago
What a terrible, clickbaity title for this submission.
- PascLeRasc 8y ago
  I love uploading documents saying I’m the biggest company in open-source instead of uploading the actual project.
Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
"our unique web-platform codebase still faces occasional compatibility problems as web developers focus less on HTML standards and rationally focus on widely used platforms like Chrome to develop and validate experiences for their customers." IMO, it was quite opposite in my experience. Website following HTML standards worked as intended on other browsers.
paulcarroty 8y ago
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- eganist 8y ago
  > Yet another dead open sourced project from Microsoft. Maybe if they opened it BEFORE happy end Edge now be real/not paper rival for Chrome/Firefox. You may wish to click the link.
dimillian 8y ago
I don't understand the Firefox trend. It was good years ago. It's time to move on. Having one rendering engine is much better than having a lot of disparate features splitted across various engines.
- chii 8y ago
  Having many engines implement the same spec means they can keep each other in check. Monopoly means complacency.
- hvs 8y ago
  Apparently you don't remember the Internet Explorer 6 years.
  - Operyl 8y ago
    I don’t remember it being Open Source, it’s not a direct one to one situation. EDIT: I found the Downvoters, but can I get a comment so we can discuss? :)
    - jsight 8y ago
      I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted either. I'd prefer multiple options as well, but you are fundamentally right that this is quite a bit different. Each Chromium fork is bound to implement its own features to some extent or another. Granted, there is still some monocultrure elements at its core, but this is far from the sheer stagnation that came along with the overreliance on IE6.
    - vezycash 8y ago
      Android is open source. Yet Amazon's fork is the only thriving one. Open source isn't a magic solution to Google's kind of monopoly. It's a herculean task to match Google with its free + convenience + monopoly + open source + strong brand recognition offering. Chrome is already past IE's level of dominance without our realising it - market share percentages just obscures reality. Google's next card is obvious from their android play book. They'll soon rip off vital parts of chromium - make em proprietary or google cloud dependent.
dbrgn 8y ago
I think this might actually be something positive in the long term: Google will control less of Chromium. (Still, it would have been nice if Microsoft would have chosen Gecko instead...)
- simonh 8y ago
  Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
nimbius 8y ago
im old enough to remember the browser wars, and this just feels like another crack at the same pinata...Microsoft ultimately refuses to give customers a choice in the matter of browsers and is simply reskinning a copy of chrome out of desperation to keep customers clicking through their product, not googles. I expect microsoft to release their rebuild of Edge, which will override all user preferences for chrome, advertise itself on the lock screen, and come bolted on with a ton of features and extensions no one asked for because Redmond couldnt help themselves.
- bsenftner 8y ago
  Found the adult!
- WalterGR 8y ago
  Microsoft ultimately refuses to give customers a choice 2008. “Fuck you, Microsoft, for not bundling Firefox or Chrome. Your browser is destroying the web!” 2018. “Fuck you, Microsoft, for bundling Firefox or Chrome. Stopping work on your browser will destroy the web!” Give it a rest. If Microsoft implemented POSIX support, people would grab their torches and pitchforks because MS was actively working to encourage monoculture because it hates customers.
deleted 8y ago
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drinchev 8y ago
My best case scenario would be for Chromium codebase to be donated and governed by a board of non-profit organisation ( why not WHATWG ), which includes the major players in the field. Doing this would be far more safe in terms of having at least some method for controlling what the engine will look like other than "hope Google don't, hope Google do..." The only way that I can feel a bit safe when a browser engine dominates ~90% of browser base.
jbk 8y ago
It is weird that they don't mention Chakra or v8. What JS engine will they use?
avar 8y ago
Everyone saying this is a repeat of history with Chromium as the new IE6 aren't remembering their history very well. When IE6 initially came out it was the best browser around, with excellent standards support for its time. It only became the horror it's remembered as today because then Microsoft just didn't update it, so a once first-in-class browser became a backwards compatibility nightmare everyone had to support. I don't see how the same situation could repeat itself. If Google or Microsoft ever decides to just drop Chromium for whatever reason the code this time around is open, so someone else can just pick it up, and users can migrate to that. The main problem with IE6 was that users couldn't do that, there was a decade of legacy apps that had grown to require IE6-specific features.
- geolgau 8y ago
  Not really. The problem with IE6 was that it didn't implement web standards as they should have, so developers had to to a lot of hacks and tricks to have their websites compatible with all browsers. And IE6 was non-compliant with the HTML standards from the start if I remember well: I had a small website that looked good in IE/Netscape/Opera, but when IE6 was out a lot of people started complaining that my backgrounds would not be positioned as they were in Opera/Netscape and all sorts of things like that.
  - avar 8y ago
    Sure. It wasn't perfect, all browsers sucked in different ways back then. Mozilla was slow as hell, IE6's CSS support was amazing etc. This was in 2001 and XP had just been released. My point is that whatever the state was back then what followed couldn't have happened if IE6 was open source. Mozilla could have simply built it as part of Firefox, shipped it as a legacy rendering mode, and nobody would have had Windows or IE6 lock-in to use some legacy website.
- detritus 8y ago
  If I remember correctly, IE5.5 was the stepping stone toward browser greatness and Netscape became an albatross around all our necks. I find it slightly ironic that my beloved Firefox was borne of that bloody mess!
OliverJones 8y ago
It's more than just the browser's CSS, rendering, and js. There's an ecosystem around browsers: web extensions (Google store), debugging tools, canary versions, sandboxes/security etc etc. MS is trying to build that ecosystem for Edge. But it is slow going. A big advantage of changing to Chromium might be to fit into the existing ecosystem.
OliverJones 8y ago
Hmm. ARM? Unmet need? apt install chromium-browser works great on my raspberry pis.
phponpcp 8y ago
Pls stop with the TLDR that's three paragraphs.

145 points by rakibtg 8y ago

dao- 8y ago

duplicate from five days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18621136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18621136 related MS blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18619774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18619774

mscasts 8y ago

Google has won the browser battle (for now) and it sucks for all of us. Competition is a good thing.

kmlx 8y ago
i disagree. in my opinion we don't need more browsers. what we need is a single browser/platform where companies and individuals can compete while developing various features. think of it like this: instead of a browser vendor implementing a feature and then the rest playing catch-up, that same feature will now be available for most users, no matter who has developed it. edit: spelling
- stjohnswarts 8y ago
  It's a good thing that you don't run the world then :) . I prefer choice to dictatorships. I certainly don't want google to be my dictator because lazy developers want it easy :).
- Yoric 8y ago
  What you say would definitely work for front-end features – the kind of things that could more or less be implemented by extensions already. It would not work for back-end features, such as WebVR or WebAR, for instance, or WebPay, or WebGL, or wasm. All these features need low-level support and low-level patches that only Google may decide to accept or reject. For the moment, Google doesn't seem overly interested in WebVR/WebAR, for instance, so it doesn't seem that any of the Chromiumlings will be competing on that field.
criddell 8y ago
> it sucks for all of us Can you remember a time when we had better web browsers than today? For sure there's some anxiety about the future, but isn't the browser situation today better than it's ever been?
- ric2b 8y ago
  > isn't the browser situation today better than it's ever been? No? Opera is gone, all we have now is Firefox, Chromium and a bunch of Firefox and Chromium skins. Some of them also bundle extensions for extra features.
  - criddell 8y ago
    You think Opera of a few years ago was better than Chromium and Firefox today?
  - auiya 8y ago
    Pretty sure opera.com still allows you to download recent versions of their web browser for most major platforms. How is it "gone"?
    - beatgammit 8y ago
      Have you used Opera before and after they switched to being a chromium clone? I used Opera back when it was good (10-12), and when they decided to sell out, I returned to Firefox. Opera was great because it had lots of conveniences built in to the browser as well as bleeding edge features. They often beat other browser vendors to implement features, and they had a pretty good developer tool stack. Now it's a shell of what it once was.
- mscasts 8y ago
  Not really, I can choose between Chromium and Firefox. It's like choosing between an iPhone and Android. Sure you technically could use an older phone but that is becoming an issue for everyday life, at least where I live. Before there was Firefox, IE, Chrome and Opera which all had their own rendering engines.

frederikvs 8y ago

Phase 1 : embrace. Next phases : extend, extinguish.

jboles 8y ago
You’re getting downvoted because you clearly didn’t read the article.
Valmar 8y ago
Uh... Microsoft can't really win against Google with tactics like this. Google is the one creating a web essentially bound to whatever Chrome does, supports, or doesn't support.
- tree_of_item 8y ago
  > Google is the one creating a web essentially bound to whatever Chrome does, supports, or doesn't support. Why do you think this? What is stopping Microsoft from changing the code?
  - ToFab123 8y ago
    What is stopping Google from rejecting the pull request?
    - singularity2001 8y ago
      what is stopping Microsoft from forking?
      - ToFab123 8y ago
        Nothing, but Edge has 2% markedshare so what effect will that have?
        singularity2001 8y ago
        There are still millions of Windows boxes so in the future there could be millions of Edge users. If Microsoft doesn't completely fuck up privacy again there won't be any more reason to switch to Chrome.

Beltiras 8y ago

Microsoft waves the white flag. Finally!

Ygg2 8y ago
I, for one, I welcome our new ad tech corporate overlords!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

expertentipp 8y ago

Long life Firefox, others passed away by now. Web with only Google backed browsers is doomed.

dana321 8y ago
I still use Firefox 99% of the time, i guess most people haven't heard about the Quantum update and got burned by the slower, older version.
- Ope191 8y ago
  Agree. Most folks, especially outside of tech circles fail to realize the exponential strides Firefox has made in terms of being a robust competitor to Chrome.
- p49k 8y ago
  I recently switched to Firefox Quantum and am really, really trying to love it because I want Mozilla to succeed, but it’s still infuriatingly slow on Mac.
  - stjohnswarts 8y ago
    I have read about a problem on some mac laptops where turning off the hardware acceleration for rendering leads to significant increases in responsiveness. Turn that off under settings and see what happens.
    - p49k 8y ago
      Tried changing that and have been browsing for 30-40 minutes, doesn't seem to help at all, sadly.
  - WebDanube 8y ago
    Android user here. Firefox Quantum has been my main driver since dethroning Chromium-based 'Brave' last November, although the interface looks super dated and clunky. Aside from the fact that the main browser has entered into what Mozilla calls 'Maintenance mode,' so there aren't any new features getting integrated. That said, I'm super excited for 'Fenix' browser which should be out sometime next year. Hope Fenix gives Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers some robust competition and loosens their stranglehold on the browser market. [0] [0] https://www.androidheadlines.com/2018/07/mozilla-developing-new-android-internet-browser-fenix.html https://www.androidheadlines.com/2018/07/mozilla-developing-...

tannhaeuser 8y ago

I had hoped MS dumped Edge onto github.

userbinator 8y ago
EdgeHTML, to be precise. I couldn't care less for the Edge UI (IMHO it is a poor clone of Chrome) but seeing MS's browser engine open-sourced would've been far more interesting --- even if it's only IE6.
- ollie87 8y ago
  Would be interested to see how much of Mosaic was left in IE6.
- wluu 8y ago
  While it’s not EdgeHTML, they do have the code for ChakraCore out there. https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865 https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865 I think EdgeHTML will continue to be used by Microsoft for various scenarios, just not in their Edge browser. These scenarios include usage in WinForms and WPF apps https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/05/09/modern-webview-winforms-wpf-apps/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/05/09/modern-webvie...
WalterGR 8y ago
I had hoped MS dumped Edge onto github. Last week: “If Microsoft really cared about open source, they’d deprecate Edge, adopt an open-source browser, and work to get improvements pushed upstream.” Today: “If Microsoft really cared about open source, they’d release the source for Edge.”

phkahler 8y ago

>> our unique web-platform codebase still faces occasional compatibility problems as web developers focus less on HTML standards and rationally focus on widely used platforms like Chrome to develop and validate experiences for their customers IMHO this is not rational on the part of web developers. If they've forgotten the lessons of IE-6 they need to have a refresher and stick to standards. If that means sticking to a subset of the standards that are supported by all browsers then so be it - stop thinking about yourself and your immediate desire (it's not a need after all) and think about the future and your users.

Timpy 8y ago
I think it's becoming clear that chromium is the future. https://xkcd.com/1726/ https://xkcd.com/1726/
deleted 8y ago
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dragonwriter 8y ago
> IMHO this is not rational on the part of web developers It's quite rational. > If they've forgotten the lessons of IE-6 they need to have a refresher and stick to standards. I think you have an unreasonable view of what “the lessons of IE-6” for web developers are.
- nirvdrum 8y ago
  > I think you have an unreasonable view of what “the lessons of IE-6” for web developers are. I agree with the OP. Perhaps you can elaborate on why you think we both have unreasonable views.
  - mnd999 8y ago
    +1
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    Some of the lessons of IE6: - Open source is important. - Web standards are important, especially living standards. - Continuous updates are extremely important. - Bundling browser updates with OS updates is an awful idea. - Plugins are a bad idea, let's not do those anymore. Am I missing any? I know people are afraid of a "browser monopoly" developing around Chrome and I think the fear is very legitimate, but I don't believe this is one of IE6's lessons. There has always been either a monopoly or a duopoly in browsers ever since… well, ever since web browsers were a thing. The web got as far as it did because there was very little fragmentation. In fact, the times where fragmentation was the highest (= when IE versions were legitimate separate browsers and auto-updating wasn't the norm) were the times with the least meaningful progress.

tree_of_item 8y ago

I really think the alarm about Edge adopting Chromium is silly. Microsoft is more than capable of forking the project, so using it does not give Google more control over the web. What exactly do people think is going to happen? If Google starts doing strange things thinking they can because "everyone uses Chromium", then downstream just won't adopt those changes, and then there will be two Chromiums. All the panic about a Google "monopoly" of the web is absurd. Google lost the ability to do anything like that the moment they open sourced the project.

codezero 8y ago
I think the gist is that Mozilla and Firefox are in peril. This worsens that peril at a time when MS could become a patron of Mozilla and Firefox and have a chance at launching a shot across Google’s bow. All that said, I’m surprised nobody is talking about Apple in all of this as they have a huge portion of the mobile browser share.
- tree_of_item 8y ago
  In peril how? Google is the one giving Mozilla money. What is perilous about more people adopting an open source Google project? I really do not get it, Edge moving to Chromium changes absolutely nothing wrt Mozilla's "peril".
  - leeoniya 8y ago
    > Google is the one giving Mozilla money. because they want Mozilla's users to use google search / services, not out of the goodness of their hearts. what if mozilla had 5000 users left tomorrow? think big G would still write that check?
  - Ygg2 8y ago
    Right now Mozilla is in a deal with Google. If Firefox numbers drop below a threshold, we can only pray, Google doesn't alter the deal any further. Not to mention Google gets carte blanche to basically control Web Standards as they see fit, since they are the only implementer (that counts). - Don't want PNaCl? Too bad. - Dart on the Web? You can't remove it even if you want it. Oh and you better support it, cause if your browser doesn't have feature parity with Chrome, you are doomed. - Rust in browser? You can only dream. - Browsers that use more GPU and SIMD? Too much of a hassle.

Santosh83 8y ago

>Outside the Microsoft Edge browser, users of other browsers on Windows PCs sometimes face inconsistent feature-sets and performance/battery-life across device types. Some browsers have had slower-progress to embrace new Windows capabilities like touch and ARM processors. As you know, we’ve recently started making contributions that provide these types of hardware support to Chromium-based browsers, and we believe that this approach can be generalized: we think we can help to accelerate the web and users’ experience of it by contributing new capabilities to Chromium open source for the benefit of all these browsers and users. Disappointing that all big players want to contribute to Chromium code base but not Gecko, which is left solely in the hands of Mozilla and presumably is going to find it tougher and tougher to simply keep up with Chromium/Skia/Blink etc.

rubber_duck 8y ago
At the same time I see they are doing a lot of experimentation with Rust and Servo - the way I see it - it would be harder to do that kind of experimentation across companies. They have the chance to do radical stuff and show that Rust/Servo investments actually pay off in the real world.
sureaboutthis 8y ago
I believe Mozilla is not going to attempt to play catch up, as if they need to catch up to others, but to become more resilient, unique and dependable. They won't concern themselves with what others are doing and, instead, concentrate on technical proficiency and usability (and privacy). Firefox will not be going away. While market share may be lower, they will always have millions and millions of users who will continue to love it.
- pointillistic 8y ago
  I tried using Mozilla year after year and always surprised how little attention they pay to graphic design and how unpolished it looks visually, a deal breaker for me.
  - Yoric 8y ago

huyzz 8y ago

What a terrible, clickbaity title for this submission.

PascLeRasc 8y ago
I love uploading documents saying I’m the biggest company in open-source instead of uploading the actual project.

Abishek_Muthian 8y ago

"our unique web-platform codebase still faces occasional compatibility problems as web developers focus less on HTML standards and rationally focus on widely used platforms like Chrome to develop and validate experiences for their customers." IMO, it was quite opposite in my experience. Website following HTML standards worked as intended on other browsers.

paulcarroty 8y ago

eganist 8y ago
> Yet another dead open sourced project from Microsoft. Maybe if they opened it BEFORE happy end Edge now be real/not paper rival for Chrome/Firefox. You may wish to click the link.

dimillian 8y ago

I don't understand the Firefox trend. It was good years ago. It's time to move on. Having one rendering engine is much better than having a lot of disparate features splitted across various engines.

chii 8y ago
Having many engines implement the same spec means they can keep each other in check. Monopoly means complacency.
hvs 8y ago
Apparently you don't remember the Internet Explorer 6 years.
- Operyl 8y ago
  I don’t remember it being Open Source, it’s not a direct one to one situation. EDIT: I found the Downvoters, but can I get a comment so we can discuss? :)
  - jsight 8y ago
    I'm not sure why you are getting downvoted either. I'd prefer multiple options as well, but you are fundamentally right that this is quite a bit different. Each Chromium fork is bound to implement its own features to some extent or another. Granted, there is still some monocultrure elements at its core, but this is far from the sheer stagnation that came along with the overreliance on IE6.
  - vezycash 8y ago
    Android is open source. Yet Amazon's fork is the only thriving one. Open source isn't a magic solution to Google's kind of monopoly. It's a herculean task to match Google with its free + convenience + monopoly + open source + strong brand recognition offering. Chrome is already past IE's level of dominance without our realising it - market share percentages just obscures reality. Google's next card is obvious from their android play book. They'll soon rip off vital parts of chromium - make em proprietary or google cloud dependent.

dbrgn 8y ago

I think this might actually be something positive in the long term: Google will control less of Chromium. (Still, it would have been nice if Microsoft would have chosen Gecko instead...)

simonh 8y ago
Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

nimbius 8y ago

im old enough to remember the browser wars, and this just feels like another crack at the same pinata...Microsoft ultimately refuses to give customers a choice in the matter of browsers and is simply reskinning a copy of chrome out of desperation to keep customers clicking through their product, not googles. I expect microsoft to release their rebuild of Edge, which will override all user preferences for chrome, advertise itself on the lock screen, and come bolted on with a ton of features and extensions no one asked for because Redmond couldnt help themselves.

bsenftner 8y ago
Found the adult!
WalterGR 8y ago
Microsoft ultimately refuses to give customers a choice 2008. “Fuck you, Microsoft, for not bundling Firefox or Chrome. Your browser is destroying the web!” 2018. “Fuck you, Microsoft, for bundling Firefox or Chrome. Stopping work on your browser will destroy the web!” Give it a rest. If Microsoft implemented POSIX support, people would grab their torches and pitchforks because MS was actively working to encourage monoculture because it hates customers.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

drinchev 8y ago

My best case scenario would be for Chromium codebase to be donated and governed by a board of non-profit organisation ( why not WHATWG ), which includes the major players in the field. Doing this would be far more safe in terms of having at least some method for controlling what the engine will look like other than "hope Google don't, hope Google do..." The only way that I can feel a bit safe when a browser engine dominates ~90% of browser base.

jbk 8y ago

It is weird that they don't mention Chakra or v8. What JS engine will they use?

avar 8y ago

Everyone saying this is a repeat of history with Chromium as the new IE6 aren't remembering their history very well. When IE6 initially came out it was the best browser around, with excellent standards support for its time. It only became the horror it's remembered as today because then Microsoft just didn't update it, so a once first-in-class browser became a backwards compatibility nightmare everyone had to support. I don't see how the same situation could repeat itself. If Google or Microsoft ever decides to just drop Chromium for whatever reason the code this time around is open, so someone else can just pick it up, and users can migrate to that. The main problem with IE6 was that users couldn't do that, there was a decade of legacy apps that had grown to require IE6-specific features.

geolgau 8y ago
Not really. The problem with IE6 was that it didn't implement web standards as they should have, so developers had to to a lot of hacks and tricks to have their websites compatible with all browsers. And IE6 was non-compliant with the HTML standards from the start if I remember well: I had a small website that looked good in IE/Netscape/Opera, but when IE6 was out a lot of people started complaining that my backgrounds would not be positioned as they were in Opera/Netscape and all sorts of things like that.
- avar 8y ago
  Sure. It wasn't perfect, all browsers sucked in different ways back then. Mozilla was slow as hell, IE6's CSS support was amazing etc. This was in 2001 and XP had just been released. My point is that whatever the state was back then what followed couldn't have happened if IE6 was open source. Mozilla could have simply built it as part of Firefox, shipped it as a legacy rendering mode, and nobody would have had Windows or IE6 lock-in to use some legacy website.
detritus 8y ago
If I remember correctly, IE5.5 was the stepping stone toward browser greatness and Netscape became an albatross around all our necks. I find it slightly ironic that my beloved Firefox was borne of that bloody mess!

OliverJones 8y ago

It's more than just the browser's CSS, rendering, and js. There's an ecosystem around browsers: web extensions (Google store), debugging tools, canary versions, sandboxes/security etc etc. MS is trying to build that ecosystem for Edge. But it is slow going. A big advantage of changing to Chromium might be to fit into the existing ecosystem.

OliverJones 8y ago

Hmm. ARM? Unmet need? apt install chromium-browser works great on my raspberry pis.

phponpcp 8y ago

Pls stop with the TLDR that's three paragraphs.