8 ms·

Chromium-based Edge preview builds

87 points by cmsimike 7y ago

partiallypro 7y ago
It looks nice so far, but Microsoft really needs to drop the E logo, and maybe even the Edge name. Both already have negative connotations; and I don't think Microsoft can now claim that it makes it easier to find access to the internet. Especially when Chrome and Safari on tablets and phones look nothing like the iconic blue E, and yet late age boomers can still figure out the devices.
- samdixon 7y ago
  I agree with this sentiment. Edge was an extremely fast browser and I think it lost before it was even released simply by using similar branding to Explorer.
  - ghostly_s 7y ago
    Edge lost because, even in April 2019, it is a buggy pile of shit that lacks fundamental features it's competitors have and chokes on web pages constantly. (I'm forced to use it for work.)
    - samdixon 7y ago
      In truth I didn't use edge much myself, but for the slim number of uses the speed was nice.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
  I'm not so sure that all old consumers can find another browser icon. Most in my experience look for the E.
  - abrowne 7y ago
    That's what they said when they announced the Edge name – if they didn't choose an E- name (and logo), literally millions of people wouldn't be able to get on the web.
    - ghostly_s 7y ago
      Now try to imagine providing support for one of these users and explaining no, you're clicking the wrong shade of blue 'e'.
saagarjha 7y ago
> Support for Mac and all supported versions of Windows will also come over time. Is anyone actually planning to use Edge on macOS? What reasons would you have for doing so?
- iamjustlooking 7y ago
  I would use it for browser testing websites if it's renders identically to the Windows version.
  - 0x0 7y ago
    Seems unlikely to ever render identically. At the very least I believe chrome uses the platform specific font shapers (coretext on mac, cleartype on win). So in the end, a mac version of edgeium just adds yet another browser to the test matrix columns....
- outside1234 7y ago
  Its Chrome but not Google? Sort of the same usecase as Brave?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    …but it’s Microsoft. Is that any better?
  - pndy 7y ago
    Brave was made originally on Electron fork Muon which was recently abandoned in favor of Chromium.
- kanche 7y ago
  Making browser cross-platform gives a bigger user base and instills confidence in developers to take a browser into consideration when designing websites, which in turn popularizes the browser as sites work properly.
- eugeniub 7y ago
  This reminds me of the 5 year period from 2007 to 2012 when Apple made Safari for Windows. I got curious and used it for a few weeks, but moved back to Firefox for the extensions.
penagwin 7y ago
I think there's a tongue-in-cheek joke about IE/Edge being so bloated as is, that the only route they could take was to slap electron on top for even more memory usage. All jokes aside, are they still using Chakra or switching to V8? I know there was a ton of work in node.js to make it work with chakra, not to mention edge was one of the early adopters of many ES2015/ES6 features, it seems odd to me to abandon all of that momentum.
- muizelaar 7y ago
  They're using V8. https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865#issue-388756166 https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865#issue-38...
  - devoply 7y ago
    Which begs the question why would anyone use Edge when they can use Chrome?
    - megous 7y ago
      They trust Microsoft more than Google?
      - devoply 7y ago
        That's an interesting point. 10 years ago I would, today with Windows data mining gone mad I wouldn't. They are on par.
        thelarkinn 7y ago
        /* Looks to other top HN Posts */ A majority of consumers do not expect Google to track their activities (niemanlab.org) Ironic?
    - penagwin 7y ago
      The alternative would be Microsoft ships windows with an outdated browser, or they include Chrome/Firefox, or they don't include any browser. For me, I plan to use Edge to install Chrome, business as usual :P
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sverige 7y ago
Seriously, why is MS doing this? Internet Explorer died years ago, Edge never took off, and Google isn't about to give up their market share for spyware without a fight. It's like MS thinks this is Browser Wars 3.0. Heaven help me if it turns out that MS seems to be doing something comparatively good.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
  I think you answered your own question. Edge never took off, why continue investing money into it? This offloads a lot of work to the open-source Chromium project, allowing Microsoft to just skin it and add whatever else they need.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > This offloads a lot of work to the open-source Chromium project, allowing Microsoft to just skin it and add whatever else they need. Plus, it means any work MS does at implementing web features they view as strategic in their browser will naturally easily port back to Chrome, eliminating technical barriers for them becoming common user-agent features (there might still be political/strategic reasons for Chrome not accepting them, of course.)
- alkonaut 7y ago
  They need a browser they control but they only need to control look/feel, interaction with windows settings etc. They don’t want to spend a fortune maintaining a js runtime and renderer. So assuming an OS does need to ship with a browser, skinning a chromium one seems very sensible.
- Shorel 7y ago
  Curiously, had they made Edge compatible with Windows 7 it would have had a much bigger chance of it actually being used. The greedy strategy of wanting to have both Windows 10 and browser market share is what doomed Edge.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rock_artist 7y ago
I mostly use Windows on Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet. TL;DR - no 32bit builds. currently only 64bit builds.
emp_ 7y ago
To the surprise of no one, its basically chrome. Even my google account came in logged in automatically, same recent sites etc. I wonder if the roadmap will include things like dark mode, I never used the annotations feature so can't vouch much for it. I'm yet to try to make a MS Teams call but looking good so far. The single engine world domination plan takes one step further today.
- basch 7y ago
  it says on the first launch page that dark mode is coming.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    There's also an experimental option to turn on in edge:flags.
- geofft 7y ago
  Google account integration seems pretty non-strategic for Microsoft - do we have any idea if this is intentional? (I would have assumed they'd implement all the cloud stuff backed by Live accounts.)
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    If they integrate Google Accounts and Microsoft services, it provides a way to exfiltrate personal data held in Google Accounts to Microsoft; least nefariously, as a way to make MS accounts more useful by, perhaps automatically, importing contacts, etc., but that's not all that is possible.)
  - fxbl0i 7y ago
    This new Edge seems to reuse the cookie jar, history, etc. of the real Edge, so emp_ is probably already logged in to his Google account on the real Edge. (Corrections welcome, but it's what I've noticed after trying it.)
    - 7y ago
olliej 7y ago
Can we finally stop saying safari is the new ie, and recognize that chrome is now literally the new IE? Seriously, this means that chrome has more or less complete market dominance at this point.
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  It wasn't dominance that people were referring to, it's the intentional heel dragging to benefit other parts of their corporate family at the expense of the web that makes Safari the new IE.
  - leeoniya 7y ago
    when people say "Safari is the new IE" they mean that Safari has numerous bugs and missing features that take years to fix or implement. there's probably a ton of CSS stuff that doesn't need -webkit prefixes anymore in any browser (because it has been standardized). except of course in the outdated and widely-used Safari/iOS. For instance, they only now got Intersection Observer (super important to efficiently lazy load on mobile devices) in the latest iOS tech preview. many browsers have had it since 2017: https://caniuse.com/#search=intersectionobserver https://caniuse.com/#search=intersectionobserver
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Let's not beat around the bush: Intersection Observer can and will be used to detect ad impressions too. Calling it "super important to lazy load images" doesn't show the whole picture.
      - leeoniya 7y ago
        ummm, did you get the impression that i was beating around the bush? i stated exactly why i've personally needed it and have had to resort to polyfills even for the latest iOS. > Intersection Observer can and will be used to detect ad impressions too. yes, and? would you rather it be done using inefficient, non-passive onscroll, onresize and onorientationchange events with a bunch more MutationObserver and getBoundingclientRect() sprinkled in plus a generous helping of setInterval(..., 100) for UI polling? cause that's how things basically work today (and how the polyfill works). replacing all that junk with a normal, optimized API is exactly how it should be.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fgonzag 7y ago
I wish they've would have gone with Firefox's Quantum, in order to try and at least balance out web market shares. MSFT no longer has any leverage in the web, so trying to keep it fair and accessible (no browser monopolies) should be a priority for them (especially since they have quite a few web platforms like office 365)
- spinningslate 7y ago
  Agreed. Browser diversity might be a pain for developers, but concentrating 2 of the 4 dominant end-user computing platforms on the same browser engine doesn't sound like a positive step for users [0]. Particularly when the engine in question is developed and maintained by one of two primary surveillance tech firms on the planet. Perhaps I'm too jaded, but there's an unmistakable smell of the fishy about this. Dominant mobile + dominant desktop OS vendors decide to cosy up together... I never thought I'd see the day that I mourned IE's decline having lived through the zenith of its hegemony. Like parent, I similarly would much rather have seen MS link up with Firefox for the sake of diversity. Perhaps that's too fanciful. Perhaps a more interesting pairing would be Apple and Firefox, given that both are increasingly playing the pro-privacy card... [0] I'm not counting Safari since WebKit and Blink diverged some time ago afaik.
  - bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
    Yep, WebKit and Blink are very different not least because of their different JS engines. Lots of developers have trouble targeting safari, whereas chrome is a breeze.
  - metildaa 7y ago
    Apple will likely stick to Safari based on their Webkit fork. Look at their stewardship of coreutils and the graphics stack on MacOS, its plain to see that they just don't care if MacOS is 5+ years behind the curve on features and performance if its not hurting battety life for most users. Gaming on MacOS has become a much more limited experience than on Linux (blame Valve for this) or Windows. Apple wields a big stick with each of these choices, kneecaping HTML5 PWAs, pushing forward their own graphics stack (hence the crap OpenGL support and lack of Mantle support)
kitsunesoba 7y ago
I hope Microsoft makes a point of prioritizing efficiency over features in Chrome-Edge. Google has seemingly placed low resource consumption and low battery life impact as tertiary concerns (at best), opting to woo developers with a constant stream of hastily developed shiny features instead. As it is the only browser that seems to care at all about not sucking your battery life down a black hole is Safari…
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  The Edge team has repeatedly said that Performance/Battery Life has always been important to them. One of the reasons they've mentioned for why they are going Chromium-based is that it gives them more time to focus on Performance/Battery rather than web platform bugs, and they've definitely listed Performance/Battery as a continued "Focus Area" for the team.
forgotmypw 7y ago
URL contains tracking device.
rayiner 7y ago
I liked Edge because of its fantastic battery life (for browsing, Edge was like having a 25% larger battery.) I was annoyed that many sites seemed to be Chrome-specific, including some I absolutely need to rely on. I switched to Brave, and it's amazing. Chrome-based, but somehow results in far better battery life than Chrome.
- pcwalton 7y ago
  > I liked Edge because of its fantastic battery life (for browsing, Edge was like having a 25% larger battery.) For what it's worth, I suspect this is the result of using the system DirectComposition. If you look at the more recent additions to that API, they're essentially just CSS 3. Basically, Windows integrates portions of CSS deeply into its OS stack, like macOS does with Core Animation. It's sad that moving to Chromium will regress this elegant architecture, as saving the extra blits that come from doing everything at the application level as Chromium mostly does (except for video playback IIRC) is a nice power and performance improvement. > Chrome-based, but somehow results in far better battery life than Chrome. Most likely because of ad blocking.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Neat, I didn't even know that existed. > Compositions and animations created by DirectComposition are passed to a built-in component of Windows called Desktop Window Manager (DWM) for rendering to the screen. Therefore, no special rendering components or UI frameworks are required on the computer. Wow. Everything old is new again: https://nnc3.com/mags/LM10/issue/04/Berlin.pdf https://nnc3.com/mags/LM10/issue/04/Berlin.pdf. (As an aside, Berlin has somehow almost completely disappeared from Google. I had trouble remembering the name, and I searched "display server scene graph corba" and it didn't come up in the first few pages. Finally found this slashdot announcement: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/02/11/24/189226/fresco-m1-released. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/02/11/24/189226/fresco-m1-re...)
    - pcwalton 7y ago
      Yeah, it's neat. The long-term goal is to move Firefox to use DirectComposition as much as it can, by the way, by integrating it into WebRender. I've done some work on this with the "planeshift" library. I wouldn't be surprised if Chromium eventually does the same (as it already uses Core Animation on macOS).
makecheck 7y ago
It’s truly remarkable that a company that was once nearly broken up by the government over its browser bundling, is now barely implementing a browser.
fxbl0i 7y ago
This wasn't necessary, they just had to get rid of the slow, ugly UWP UI framework. The Edge rendering engine was fine. It looks like this new Edge uses Win32 instead of UWP, so people will actually use it, and they'll pat their own backs thinking the problem was the rendering engine. No, it was the stupid UI framework. >:(
- zamadatix 7y ago
  99% of people probably never even noticed Edge is UWP based. I don't really think MS switched over because they were losing out on performance either. Seems more like they were just tired of maintaining a first class browser stack that wasn't very popular when using Google's gets them everything just about the same.
janober 7y ago
It seems like they do not have planned to support Linux. It simply says "Not supported" and on the download page it is not even mentioned: https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/download/ https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/download/
murkle 7y ago
chrome://flags/#enable-experimental-web-platform-features works but redirects to edge:// :)

87 points by cmsimike 7y ago

It looks nice so far, but Microsoft really needs to drop the E logo, and maybe even the Edge name. Both already have negative connotations; and I don't think Microsoft can now claim that it makes it easier to find access to the internet. Especially when Chrome and Safari on tablets and phones look nothing like the iconic blue E, and yet late age boomers can still figure out the devices.

samdixon 7y ago
I agree with this sentiment. Edge was an extremely fast browser and I think it lost before it was even released simply by using similar branding to Explorer.
- ghostly_s 7y ago
  Edge lost because, even in April 2019, it is a buggy pile of shit that lacks fundamental features it's competitors have and chokes on web pages constantly. (I'm forced to use it for work.)
  - samdixon 7y ago
    In truth I didn't use edge much myself, but for the slim number of uses the speed was nice.
s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
I'm not so sure that all old consumers can find another browser icon. Most in my experience look for the E.
- abrowne 7y ago
  That's what they said when they announced the Edge name – if they didn't choose an E- name (and logo), literally millions of people wouldn't be able to get on the web.
  - ghostly_s 7y ago
    Now try to imagine providing support for one of these users and explaining no, you're clicking the wrong shade of blue 'e'.

saagarjha 7y ago

> Support for Mac and all supported versions of Windows will also come over time. Is anyone actually planning to use Edge on macOS? What reasons would you have for doing so?

iamjustlooking 7y ago
I would use it for browser testing websites if it's renders identically to the Windows version.
- 0x0 7y ago
  Seems unlikely to ever render identically. At the very least I believe chrome uses the platform specific font shapers (coretext on mac, cleartype on win). So in the end, a mac version of edgeium just adds yet another browser to the test matrix columns....
outside1234 7y ago
Its Chrome but not Google? Sort of the same usecase as Brave?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  …but it’s Microsoft. Is that any better?
- pndy 7y ago
  Brave was made originally on Electron fork Muon which was recently abandoned in favor of Chromium.
kanche 7y ago
Making browser cross-platform gives a bigger user base and instills confidence in developers to take a browser into consideration when designing websites, which in turn popularizes the browser as sites work properly.
eugeniub 7y ago
This reminds me of the 5 year period from 2007 to 2012 when Apple made Safari for Windows. I got curious and used it for a few weeks, but moved back to Firefox for the extensions.

penagwin 7y ago

I think there's a tongue-in-cheek joke about IE/Edge being so bloated as is, that the only route they could take was to slap electron on top for even more memory usage. All jokes aside, are they still using Chakra or switching to V8? I know there was a ton of work in node.js to make it work with chakra, not to mention edge was one of the early adopters of many ES2015/ES6 features, it seems odd to me to abandon all of that momentum.

muizelaar 7y ago
They're using V8. https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865#issue-388756166 https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865#issue-38...
- devoply 7y ago
  Which begs the question why would anyone use Edge when they can use Chrome?
  - megous 7y ago
    They trust Microsoft more than Google?
    - devoply 7y ago
      That's an interesting point. 10 years ago I would, today with Windows data mining gone mad I wouldn't. They are on par.
      - thelarkinn 7y ago
        /* Looks to other top HN Posts */ A majority of consumers do not expect Google to track their activities (niemanlab.org) Ironic?
  - penagwin 7y ago
    The alternative would be Microsoft ships windows with an outdated browser, or they include Chrome/Firefox, or they don't include any browser. For me, I plan to use Edge to install Chrome, business as usual :P

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sverige 7y ago

Seriously, why is MS doing this? Internet Explorer died years ago, Edge never took off, and Google isn't about to give up their market share for spyware without a fight. It's like MS thinks this is Browser Wars 3.0. Heaven help me if it turns out that MS seems to be doing something comparatively good.

s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
I think you answered your own question. Edge never took off, why continue investing money into it? This offloads a lot of work to the open-source Chromium project, allowing Microsoft to just skin it and add whatever else they need.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > This offloads a lot of work to the open-source Chromium project, allowing Microsoft to just skin it and add whatever else they need. Plus, it means any work MS does at implementing web features they view as strategic in their browser will naturally easily port back to Chrome, eliminating technical barriers for them becoming common user-agent features (there might still be political/strategic reasons for Chrome not accepting them, of course.)
alkonaut 7y ago
They need a browser they control but they only need to control look/feel, interaction with windows settings etc. They don’t want to spend a fortune maintaining a js runtime and renderer. So assuming an OS does need to ship with a browser, skinning a chromium one seems very sensible.
Shorel 7y ago
Curiously, had they made Edge compatible with Windows 7 it would have had a much bigger chance of it actually being used. The greedy strategy of wanting to have both Windows 10 and browser market share is what doomed Edge.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rock_artist 7y ago

I mostly use Windows on Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet. TL;DR - no 32bit builds. currently only 64bit builds.

emp_ 7y ago

To the surprise of no one, its basically chrome. Even my google account came in logged in automatically, same recent sites etc. I wonder if the roadmap will include things like dark mode, I never used the annotations feature so can't vouch much for it. I'm yet to try to make a MS Teams call but looking good so far. The single engine world domination plan takes one step further today.

basch 7y ago
it says on the first launch page that dark mode is coming.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  There's also an experimental option to turn on in edge:flags.
geofft 7y ago
Google account integration seems pretty non-strategic for Microsoft - do we have any idea if this is intentional? (I would have assumed they'd implement all the cloud stuff backed by Live accounts.)
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  If they integrate Google Accounts and Microsoft services, it provides a way to exfiltrate personal data held in Google Accounts to Microsoft; least nefariously, as a way to make MS accounts more useful by, perhaps automatically, importing contacts, etc., but that's not all that is possible.)
- fxbl0i 7y ago
  This new Edge seems to reuse the cookie jar, history, etc. of the real Edge, so emp_ is probably already logged in to his Google account on the real Edge. (Corrections welcome, but it's what I've noticed after trying it.)
  - 7y ago

olliej 7y ago

Can we finally stop saying safari is the new ie, and recognize that chrome is now literally the new IE? Seriously, this means that chrome has more or less complete market dominance at this point.

ZeroGravitas 7y ago
It wasn't dominance that people were referring to, it's the intentional heel dragging to benefit other parts of their corporate family at the expense of the web that makes Safari the new IE.
- leeoniya 7y ago
  when people say "Safari is the new IE" they mean that Safari has numerous bugs and missing features that take years to fix or implement. there's probably a ton of CSS stuff that doesn't need -webkit prefixes anymore in any browser (because it has been standardized). except of course in the outdated and widely-used Safari/iOS. For instance, they only now got Intersection Observer (super important to efficiently lazy load on mobile devices) in the latest iOS tech preview. many browsers have had it since 2017: https://caniuse.com/#search=intersectionobserver https://caniuse.com/#search=intersectionobserver
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Let's not beat around the bush: Intersection Observer can and will be used to detect ad impressions too. Calling it "super important to lazy load images" doesn't show the whole picture.
    - leeoniya 7y ago
      ummm, did you get the impression that i was beating around the bush? i stated exactly why i've personally needed it and have had to resort to polyfills even for the latest iOS. > Intersection Observer can and will be used to detect ad impressions too. yes, and? would you rather it be done using inefficient, non-passive onscroll, onresize and onorientationchange events with a bunch more MutationObserver and getBoundingclientRect() sprinkled in plus a generous helping of setInterval(..., 100) for UI polling? cause that's how things basically work today (and how the polyfill works). replacing all that junk with a normal, optimized API is exactly how it should be.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

fgonzag 7y ago

I wish they've would have gone with Firefox's Quantum, in order to try and at least balance out web market shares. MSFT no longer has any leverage in the web, so trying to keep it fair and accessible (no browser monopolies) should be a priority for them (especially since they have quite a few web platforms like office 365)

spinningslate 7y ago
Agreed. Browser diversity might be a pain for developers, but concentrating 2 of the 4 dominant end-user computing platforms on the same browser engine doesn't sound like a positive step for users [0]. Particularly when the engine in question is developed and maintained by one of two primary surveillance tech firms on the planet. Perhaps I'm too jaded, but there's an unmistakable smell of the fishy about this. Dominant mobile + dominant desktop OS vendors decide to cosy up together... I never thought I'd see the day that I mourned IE's decline having lived through the zenith of its hegemony. Like parent, I similarly would much rather have seen MS link up with Firefox for the sake of diversity. Perhaps that's too fanciful. Perhaps a more interesting pairing would be Apple and Firefox, given that both are increasingly playing the pro-privacy card... [0] I'm not counting Safari since WebKit and Blink diverged some time ago afaik.
- bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
  Yep, WebKit and Blink are very different not least because of their different JS engines. Lots of developers have trouble targeting safari, whereas chrome is a breeze.
- metildaa 7y ago
  Apple will likely stick to Safari based on their Webkit fork. Look at their stewardship of coreutils and the graphics stack on MacOS, its plain to see that they just don't care if MacOS is 5+ years behind the curve on features and performance if its not hurting battety life for most users. Gaming on MacOS has become a much more limited experience than on Linux (blame Valve for this) or Windows. Apple wields a big stick with each of these choices, kneecaping HTML5 PWAs, pushing forward their own graphics stack (hence the crap OpenGL support and lack of Mantle support)

kitsunesoba 7y ago

I hope Microsoft makes a point of prioritizing efficiency over features in Chrome-Edge. Google has seemingly placed low resource consumption and low battery life impact as tertiary concerns (at best), opting to woo developers with a constant stream of hastily developed shiny features instead. As it is the only browser that seems to care at all about not sucking your battery life down a black hole is Safari…

WorldMaker 7y ago
The Edge team has repeatedly said that Performance/Battery Life has always been important to them. One of the reasons they've mentioned for why they are going Chromium-based is that it gives them more time to focus on Performance/Battery rather than web platform bugs, and they've definitely listed Performance/Battery as a continued "Focus Area" for the team.

forgotmypw 7y ago

URL contains tracking device.

rayiner 7y ago

I liked Edge because of its fantastic battery life (for browsing, Edge was like having a 25% larger battery.) I was annoyed that many sites seemed to be Chrome-specific, including some I absolutely need to rely on. I switched to Brave, and it's amazing. Chrome-based, but somehow results in far better battery life than Chrome.

pcwalton 7y ago
> I liked Edge because of its fantastic battery life (for browsing, Edge was like having a 25% larger battery.) For what it's worth, I suspect this is the result of using the system DirectComposition. If you look at the more recent additions to that API, they're essentially just CSS 3. Basically, Windows integrates portions of CSS deeply into its OS stack, like macOS does with Core Animation. It's sad that moving to Chromium will regress this elegant architecture, as saving the extra blits that come from doing everything at the application level as Chromium mostly does (except for video playback IIRC) is a nice power and performance improvement. > Chrome-based, but somehow results in far better battery life than Chrome. Most likely because of ad blocking.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Neat, I didn't even know that existed. > Compositions and animations created by DirectComposition are passed to a built-in component of Windows called Desktop Window Manager (DWM) for rendering to the screen. Therefore, no special rendering components or UI frameworks are required on the computer. Wow. Everything old is new again: https://nnc3.com/mags/LM10/issue/04/Berlin.pdf https://nnc3.com/mags/LM10/issue/04/Berlin.pdf. (As an aside, Berlin has somehow almost completely disappeared from Google. I had trouble remembering the name, and I searched "display server scene graph corba" and it didn't come up in the first few pages. Finally found this slashdot announcement: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/02/11/24/189226/fresco-m1-released. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/02/11/24/189226/fresco-m1-re...)
  - pcwalton 7y ago
    Yeah, it's neat. The long-term goal is to move Firefox to use DirectComposition as much as it can, by the way, by integrating it into WebRender. I've done some work on this with the "planeshift" library. I wouldn't be surprised if Chromium eventually does the same (as it already uses Core Animation on macOS).

makecheck 7y ago

It’s truly remarkable that a company that was once nearly broken up by the government over its browser bundling, is now barely implementing a browser.

fxbl0i 7y ago

This wasn't necessary, they just had to get rid of the slow, ugly UWP UI framework. The Edge rendering engine was fine. It looks like this new Edge uses Win32 instead of UWP, so people will actually use it, and they'll pat their own backs thinking the problem was the rendering engine. No, it was the stupid UI framework. >:(

zamadatix 7y ago
99% of people probably never even noticed Edge is UWP based. I don't really think MS switched over because they were losing out on performance either. Seems more like they were just tired of maintaining a first class browser stack that wasn't very popular when using Google's gets them everything just about the same.

janober 7y ago

It seems like they do not have planned to support Linux. It simply says "Not supported" and on the download page it is not even mentioned: https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/download/ https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/download/

murkle 7y ago

chrome://flags/#enable-experimental-web-platform-features works but redirects to edge:// :)