32 ms·

The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

560 points by MikusR 7y ago

dstaley 7y ago
I'm really curious why they released to stable with so many basic features missing. For example, your bookmarks won't sync between devices (although that was recently re-enabled in the preview channels). It sounds like they're not pushing out automatic updates right now anyway, so I'm not sure what this announcement amounts to. Why not wait until the 20H1 Windows 10 feature update (which sounds like the update that will include the stable version of Edge) is released to mark the first stable version? Just seems like a weird release schedule.
- deleted 7y ago
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- chapium 7y ago
  I use Edge (Canary) as my primary browser and appreciate how minimalist it is.
- _nickwhite 7y ago
  I actually gave Edge Dev an honest try for a few months using it as my only browser. At some point it just stopped syncing bookmarks between my various computers (all Windows), and that was the breaking point for me. I went back to Firefox. I may give it another go if they can fix sync.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  The blog posts mention that releasing it today is a shot across the bow for Enterprise. Given Enterprises like their year+ efforts to "test" software before ever deploying it, they want Enterprise to start that process today, ahead of 20H1 when all consumers presumably will be pushed to it. It's also a very subtle signal for several reasons to release it the day after Extended Support for Windows 7 ended. On the one hand, it supports Windows 7, so there is a possible mixed message there, which is why it is subtle. On the other hand, some of these Enterprises should realize that the last time the browser team at Microsoft did a release like this after/ahead of a Windows EOL they highly revised their browser security support policy. (Back with IE11 adding support for a couple older versions of Windows and Microsoft immediately dropping support for IE <11, despite earlier "bundled with Windows support timeframe" promises.) It can be seen as a very subtle "IE is dead, move on from it, already, you dinosaur customers".
  - ataylor32 7y ago
    > ahead of 20H1 when all consumers presumably will be pushed to it I'm not sure it will be part of 20H1. https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/01/15/upgrading-new-microsoft-edge-79-chromium/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/01/15/upgrading-new... says: > If you’d prefer not to install Microsoft Edge manually, you can wait for it to be installed in a future update to Windows 10, following our measured roll-out approach over the next several months. We will start to migrate Windows 10 customers to the new Microsoft Edge in the coming weeks, starting with a subset of Windows Insiders in the Release Preview ring. I'm guessing 20H1 will be released sooner than several months.
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      That says they are starting now, so they are starting with 19H2 (in Release Preview to start, which is still 19H2 by the way, then into the wilds). "Several months" here could mean they want everything done by 20H1 (somewhere between March and May, given the usual pattern). I don't know if that also means that they are planning to move to packing New Edge in the RTW images for 20H1; so far 20H1 on Insiders still seems to have Edge Classic. But the clear thing is that these are clearly parallel rollouts right now.
- bloaf 7y ago
  They released Edge before it was ready too. They never did give it any kind of sane bookmark management.
llampx 7y ago
If you use the PDF or e-book functionality in Edge, you may want to hold off on upgrading. The PDF scrolling is not as smooth as on the older version.
- iamaelephant 7y ago
  None of the touch scrolling or gestures are as smooth as the old Edge, it's a real shame.
- microtheo 7y ago
  You're not wrong, but it is much faster than old edge and just as nicely integrated with touch. I say it's a big upgrade! :)
- iotku 7y ago
  Yeah, I threw a sizeable PDF (800MB textbook) at it and it's choking pretty hard compared to old Edge to the point where it's barely usable. Not a deal breaker for me because I don't have a touch screen and use an external PDF reader (sumatraPDF), but if I was using edge for heavy PDFs I would be rather disappointed Seems fine for PDFs that are a bit less extreme, but nowhere near as smooth as old edge.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    That's a problem the Firefox PDF viewer frequently suffers from as well. Give it a big complex PDF and it can choke very hard on stuff that Acrobat reader or xpdf open in under a second.
  - chirau 7y ago
    800MB textbook??? What kind of textbook is that and how many pages does it have? Or page dimension/image resolution??? That is a very very large size for a pdf.
    - iotku 7y ago
      It's certainly not a typical PDF, but it's 1400 page physics textbook which seem to all be excessively large and unoptimized. Originally it was completely uncroped, and OCRing it seems to have grown it even larger. Not too familiar with details with PDFs but I suspect it's just a huge DPI render (maybe designed to go towards being printed) that could probably be reduced significantly if it was designed for normal consumption. All things considered it's amazing it works at all, but old Edge handled it a lot smoother.
ongezoutenboter 7y ago
What about the new fluent design language? Where is the fucking transparency in the tab bar MS.
- Devagamster 7y ago
  Not sure why you're angry about this...
  - dblohm7 7y ago
    Lots of people get angry about this kind of stuff. "I'd switch to Firefox if it supported Fluent" is something I have read multiple times in discussions about browsers.
- XzetaU8 7y ago
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/discussion-updating-our-interface-with-fluent-touches/m-p/1105938 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/discussio...
ripdog 7y ago
So... What's the value proposition over, say, Firefox?
- Scarbutt 7y ago
  Not google and your web apps will work and be snappy. Not implying this is all good.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    And if you do webdev, chrome dev tools are still the best. While firefox tools keep getting better, i still find myself regularly launching chrome just for those.
    - laken 7y ago
      I feel the opposite, I prefer the Firefox dev tools by far. The CSS Grid and CSS Animation tools are lacking hard on Chrome. I feel though that overall they're close to equal, some tools are better on one platform than the other, but it's personal preference at the end of the day.
    - irrational 7y ago
      I don't agree. I think it is just what you are used to using. I'm used to Firefox and find their dev tools to be superior to Chrome, but I'm pretty sure that is just because I'm just more used to Firefox's dev tools (having used them since the firebug days).
    - endemic 7y ago
      I feel like I regularly see similar comments, touting the superiority of Chrome devtools. I haven’t used Chrome in a few years; what do they have that others don’t?
      - aabbcc1241 7y ago
        The only moment I would use chrome devtools is when I need to debug remote devices (Android webview)
baby 7y ago
Does it allow for tabs on the side like tree style tabs on firefox?
mouzogu 7y ago
I haven't looked into it but I hope that the use of the Chromium engine means web standards and feature support on par with Chrome and Firefox. They mention less fragmentation for web developers so I hope that that is what they are alluding to. I will "probably" never use this browser but I just hope that it doesn't open a new set of issues to deal with. I don't think it should
deleted 7y ago
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thiagomgd 7y ago
At home, it's already my main browser. Love the work they are doing on it and it's a nice alternative to Chrome (everytime I try Firefox, I go back to Chrome, so...)
scanr 7y ago
It will make me happy to be able to stop supporting ie11 at some point in the future. Sadly, it doesn’t appear that ie11 will have an end of life date as it’ll be supported as long as Windows 10 is and Windows 10 appears evergreen. Hopefully Microsoft will make edge the default browser at some point.
- irrational 7y ago
  2025 is the official end of life year. You can find a page on MS's website with all the end of life dates.
  - noahster11 7y ago
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17454/lifecycle-faq-internet-explorer https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17454/lifecycle-faq...
    - TurningCanadian 7y ago
      So scanr is right, right?
  - oefrha 7y ago
    5+ more years of buggy flexbox, yay...
    - butz 7y ago
      ... and gapless grids.
  - dspillett 7y ago
    I've heard the 2025 date before, but I think that is only based on a "time since release" metric. For IE versions the support windows have always been "X years since release (or perhaps X years since the next version), or until all Windows variant released with it are EOL". If Win10 is indeed evergreen, then that second part will never expire. Perhaps they'll count the biannual Windows feature updates instead of Win10 as a whole, and so count it from when they stop releasing install media with IE11 on them, but as that hasn't happened yet, we'll still be some years away for IE11 stopping. Even then '11 will still be around in some environments for a while after EOL. We only recently got rid of IE8 support for some of our clients as they stopped using it. That was mainly because of the then upcoming EOL of IE8 in sync with the EOL of Win7/Win2008 (the last versions released with IE8). I hear some are not so lucky... I expect IE11 to be a problem (though an increasingly small one, thankfully) for some time to come. In any case, can you link (or screenshot if it doesn't cooperate with deep linking) to an official page listing 2025? I'm not seeing that.
retonom 7y ago
It's nice to see MS pushing for tracking protection as well. Firefox now takes the lead on privacy issues. Google will try to hold it off as not to hurt their own business. People will eventually migrate away from Chrome because of this and the tracking/ad business will go down. Now is a good time to do some thinking if you're in the online tracking and/or ad business.
- nattaylor 7y ago
  Chrome announced it will drop support for third party cookies within 2 years. https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-path-towards.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-...
rdiddly 7y ago
Linked at https://microsoftedgewelcome.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy https://microsoftedgewelcome.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy: "We will honor your choices about browsing data and collect only what is needed to make your experiences better."
- hyperdimension 7y ago
  Given Microsoft's recent telemetry "features", I don't really think Microsoft's idea of "needed" and mine intersect...
  - kgwxd 7y ago
    "better" too.
- pacala 7y ago
  Meaningless. There are people claiming with a straight face that targeted ads make user experience better. Wholesale collection and aggregation of personal user data will continue unabated.
  - tomerico 7y ago
    Curious, why would targeted ads make the user experience worse? (putting privacy aside)
    - skrebbel 7y ago
      Why would getting shot make your life worse? (putting the pain and the bleeding aside)
    - throwaheyy 7y ago
      Advertising is a distraction and an attempt at psychological manipulation. That is obviously a worse experience, unless you're actually into being distracted/manipulated. The weasel words "targeted ads are better" imply comparison to untargeted ads and is a disingenuous statement.
hybrids 7y ago
I get why Microsoft did what they did. I just still wish they would have at least OSS'd EdgeHTML instead of just shoving it in a closet somewhere.
- Klonoar 7y ago
  I don't see why they would've done that, given how much it was baked into other stuff behind the scenes throughout the years. Auditing it would be a massive undertaking that I'm not sure even the most well-off organization would like to try.
- techsupporter 7y ago
  I wish they had thrown in with helping Firefox instead of handing even more web influence over to Google. A percentage of what Microsoft spent on EdgeHTML contributed to the Firefox project—ideally as employee time—would go a long way, along with the counterbalance of putting the Firefox engine and code base front and center of more Windows users.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - faitswulff 7y ago
    Cynical thought: in no way am I claiming this was the only reason for Microsoft choosing Blink, but it’s probably easier to find and replace Google analytics APIs with Microsoft endpoints than it is to add them into a code base after the fact.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      Can you link to a Google Analytics API call in Chromium? It's OSS. Edit: Chromium connects to Google servers to update extensions and for captive portal detection. Firefox does pretty much the same.
      - wbkang 7y ago
greatjack613 7y ago
As much as I despise chromium controlling the browser market, having microsoft in the game should improve the situation, so kudos to them.
- arbitrage 7y ago
  Monocultures never improve anything.
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    What about the Linux kernel? Not understanding that an open source software can be co-created by many actors is a failure of understanding.
  - d1zzy 7y ago
    I disagree with such a vast general statement. Yes there are problems to everyone using the same software but there are advantages too. One drawback is that potential security issues would affect "everyone" but on the other hand the same fix works for "everyone". If the common software is open source it serves as de facto standard/reference implementation so you don't have compatibility issues. Standardization processes try to address this without reference software but IMO that is a lot more effort (in terms of engineering hours) to get it right so you can have a fully featured standard that is clear, has no bugs and has multiple perfectly standard compliant independent implementations. After all software is just a tool to serve a purpose and our decisions in this area should be driven by pragmatic reasons alone. If we can serve the same purpose with much less effort by having everyone build on top of/use the same common base why not. Similarly I'd rather see everyone just use Linux instead of all the different popular OSes we have.
FpUser 7y ago
For some reason it had decided that I am Italian. Took me a while to decipher and bring it back to English
- dunham 7y ago
  It gave me the page in english, but the license agreement in Russian.
  - elygre 7y ago
    Russian license agreement, and then menus and texts in Bulgarian! I ended up using the beta version I have installed to find the language setting :-)
  - downerending 7y ago
    So you're saying that if the license was in English you would have read it?
    - dunham 7y ago
      To be honest, I paid more attention to the Russian version than I would English. I kinda know how to pronounce it, and it's fun to see if I can figure out any of the words.
Pigo 7y ago
I'm glad to see this, and I hope it's a strong competitor. Stronger competition pushes everyone and we end up with better results as users. That said, browser debates often come off like the Nintendo versus Sega arguments I remember as a kid. It's funny how people become married to one.
- jamesgeck0 7y ago
  We have effectively lost a competitor. Microsoft is now contributing to Chrome development. The best long-term outcome for the web would arguably to have been for Microsoft to put more resources into their in-house EdgeHTML browser instead of throwing it out and reskinning Chrome.
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    Microsoft is now contributing to Chrome development. And now everybody can benefit from their hard work. But somehow it's better for them to duplicate work for their 1% marketshare?
  - robbrown451 7y ago
    It's beyond reskinning. They can change anything they want to. Let's say Google says they don't like some privacy feature because it hurts their bottom line in terms of ad revenue. So they decide not to have that in Chrome. Sure, people could switch to in-house Edge or Firefox. But they don't want to switch, because for whatever reason, Google is better able to make a browser that people like. Attested to by the tiny market share Edge has (and fairly small share Firefox has, notwithstanding its popularity within the HN community). Switching to Chromium based Edge is a much easier move for users, assuming Microsoft decides to second-guess Google's decision, which they can do easily and have strong incentives to do -- keeping in mind that the number one complaint people have about Chrome is that they don't trust Google.
  - wayneftw 7y ago
    We have gained an effective competitor and lost an ineffective one. Just because it's the same codebase doesn't mean they're not competing.
dmd 7y ago
The logo seems confusingly similar to Firefox's.
- bagacrap 7y ago
  Definitely more similar to the explorer 'e', but I do see the resemblance to IceWeasel.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    I don't think it evoques a flat letter 'e' at all, it is highly reminiscent of a blue Firefox logo though (so IceWeasel probably, if I remembered that logo), IMO.
SanchoPanda 7y ago
Why save pages as mhtml by default (Android)?
izacus 7y ago
Previous Edge was significantly more power efficient than Chrome - did they tell anything about how much battery does this new version use?
makach 7y ago
I love it!
agumonkey 7y ago
Their logo is really neat, soft and peace inducing. Everything but today's web :)
- c-smile 7y ago
  Yeah, and it is close to my Sciter logo: https://sciter.com/ https://sciter.com/ :) Seems like I am not alone in using Yin and Yang metaphor here.
amyjess 7y ago
Everything I've heard is that touch support is completely destroyed in this one. This completely destroys my main use case for my Surface. I need a tablet with a web browser that's designed to be used in portrait mode without the Type Cover attached. Can anyone here recommend a UWP web browser I can switch to when the real Edge goes away for good? Or if none exists, can someone recommend a cheap 12"+ tablet that runs a mobile OS?
- microtheo 7y ago
  Ironically it has brought a breath of fresh air to my surface in tablet mode. I use it everyday with touchscreen only and find it very satisfying.
- SBArbeit 7y ago
  I've been using Edge Dev on my Surface Laptop 2 for months now... touch support is just as good as it's always been.
reddotX 7y ago
Linux not sported yet...
mactunes 7y ago
Does anyone know what the UI of Edge is written in? Since it runs on Mac as well, have they ported some of the .Net UI frameworks to Mac or is it native all the way?
- dstaley 7y ago
  Edge (and Chromium) both use a custom C++ UI framework. Chrome wrote the framework to be cross-platform, so Edge was able to take advantage of that to deliver the macOS version. AFAIK there's no WinUI XAML components being used.
ChicagoDave 7y ago
I use Edge on my iPhone and Firefox on my laptop. Trying to reduce my Google footprint as much as possible.
- blackearl 7y ago
  Aren't all browsers in iOS Safari reskins?
- kxrm 7y ago
  Just for clarity, iPhone browsers all use Safari, so Edge on iPhone will just be an Edge skinned Safari.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - ChicagoDave 7y ago
    Using WebKit as a foundation is not the same as using Safari.
c-smile 7y ago
What happened with font rendering? Fonts are rendered with thinner lines in new Edge (on the left): http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-fonts.png http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-fo... Such rendering does not match rest of Windows... New Edge is definitely less readable, and Google Chrome exhibits the same problem.
- dubcanada 7y ago
  Chromium has font rendering built into it, I am guessing Microsoft didn't ripe it out and replace it with their own as it's not cross platform.
  - c-smile 7y ago
    That's why I think having multiple browser implementations is beneficial. Proposal to Democrats: to unite with Republicans in one party as Republicans have "better development tools".
    - pizza 7y ago
      Although I don't think such a comment is appropriate for this thread, I'm curious as to what you mean.
      - jonny_eh 7y ago
        It's good to have alternatives.
        jpadkins 7y ago
        do you believe Democrat and Republicans have significant policy differences?
        IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
        We’re getting far OT. But the two US parties being identical, policy-wise, may have been an insightful oberservation during, say, the Clinton adminstration. To repeat it today is just completely ridiculous.
deaps 7y ago
So as somewhat of an outsider to the 'web game' as far as most people here (at HN) are concerned, but a relatively aware patron of web browsing software, I'll add my thoughts on the 'web browser' game... I feel like most people's browser of choice is chosen for reasons specific to their needs. For example: I think that Firefox gives me a bit of additional privacy. I think that Safari gives me that additional privacy as well. Some people may feel like Chrome just works. Some people just use what came with their OS. When I do front end work, I tend to always test it in Chrome first. Their devtools make that part of my job (quickly finding issues with the frontend) a lot easier. Once it works in Chrome, I'm sure that the code is working, and any problems I encounter will just require browser-specific tweaks. Anyway, long story short...I think that Microsoft really needs to pick something that Edge is best at if they want people to have a reason to use it (PS loading a highly browser-optimized page some number of milliseconds faster than the competition just doesn't do it for me, personally). Their niche has always just kind of been "well it's what comes with the OS" - and that's a fine way to get a userbase for sure. I'm not faulting them - but if that's their intended userbase, then I feel like they're putting a lot of effort into this whole browser game. I guess at the end of the day, I don't trust IE or Edge or Chrome for my every day use. Whether that's poorly placed mistrust or not, I'm uncertain. But in either event, that's how I feel.
- pickpuck 7y ago
  They are basically paying you a tiny bit to use Edge and Bing with their rewards program. You get points, which can be converted to Microsoft Gift Cards and some other stuff.
- jpalomaki 7y ago
  "The thing" for Edge is likely going to be the integration with rest of Microsoft ecosystem. Management tools, security tools, authentication etc. Of course these things matter mainly for organizations, who are otherwise running Microsoft stuff.
- blackearl 7y ago
  Sometimes I'm forced to use it when administrating a O365 tenant. That's something I guess
Jamwinner 7y ago
Of all the times I wish MS had written their own browser, this would be the first not in jest. The web is not open if only 2 orgs can hope to stay functional displaying it.
- selectodude 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeHTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeHTML They already did that years ago.
dessant 7y ago
I have published some of my extensions for the new Edge browser on their store [1], the submission experience was straightforward and pleasant, and the extensions were published in a couple of days after manual review. Updates were also reviewed and published in a timely manner. More importantly, during extension submissions and reviews I did not feel abused as a developer, something which I cannot say about the Chrome Web Store [2][3]. So I am happy that Microsoft has not only renewed their effort in this space, but they're also offering a decent alternative for developers who would rather not deal with Google. [1] https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/category/Edge-Extensions https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/category/Edge-Ext... [2] https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image/issues/63 https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image/issues/63 [3] https://github.com/dessant/youtube-autoplay/issues/3 https://github.com/dessant/youtube-autoplay/issues/3
- tus88 7y ago
  Wonder why... Microsoft: developers, developers, developers, developers! Google: advertisers, advertisers, advertisers, advertisers!
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - ghayes 7y ago
    Google has for its entire history had strong ties to building a developer community. For instance Google Summer of Code [0] and here's a list of Google APIs with 179 current APIs [1]. [0] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/ https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/ [1] https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      Conveniently leaving out the hundreds of times that Google has randomly terminated APIs or entire products with minimal if any forewarning, or reduced API functionality or pricing without forewarning, and the complete and utter lack of support [edit] Google provides to developers who don't already have their own twitter following.
theebrownieee 7y ago
Anyone know how Ad blocking works for Edge on iOS? I’m getting better results than Safari and while I see AdBlock Plus in edge settings, there’s nothing to unable under Content Blockers under iOS settings.
deleted 7y ago
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altitudinous 7y ago
On MacOS it requires admin privilege to install. I am done with that after all the crap that previous software with admin rights installed. I cleaned it up and swore I would not install anything that required admin rights again - for my own security and peace of mind. What does it need admin rights for?
- mrpippy 7y ago
  Maybe to install an autoupdater?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - alpb 7y ago
    It doesn't use a TUF-like update protocol that Chrome uses?
    - trishankkarthik 7y ago
      Last I checked, Chrome uses CUP, which is more like TLS than TUF
- deleted 7y ago
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- ajacksified 7y ago
  I was going to install it to try it out, but this was the dealbreaker for me.
- lucasverra 7y ago
  also requires 10.12 or above
- crazygringo 7y ago
  Seriously, that bugs the hell out of me too. Why do I need to give Adobe admin rights to install Photoshop? Why do I need to give Microsoft the same to install Word? And now for a web browser? If I'm installing something low-level like a window manager or a keyboard shortcut tool, I get it. But for a normal mainstream flagship consumer application, what on earth do they need admin privileges for?! I hate the fact I have to hand over the keys to my computer just to run basic industry standard software and I have no choice because it's industry standard and I have requirements to use it.
0xdead 7y ago
I'm not entertaining any new browsers that aren't written in Rust.
Scarbutt 7y ago
Does the android version lets you install ublock?
robbrown451 7y ago
This is very good news. In my opinion, this does more to keep Google in check than had they gone with Firefox's engine, or stuck with their own. (I know not everyone agrees) People use Chrome because they consider it a better overall experience than other alternatives, and I happen to agree. (again, I get that not everyone here agrees with that) For whatever reason, Google has the resources and talent to make a browser that is preferred to the alternatives, by most regular users. Chromium based Edge allows users to get the best of Chrome without the worst of Google. Google knows that if they get too aggressive with decisions that are biased toward Google's bottom line (such as how they handle ad blocking and various privacy features), Microsoft can easily push back by changing these decisions in Edge. This is a very good thing. True, there is also pressure on Google from Firefox (people can abandon Chrome for Firefox if Google is too aggressive), and there is also Brave (and others) if you want the benefits of Chrome/Chromium without the worst stuff. But moving to Firefox is simply too big a move for most users and many don't like the downsides [1]. And Brave has their own revenue model to protect, and they don't have the deep pockets Microsoft has to resist the temptation to make decisions that benefit their bottom line in the short term. [1] In my case, I do a lot with MIDI in the browser, i.e. connecting a digital piano and using it within web sites that support it. Firefox doesn't support this yet, after years and years of talking about it. https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58 There are a ton of other things, but that one is a deal breaker for me. Works beautifully in the new Edge.
- mtgx 7y ago
  > In my opinion, this does more to keep Google in check than had they gone with Firefox's engine, or stuck with their own We'll see. Microsoft gave up developing its own browser because it found it too hard to keep pace. So the question is what happens when Google goes in a direction Microsoft doesn't like with Chromium? Do they just adopt the changes as they are because they don't want to bother developing their very own browser once again, or will they create a hard fork of Chromium that they are willing to maintain independent of Google? I'm pretty skeptical it will be the latter, but I'd like to be proven wrong.
- mariushn 7y ago
boyadjian 7y ago
It’s hard to compete with Chrome and Firefox, it’s a fact.
kerpele 7y ago
If someone told the young Linux freak me back in the early 2000s that one day Internet Explorer’s rendering engine is based on the KDE rendering engine I would’ve probably died laughing and frozen in horror at the same time. Yeah, I realize there’s probably nothing left if the old KHTML but it still does give me a chuckle.
- cptskippy 7y ago
  Internet Explorer and Edge are two different products and co-exist. I wouldn't expect a Unix user to understand the difference though.
- loudmax 7y ago
  But one wouldn't have been surprised to find out that the Microsoft's KHTML based browser doesn't run on any open source operating system.
  - arusahni 7y ago
    IIRC it exists for Android.
    - vermilingua 7y ago
      Android is open source in the same way that Chrome is. That is to say, not.
      - arusahni 7y ago
        I'd contend that it is closer to Chromium as the Googley bits are in Play Services and OEM builds.
  - SyneRyder 7y ago
    Not yet, but a Linux version of Edge is coming later: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-edge-confirmed-coming-linux-future https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-edge-confirmed-comi...
- 7y ago
Rapzid 7y ago
Tested it out a few weeks ago and discovered Netflix was limiting the streaming bitrate on it. Turns out Chrome and Edge can play at 1080p now, but the bitrate is reduced(much) over what I see in Safari and the Netflix app on Windows.
- rejectfinite 7y ago
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/features https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/features Says it is 4k in Netflix now * 4K Ultra HD exclusivity is limited to PCs running Windows 10. 4K works in both Microsoft Edge and Netflix app. Only 7th Gen Intel® Core™ processor or higher devices can decrypt PlayReady 4K DRM. Netflix Ultra HD plan required.
  - Rapzid 7y ago
    Interesting, I did report the issue. Worth looking at again but I don't have a 4k display and it may still be reduced nitrate. The quality difference was very noticeable on something like Lost In Space.
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skierguy 7y ago
Aaaaand the EULA and menu buttons are in Italian when I download from the en-us version of the site. I knew there would be 90 languages, but I didn't know I'd need to learn all of them to use Edge!
- lostmsu 7y ago
  Just strip the query part of the URL. I guess the submitter of the blog post is an Italian.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  It was french for me. German for a coworker. The language settings are all screwed up.
Krasnol 7y ago
Great. Now give me a safe and reasonable way to uninstall it.
vkaku 7y ago
Installed it. I use Firefox, but now I don't need Chromium/Chrome/Brave for any websites that do detect Blink.
crescentfresh 7y ago
Installed itself entirely in German. What?
sime2009 7y ago
Regarding the topic of browser mono-cultures, I was web developer in the post browser war era in the early 2000s where we had a dominant IE6 and a stagnant browser landscape. It was bad. Real bad. But I'm actually fairly positive about MS getting into the chromium landscape and back into the game. Let's face it MS had lost all of its influence in the browser world before dropping IE and making this move. It is a Google/Chrome dominated world at the moment. But by adopting Chromium, MS can "catch up" on a technical level and also wield significant power inside the Chromium project itself. They have money and they have an experienced browser engine engineering team. They will be able to provide some balance to Google in this ecosystem. If push came to shove, forking chromium wouldn't be an idle threat from MS. They will have some power. On a technical level it looks like a move towards a mono-culture, but politically it looks like a chance at more balance and diversity to me.
- duxup 7y ago
  I'm a noob web dev working in a small shop that sells a niche SaaS product. We had a customer push us to support Edge. The dev team (3 dudes) just looked at eachother and laid down the "No, Firefox or Chrome...". It's just so much pressure to dance around the "this one does this, that one doesn't" and generally we rarely run into any Firefox and Chrome issues. Edge, just not worth it for a small team. I'm glad we probabbly can direct them to the new Edge now (after some testing).
  - darekkay 7y ago
    To be fair, Edge has a good feature support (check caniuse.com). It would be interesting to know what the exact issues your app has with the browser. Otherwise it sounds more like your devs like to use some vendor-specific hacks and blame Edge for it. I know there are some Flexbox things to consider, but nothing a small team can't handle. IE11 is another story, though.
    - ewgoforth 7y ago
      I'd also be curious to know what features that Edge doesn't support. I know it doesn't do everything Chrome does, but I haven't run into any scenarios that Edge didn't support in a long time. It's a pet peeve of mine that apps don't support Edge/Trident, Vivaldi, etc. It's easier to write cross-browser code than ever, but it seems like we're in the process of reverting back to the bad old days when IE6 was the only browser people supported, but it's Chrome now instead of IE.
mtgx 7y ago
Will this be update-able independently, or did they repeat the Edge mistake once again and tied its update to OS updates?
srhngpr 7y ago
Is this also susceptible to the same issues that resulted in developer of uBlock Origin to no longer create new versions for Chrome?
Slashbot 7y ago
Is it better than Vivaldi(Chromium based) ... nope Just another shit bare bones so called browser. Its crazy to think that literately 20 fucking years ago, there existed browsers (like MyIE2 Trident Engine based (ie IE)) that had more features and customisation options than the fucking shite that is released to public now.
doctor_eval 7y ago
So if I remember correctly this is another step in the history of KHTML -> WebKit -> Safari -> Chrome -> Edge. I’m sure much has changed internally but still, who would have imagined that KDE and Apple would be the ones to produce the dominant core browser architecture for the whole world?
miohtama 7y ago
Are there interviews why they based it on Chromium, not Gecko? From business point of a view taking a direct competitor's effort is somewhat blurry.
- exacube 7y ago
  Presumably because Chromium and related technologies (e.g. V8) have far more investment by the community than Gecko and SpiderMonkey. MS already uses Chromium/v8 in some of their products like VS Code.
rejectfinite 7y ago
Installed it on my home PC and work PC. I like it. Customised the front page with some useful links and turned off the news. Real serene image, non-distracting new page. I like the interface overall and it has ublock origin, basically the one extension that is a must. This will be big for corporations too. Users wont need to have Google Chrome deployed anymore to use certain web apps. Ill use it as a secondary browser to Firefox when I need a Chromium based browser, as this is already installed in Windows 10 soon. Best browser for Netflix too. I am using the "Add website to app" function for it already, or just browse to it. Old Edge was also really good for video performance and battery performance in general, hope this has that too.
- toper-centage 7y ago
  Unlock origin will soon be se verily nerfed though, which is a pity.
kirstenbirgit 7y ago
Tried to download it for macOS. It displayed a license agreement/download page in Polish (I assume.) My browser language is English, and I'm in Denmark. Maybe some other day.
AsyncAwait 7y ago
I don't get why Microsoft gets a pass here vs Google, given its insane mal/ad/spy/ware crap default settings in Windows 10, including sending MS all kinds of telemetry, logging into Windows via an online login etc. Firefox over this crap all day.
skalsk 7y ago
is this too fast
Sirikon 7y ago
The video they prepared for the launch is basically what happens when you downloaded Chrome like a year ago.
okareaman 7y ago
I've been using it all afternoon and I must say it is very snappy, crisp and pleasant to use. Microsoft has cleverly copied Chrome and made it better. A bit of the ol' Embrace and Extend of the past? I've tried Firefox but it never feels right and I switch back to Chrome. I'm not switching back this time. They even restored a feature that Chrome inexplicably took out -- the option in history to restore all your open tabs that went away when you accidentally closed the browser. Edit: I even like Bing better. What miracle is this that the top links aren't advertisements?
chensformers 7y ago
I see it supports Mac. Does it mean we can now test webpages without a Windows PC?
chensformers 7y ago
Does it finally support Blink element?
CriticalCathed 7y ago
I love Edge. It's very quick and feels super stable. However that new icon is terrible. It looks like laundry detergent branding and it only vaguely resembles an e.
petilon 7y ago
I love that I can now use Edge when using Google services such as Gmail and Chrome when accessing Microsoft sites such as Office 365. That way neither company can log me into the browser itself when I log into their sites. This should reduce abuses by both companies. Google has an option that says "By turning this off, you can sign in to Google sites like Gmail without signing in to Chrome." But it doesn't work, which is a blatant abuse by Google. Adios, Chrome! I will now be using Edge when logging into Gmail.
sys_64738 7y ago
Microsoft makes the coolest software these days. Who knew.
- mda 7y ago
  Except it is 80% Google's work.
niuzeta 7y ago
I know this isn't contributing to the discussion, but Vimium extension is honestly my only reason to keep using Chromium-based browser. I should give this a try.
rym_ 7y ago
Not completely related but does anyone know of an epub reader with the quality that Edge had? The EPUBReader extension in FF works but the rendering and UX is a lot worse. Calibre on the other hand is a great management system but with a horrendous reader.
mlang23 7y ago
I wish Microsoft wouldn't alpha-test their browser-experiment on real-world-users. Since Edge is out, I find it totally useless. It has also been a total fail on the accessibility front. To release something that is inaccessible from the start is no longer acceptable in 2020 methinks, especially from a big player like MS. The word that comes to mind is embarrasment.
axilmar 7y ago
One of the reasons there are so many incompatibilities between browsers in every era is that the web is not built out of a small set of primitives: everyone that wants to provide a web interface must implement the whole set of WWW standards (html, scripting, css, etc), which is very difficult and error prone. If there was only a handful of primitives to implement, and everything else was built on it, then it would be much easier to stay compatible. This is the kind of situation that has led to IE6 dominating the web, then motivating Google to create a browser, take the market and then Microsoft finally dropping their web engine and taking up Chromium.
jdlyga 7y ago
I switched over to Firefox about 6 months ago, and I'm surprised by how much I love it. It's great to be able to have separate home and work accounts while still being logged into the same gmail account. Plus, there's certain interface decisions like putting Undo Close Tab in more places that makes it a nicer experience. The only issue I run into with Firefox is my company's intranet site makes me login once per day where with Chrome it doesn't.
oaiey 7y ago
Is it just me or is edge with blink faster than chrome with blink
zsoltsandor 7y ago
Now, if only they released it for Android (before Surface Duo hits the market), and Linux (since they have teased us). Well, I'll wait.
Tom_Martin 7y ago
For those already using Edge for its greatly superior DRM, the new browser may result in a big nosedive in performance for streaming video! Providers will be happy to supply cheaper Widevine-encrypted content instead of Playready but this will cause a big increase in CPU cycles when watching encrypted videos. Fortunately users may opt out of using Widevine by disabling the Widevine DRM flag at edge://flags/#edge-widevine-drm.
cmroanirgo 7y ago
Was just about to have a look at the latest download for this for MacOS, and found out it downloads a .pkg rather than a .dmg (which is how standalone apps typically install). So, looking into the .pkg file I notice that it's also bundled Office16_all_autoupdate.pkg, which has a 'Microsoft AutoUpdate.app'. Inside the contents of that app is another app called 'Microsoft AU Daemon.app' which contains various M$ Root Certs and a string 'Microsoft Update Assistant launched'... It's stunts like this which make me not trust Microsoft very much. I want nothing to do with Office, nor a one-stop-shop port of Windows Update. God knows what telemetry MS will try to upload with these products, but I'm not buying it.

560 points by MikusR 7y ago

I'm really curious why they released to stable with so many basic features missing. For example, your bookmarks won't sync between devices (although that was recently re-enabled in the preview channels). It sounds like they're not pushing out automatic updates right now anyway, so I'm not sure what this announcement amounts to. Why not wait until the 20H1 Windows 10 feature update (which sounds like the update that will include the stable version of Edge) is released to mark the first stable version? Just seems like a weird release schedule.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
chapium 7y ago
I use Edge (Canary) as my primary browser and appreciate how minimalist it is.
_nickwhite 7y ago
I actually gave Edge Dev an honest try for a few months using it as my only browser. At some point it just stopped syncing bookmarks between my various computers (all Windows), and that was the breaking point for me. I went back to Firefox. I may give it another go if they can fix sync.
WorldMaker 7y ago
The blog posts mention that releasing it today is a shot across the bow for Enterprise. Given Enterprises like their year+ efforts to "test" software before ever deploying it, they want Enterprise to start that process today, ahead of 20H1 when all consumers presumably will be pushed to it. It's also a very subtle signal for several reasons to release it the day after Extended Support for Windows 7 ended. On the one hand, it supports Windows 7, so there is a possible mixed message there, which is why it is subtle. On the other hand, some of these Enterprises should realize that the last time the browser team at Microsoft did a release like this after/ahead of a Windows EOL they highly revised their browser security support policy. (Back with IE11 adding support for a couple older versions of Windows and Microsoft immediately dropping support for IE <11, despite earlier "bundled with Windows support timeframe" promises.) It can be seen as a very subtle "IE is dead, move on from it, already, you dinosaur customers".
- ataylor32 7y ago
  > ahead of 20H1 when all consumers presumably will be pushed to it I'm not sure it will be part of 20H1. https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/01/15/upgrading-new-microsoft-edge-79-chromium/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/01/15/upgrading-new... says: > If you’d prefer not to install Microsoft Edge manually, you can wait for it to be installed in a future update to Windows 10, following our measured roll-out approach over the next several months. We will start to migrate Windows 10 customers to the new Microsoft Edge in the coming weeks, starting with a subset of Windows Insiders in the Release Preview ring. I'm guessing 20H1 will be released sooner than several months.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    That says they are starting now, so they are starting with 19H2 (in Release Preview to start, which is still 19H2 by the way, then into the wilds). "Several months" here could mean they want everything done by 20H1 (somewhere between March and May, given the usual pattern). I don't know if that also means that they are planning to move to packing New Edge in the RTW images for 20H1; so far 20H1 on Insiders still seems to have Edge Classic. But the clear thing is that these are clearly parallel rollouts right now.
bloaf 7y ago
They released Edge before it was ready too. They never did give it any kind of sane bookmark management.

llampx 7y ago

If you use the PDF or e-book functionality in Edge, you may want to hold off on upgrading. The PDF scrolling is not as smooth as on the older version.

iamaelephant 7y ago
None of the touch scrolling or gestures are as smooth as the old Edge, it's a real shame.
microtheo 7y ago
You're not wrong, but it is much faster than old edge and just as nicely integrated with touch. I say it's a big upgrade! :)
iotku 7y ago
Yeah, I threw a sizeable PDF (800MB textbook) at it and it's choking pretty hard compared to old Edge to the point where it's barely usable. Not a deal breaker for me because I don't have a touch screen and use an external PDF reader (sumatraPDF), but if I was using edge for heavy PDFs I would be rather disappointed Seems fine for PDFs that are a bit less extreme, but nowhere near as smooth as old edge.
- jandrese 7y ago
  That's a problem the Firefox PDF viewer frequently suffers from as well. Give it a big complex PDF and it can choke very hard on stuff that Acrobat reader or xpdf open in under a second.
- chirau 7y ago
  800MB textbook??? What kind of textbook is that and how many pages does it have? Or page dimension/image resolution??? That is a very very large size for a pdf.
  - iotku 7y ago
    It's certainly not a typical PDF, but it's 1400 page physics textbook which seem to all be excessively large and unoptimized. Originally it was completely uncroped, and OCRing it seems to have grown it even larger. Not too familiar with details with PDFs but I suspect it's just a huge DPI render (maybe designed to go towards being printed) that could probably be reduced significantly if it was designed for normal consumption. All things considered it's amazing it works at all, but old Edge handled it a lot smoother.

ongezoutenboter 7y ago

What about the new fluent design language? Where is the fucking transparency in the tab bar MS.

Devagamster 7y ago
Not sure why you're angry about this...
- dblohm7 7y ago
  Lots of people get angry about this kind of stuff. "I'd switch to Firefox if it supported Fluent" is something I have read multiple times in discussions about browsers.
XzetaU8 7y ago
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/discussion-updating-our-interface-with-fluent-touches/m-p/1105938 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/discussio...

ripdog 7y ago

So... What's the value proposition over, say, Firefox?

Scarbutt 7y ago
Not google and your web apps will work and be snappy. Not implying this is all good.
- filoleg 7y ago
  And if you do webdev, chrome dev tools are still the best. While firefox tools keep getting better, i still find myself regularly launching chrome just for those.
  - laken 7y ago
    I feel the opposite, I prefer the Firefox dev tools by far. The CSS Grid and CSS Animation tools are lacking hard on Chrome. I feel though that overall they're close to equal, some tools are better on one platform than the other, but it's personal preference at the end of the day.
  - irrational 7y ago
    I don't agree. I think it is just what you are used to using. I'm used to Firefox and find their dev tools to be superior to Chrome, but I'm pretty sure that is just because I'm just more used to Firefox's dev tools (having used them since the firebug days).
  - endemic 7y ago
    I feel like I regularly see similar comments, touting the superiority of Chrome devtools. I haven’t used Chrome in a few years; what do they have that others don’t?
    - aabbcc1241 7y ago
      The only moment I would use chrome devtools is when I need to debug remote devices (Android webview)

baby 7y ago

Does it allow for tabs on the side like tree style tabs on firefox?

mouzogu 7y ago

I haven't looked into it but I hope that the use of the Chromium engine means web standards and feature support on par with Chrome and Firefox. They mention less fragmentation for web developers so I hope that that is what they are alluding to. I will "probably" never use this browser but I just hope that it doesn't open a new set of issues to deal with. I don't think it should

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

thiagomgd 7y ago

At home, it's already my main browser. Love the work they are doing on it and it's a nice alternative to Chrome (everytime I try Firefox, I go back to Chrome, so...)

scanr 7y ago

It will make me happy to be able to stop supporting ie11 at some point in the future. Sadly, it doesn’t appear that ie11 will have an end of life date as it’ll be supported as long as Windows 10 is and Windows 10 appears evergreen. Hopefully Microsoft will make edge the default browser at some point.

irrational 7y ago
2025 is the official end of life year. You can find a page on MS's website with all the end of life dates.
- noahster11 7y ago
  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17454/lifecycle-faq-internet-explorer https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17454/lifecycle-faq...
  - TurningCanadian 7y ago
    So scanr is right, right?
- oefrha 7y ago
  5+ more years of buggy flexbox, yay...
  - butz 7y ago
    ... and gapless grids.
- dspillett 7y ago
  I've heard the 2025 date before, but I think that is only based on a "time since release" metric. For IE versions the support windows have always been "X years since release (or perhaps X years since the next version), or until all Windows variant released with it are EOL". If Win10 is indeed evergreen, then that second part will never expire. Perhaps they'll count the biannual Windows feature updates instead of Win10 as a whole, and so count it from when they stop releasing install media with IE11 on them, but as that hasn't happened yet, we'll still be some years away for IE11 stopping. Even then '11 will still be around in some environments for a while after EOL. We only recently got rid of IE8 support for some of our clients as they stopped using it. That was mainly because of the then upcoming EOL of IE8 in sync with the EOL of Win7/Win2008 (the last versions released with IE8). I hear some are not so lucky... I expect IE11 to be a problem (though an increasingly small one, thankfully) for some time to come. In any case, can you link (or screenshot if it doesn't cooperate with deep linking) to an official page listing 2025? I'm not seeing that.

retonom 7y ago

It's nice to see MS pushing for tracking protection as well. Firefox now takes the lead on privacy issues. Google will try to hold it off as not to hurt their own business. People will eventually migrate away from Chrome because of this and the tracking/ad business will go down. Now is a good time to do some thinking if you're in the online tracking and/or ad business.

nattaylor 7y ago
Chrome announced it will drop support for third party cookies within 2 years. https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-path-towards.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-...

rdiddly 7y ago

Linked at https://microsoftedgewelcome.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy https://microsoftedgewelcome.microsoft.com/en-us/privacy: "We will honor your choices about browsing data and collect only what is needed to make your experiences better."

hyperdimension 7y ago
Given Microsoft's recent telemetry "features", I don't really think Microsoft's idea of "needed" and mine intersect...
- kgwxd 7y ago
  "better" too.
pacala 7y ago
Meaningless. There are people claiming with a straight face that targeted ads make user experience better. Wholesale collection and aggregation of personal user data will continue unabated.
- tomerico 7y ago
  Curious, why would targeted ads make the user experience worse? (putting privacy aside)
  - skrebbel 7y ago
    Why would getting shot make your life worse? (putting the pain and the bleeding aside)
  - throwaheyy 7y ago
    Advertising is a distraction and an attempt at psychological manipulation. That is obviously a worse experience, unless you're actually into being distracted/manipulated. The weasel words "targeted ads are better" imply comparison to untargeted ads and is a disingenuous statement.

hybrids 7y ago

I get why Microsoft did what they did. I just still wish they would have at least OSS'd EdgeHTML instead of just shoving it in a closet somewhere.

Klonoar 7y ago
I don't see why they would've done that, given how much it was baked into other stuff behind the scenes throughout the years. Auditing it would be a massive undertaking that I'm not sure even the most well-off organization would like to try.
techsupporter 7y ago
I wish they had thrown in with helping Firefox instead of handing even more web influence over to Google. A percentage of what Microsoft spent on EdgeHTML contributed to the Firefox project—ideally as employee time—would go a long way, along with the counterbalance of putting the Firefox engine and code base front and center of more Windows users.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- faitswulff 7y ago
  Cynical thought: in no way am I claiming this was the only reason for Microsoft choosing Blink, but it’s probably easier to find and replace Google analytics APIs with Microsoft endpoints than it is to add them into a code base after the fact.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    Can you link to a Google Analytics API call in Chromium? It's OSS. Edit: Chromium connects to Google servers to update extensions and for captive portal detection. Firefox does pretty much the same.
    - wbkang 7y ago

greatjack613 7y ago

As much as I despise chromium controlling the browser market, having microsoft in the game should improve the situation, so kudos to them.

arbitrage 7y ago
Monocultures never improve anything.
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  What about the Linux kernel? Not understanding that an open source software can be co-created by many actors is a failure of understanding.
- d1zzy 7y ago
  I disagree with such a vast general statement. Yes there are problems to everyone using the same software but there are advantages too. One drawback is that potential security issues would affect "everyone" but on the other hand the same fix works for "everyone". If the common software is open source it serves as de facto standard/reference implementation so you don't have compatibility issues. Standardization processes try to address this without reference software but IMO that is a lot more effort (in terms of engineering hours) to get it right so you can have a fully featured standard that is clear, has no bugs and has multiple perfectly standard compliant independent implementations. After all software is just a tool to serve a purpose and our decisions in this area should be driven by pragmatic reasons alone. If we can serve the same purpose with much less effort by having everyone build on top of/use the same common base why not. Similarly I'd rather see everyone just use Linux instead of all the different popular OSes we have.

FpUser 7y ago

For some reason it had decided that I am Italian. Took me a while to decipher and bring it back to English

dunham 7y ago
It gave me the page in english, but the license agreement in Russian.
- elygre 7y ago
  Russian license agreement, and then menus and texts in Bulgarian! I ended up using the beta version I have installed to find the language setting :-)
- downerending 7y ago
  So you're saying that if the license was in English you would have read it?
  - dunham 7y ago
    To be honest, I paid more attention to the Russian version than I would English. I kinda know how to pronounce it, and it's fun to see if I can figure out any of the words.

Pigo 7y ago

I'm glad to see this, and I hope it's a strong competitor. Stronger competition pushes everyone and we end up with better results as users. That said, browser debates often come off like the Nintendo versus Sega arguments I remember as a kid. It's funny how people become married to one.

jamesgeck0 7y ago
We have effectively lost a competitor. Microsoft is now contributing to Chrome development. The best long-term outcome for the web would arguably to have been for Microsoft to put more resources into their in-house EdgeHTML browser instead of throwing it out and reskinning Chrome.
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  Microsoft is now contributing to Chrome development. And now everybody can benefit from their hard work. But somehow it's better for them to duplicate work for their 1% marketshare?
- robbrown451 7y ago
  It's beyond reskinning. They can change anything they want to. Let's say Google says they don't like some privacy feature because it hurts their bottom line in terms of ad revenue. So they decide not to have that in Chrome. Sure, people could switch to in-house Edge or Firefox. But they don't want to switch, because for whatever reason, Google is better able to make a browser that people like. Attested to by the tiny market share Edge has (and fairly small share Firefox has, notwithstanding its popularity within the HN community). Switching to Chromium based Edge is a much easier move for users, assuming Microsoft decides to second-guess Google's decision, which they can do easily and have strong incentives to do -- keeping in mind that the number one complaint people have about Chrome is that they don't trust Google.
- wayneftw 7y ago
  We have gained an effective competitor and lost an ineffective one. Just because it's the same codebase doesn't mean they're not competing.

dmd 7y ago

The logo seems confusingly similar to Firefox's.

bagacrap 7y ago
Definitely more similar to the explorer 'e', but I do see the resemblance to IceWeasel.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  I don't think it evoques a flat letter 'e' at all, it is highly reminiscent of a blue Firefox logo though (so IceWeasel probably, if I remembered that logo), IMO.

SanchoPanda 7y ago

Why save pages as mhtml by default (Android)?

izacus 7y ago

Previous Edge was significantly more power efficient than Chrome - did they tell anything about how much battery does this new version use?

makach 7y ago

I love it!

agumonkey 7y ago

Their logo is really neat, soft and peace inducing. Everything but today's web :)

c-smile 7y ago
Yeah, and it is close to my Sciter logo: https://sciter.com/ https://sciter.com/ :) Seems like I am not alone in using Yin and Yang metaphor here.

amyjess 7y ago

Everything I've heard is that touch support is completely destroyed in this one. This completely destroys my main use case for my Surface. I need a tablet with a web browser that's designed to be used in portrait mode without the Type Cover attached. Can anyone here recommend a UWP web browser I can switch to when the real Edge goes away for good? Or if none exists, can someone recommend a cheap 12"+ tablet that runs a mobile OS?

microtheo 7y ago
Ironically it has brought a breath of fresh air to my surface in tablet mode. I use it everyday with touchscreen only and find it very satisfying.
SBArbeit 7y ago
I've been using Edge Dev on my Surface Laptop 2 for months now... touch support is just as good as it's always been.

reddotX 7y ago

Linux not sported yet...

mactunes 7y ago

Does anyone know what the UI of Edge is written in? Since it runs on Mac as well, have they ported some of the .Net UI frameworks to Mac or is it native all the way?

dstaley 7y ago
Edge (and Chromium) both use a custom C++ UI framework. Chrome wrote the framework to be cross-platform, so Edge was able to take advantage of that to deliver the macOS version. AFAIK there's no WinUI XAML components being used.

ChicagoDave 7y ago

I use Edge on my iPhone and Firefox on my laptop. Trying to reduce my Google footprint as much as possible.

blackearl 7y ago
Aren't all browsers in iOS Safari reskins?
kxrm 7y ago
Just for clarity, iPhone browsers all use Safari, so Edge on iPhone will just be an Edge skinned Safari.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ChicagoDave 7y ago
  Using WebKit as a foundation is not the same as using Safari.

c-smile 7y ago

What happened with font rendering? Fonts are rendered with thinner lines in new Edge (on the left): http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-fonts.png http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-fo... Such rendering does not match rest of Windows... New Edge is definitely less readable, and Google Chrome exhibits the same problem.

dubcanada 7y ago
Chromium has font rendering built into it, I am guessing Microsoft didn't ripe it out and replace it with their own as it's not cross platform.
- c-smile 7y ago
  That's why I think having multiple browser implementations is beneficial. Proposal to Democrats: to unite with Republicans in one party as Republicans have "better development tools".
  - pizza 7y ago
    Although I don't think such a comment is appropriate for this thread, I'm curious as to what you mean.
    - jonny_eh 7y ago
      It's good to have alternatives.
      - jpadkins 7y ago
        do you believe Democrat and Republicans have significant policy differences?
        IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
        We’re getting far OT. But the two US parties being identical, policy-wise, may have been an insightful oberservation during, say, the Clinton adminstration. To repeat it today is just completely ridiculous.

deaps 7y ago

So as somewhat of an outsider to the 'web game' as far as most people here (at HN) are concerned, but a relatively aware patron of web browsing software, I'll add my thoughts on the 'web browser' game... I feel like most people's browser of choice is chosen for reasons specific to their needs. For example: I think that Firefox gives me a bit of additional privacy. I think that Safari gives me that additional privacy as well. Some people may feel like Chrome just works. Some people just use what came with their OS. When I do front end work, I tend to always test it in Chrome first. Their devtools make that part of my job (quickly finding issues with the frontend) a lot easier. Once it works in Chrome, I'm sure that the code is working, and any problems I encounter will just require browser-specific tweaks. Anyway, long story short...I think that Microsoft really needs to pick something that Edge is best at if they want people to have a reason to use it (PS loading a highly browser-optimized page some number of milliseconds faster than the competition just doesn't do it for me, personally). Their niche has always just kind of been "well it's what comes with the OS" - and that's a fine way to get a userbase for sure. I'm not faulting them - but if that's their intended userbase, then I feel like they're putting a lot of effort into this whole browser game. I guess at the end of the day, I don't trust IE or Edge or Chrome for my every day use. Whether that's poorly placed mistrust or not, I'm uncertain. But in either event, that's how I feel.

pickpuck 7y ago
They are basically paying you a tiny bit to use Edge and Bing with their rewards program. You get points, which can be converted to Microsoft Gift Cards and some other stuff.
jpalomaki 7y ago
"The thing" for Edge is likely going to be the integration with rest of Microsoft ecosystem. Management tools, security tools, authentication etc. Of course these things matter mainly for organizations, who are otherwise running Microsoft stuff.
blackearl 7y ago
Sometimes I'm forced to use it when administrating a O365 tenant. That's something I guess

Jamwinner 7y ago

Of all the times I wish MS had written their own browser, this would be the first not in jest. The web is not open if only 2 orgs can hope to stay functional displaying it.

selectodude 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeHTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdgeHTML They already did that years ago.

dessant 7y ago

I have published some of my extensions for the new Edge browser on their store [1], the submission experience was straightforward and pleasant, and the extensions were published in a couple of days after manual review. Updates were also reviewed and published in a timely manner. More importantly, during extension submissions and reviews I did not feel abused as a developer, something which I cannot say about the Chrome Web Store [2][3]. So I am happy that Microsoft has not only renewed their effort in this space, but they're also offering a decent alternative for developers who would rather not deal with Google. [1] https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/category/Edge-Extensions https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/category/Edge-Ext... [2] https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image/issues/63 https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image/issues/63 [3] https://github.com/dessant/youtube-autoplay/issues/3 https://github.com/dessant/youtube-autoplay/issues/3

tus88 7y ago
Wonder why... Microsoft: developers, developers, developers, developers! Google: advertisers, advertisers, advertisers, advertisers!
- deleted 7y ago
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- ghayes 7y ago
  Google has for its entire history had strong ties to building a developer community. For instance Google Summer of Code [0] and here's a list of Google APIs with 179 current APIs [1]. [0] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/ https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/ [1] https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Conveniently leaving out the hundreds of times that Google has randomly terminated APIs or entire products with minimal if any forewarning, or reduced API functionality or pricing without forewarning, and the complete and utter lack of support [edit] Google provides to developers who don't already have their own twitter following.

theebrownieee 7y ago

Anyone know how Ad blocking works for Edge on iOS? I’m getting better results than Safari and while I see AdBlock Plus in edge settings, there’s nothing to unable under Content Blockers under iOS settings.

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altitudinous 7y ago

On MacOS it requires admin privilege to install. I am done with that after all the crap that previous software with admin rights installed. I cleaned it up and swore I would not install anything that required admin rights again - for my own security and peace of mind. What does it need admin rights for?

mrpippy 7y ago
Maybe to install an autoupdater?
- deleted 7y ago
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- alpb 7y ago
  It doesn't use a TUF-like update protocol that Chrome uses?
  - trishankkarthik 7y ago
    Last I checked, Chrome uses CUP, which is more like TLS than TUF
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ajacksified 7y ago
I was going to install it to try it out, but this was the dealbreaker for me.
lucasverra 7y ago
also requires 10.12 or above
crazygringo 7y ago
Seriously, that bugs the hell out of me too. Why do I need to give Adobe admin rights to install Photoshop? Why do I need to give Microsoft the same to install Word? And now for a web browser? If I'm installing something low-level like a window manager or a keyboard shortcut tool, I get it. But for a normal mainstream flagship consumer application, what on earth do they need admin privileges for?! I hate the fact I have to hand over the keys to my computer just to run basic industry standard software and I have no choice because it's industry standard and I have requirements to use it.

0xdead 7y ago

I'm not entertaining any new browsers that aren't written in Rust.

Scarbutt 7y ago

Does the android version lets you install ublock?

robbrown451 7y ago

This is very good news. In my opinion, this does more to keep Google in check than had they gone with Firefox's engine, or stuck with their own. (I know not everyone agrees) People use Chrome because they consider it a better overall experience than other alternatives, and I happen to agree. (again, I get that not everyone here agrees with that) For whatever reason, Google has the resources and talent to make a browser that is preferred to the alternatives, by most regular users. Chromium based Edge allows users to get the best of Chrome without the worst of Google. Google knows that if they get too aggressive with decisions that are biased toward Google's bottom line (such as how they handle ad blocking and various privacy features), Microsoft can easily push back by changing these decisions in Edge. This is a very good thing. True, there is also pressure on Google from Firefox (people can abandon Chrome for Firefox if Google is too aggressive), and there is also Brave (and others) if you want the benefits of Chrome/Chromium without the worst stuff. But moving to Firefox is simply too big a move for most users and many don't like the downsides [1]. And Brave has their own revenue model to protect, and they don't have the deep pockets Microsoft has to resist the temptation to make decisions that benefit their bottom line in the short term. [1] In my case, I do a lot with MIDI in the browser, i.e. connecting a digital piano and using it within web sites that support it. Firefox doesn't support this yet, after years and years of talking about it. https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58 There are a ton of other things, but that one is a deal breaker for me. Works beautifully in the new Edge.

mtgx 7y ago
> In my opinion, this does more to keep Google in check than had they gone with Firefox's engine, or stuck with their own We'll see. Microsoft gave up developing its own browser because it found it too hard to keep pace. So the question is what happens when Google goes in a direction Microsoft doesn't like with Chromium? Do they just adopt the changes as they are because they don't want to bother developing their very own browser once again, or will they create a hard fork of Chromium that they are willing to maintain independent of Google? I'm pretty skeptical it will be the latter, but I'd like to be proven wrong.
mariushn 7y ago

boyadjian 7y ago

It’s hard to compete with Chrome and Firefox, it’s a fact.

kerpele 7y ago

If someone told the young Linux freak me back in the early 2000s that one day Internet Explorer’s rendering engine is based on the KDE rendering engine I would’ve probably died laughing and frozen in horror at the same time. Yeah, I realize there’s probably nothing left if the old KHTML but it still does give me a chuckle.

cptskippy 7y ago
Internet Explorer and Edge are two different products and co-exist. I wouldn't expect a Unix user to understand the difference though.
loudmax 7y ago
But one wouldn't have been surprised to find out that the Microsoft's KHTML based browser doesn't run on any open source operating system.
- arusahni 7y ago
  IIRC it exists for Android.
  - vermilingua 7y ago
    Android is open source in the same way that Chrome is. That is to say, not.
    - arusahni 7y ago
      I'd contend that it is closer to Chromium as the Googley bits are in Play Services and OEM builds.
- SyneRyder 7y ago
  Not yet, but a Linux version of Edge is coming later: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-edge-confirmed-coming-linux-future https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-edge-confirmed-comi...
7y ago

Rapzid 7y ago

Tested it out a few weeks ago and discovered Netflix was limiting the streaming bitrate on it. Turns out Chrome and Edge can play at 1080p now, but the bitrate is reduced(much) over what I see in Safari and the Netflix app on Windows.

rejectfinite 7y ago
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/features https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/features Says it is 4k in Netflix now * 4K Ultra HD exclusivity is limited to PCs running Windows 10. 4K works in both Microsoft Edge and Netflix app. Only 7th Gen Intel® Core™ processor or higher devices can decrypt PlayReady 4K DRM. Netflix Ultra HD plan required.
- Rapzid 7y ago
  Interesting, I did report the issue. Worth looking at again but I don't have a 4k display and it may still be reduced nitrate. The quality difference was very noticeable on something like Lost In Space.

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skierguy 7y ago

Aaaaand the EULA and menu buttons are in Italian when I download from the en-us version of the site. I knew there would be 90 languages, but I didn't know I'd need to learn all of them to use Edge!

lostmsu 7y ago
Just strip the query part of the URL. I guess the submitter of the blog post is an Italian.
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
It was french for me. German for a coworker. The language settings are all screwed up.

Krasnol 7y ago

Great. Now give me a safe and reasonable way to uninstall it.

vkaku 7y ago

Installed it. I use Firefox, but now I don't need Chromium/Chrome/Brave for any websites that do detect Blink.

crescentfresh 7y ago

Installed itself entirely in German. What?

sime2009 7y ago

Regarding the topic of browser mono-cultures, I was web developer in the post browser war era in the early 2000s where we had a dominant IE6 and a stagnant browser landscape. It was bad. Real bad. But I'm actually fairly positive about MS getting into the chromium landscape and back into the game. Let's face it MS had lost all of its influence in the browser world before dropping IE and making this move. It is a Google/Chrome dominated world at the moment. But by adopting Chromium, MS can "catch up" on a technical level and also wield significant power inside the Chromium project itself. They have money and they have an experienced browser engine engineering team. They will be able to provide some balance to Google in this ecosystem. If push came to shove, forking chromium wouldn't be an idle threat from MS. They will have some power. On a technical level it looks like a move towards a mono-culture, but politically it looks like a chance at more balance and diversity to me.

duxup 7y ago
I'm a noob web dev working in a small shop that sells a niche SaaS product. We had a customer push us to support Edge. The dev team (3 dudes) just looked at eachother and laid down the "No, Firefox or Chrome...". It's just so much pressure to dance around the "this one does this, that one doesn't" and generally we rarely run into any Firefox and Chrome issues. Edge, just not worth it for a small team. I'm glad we probabbly can direct them to the new Edge now (after some testing).
- darekkay 7y ago
  To be fair, Edge has a good feature support (check caniuse.com). It would be interesting to know what the exact issues your app has with the browser. Otherwise it sounds more like your devs like to use some vendor-specific hacks and blame Edge for it. I know there are some Flexbox things to consider, but nothing a small team can't handle. IE11 is another story, though.
  - ewgoforth 7y ago
    I'd also be curious to know what features that Edge doesn't support. I know it doesn't do everything Chrome does, but I haven't run into any scenarios that Edge didn't support in a long time. It's a pet peeve of mine that apps don't support Edge/Trident, Vivaldi, etc. It's easier to write cross-browser code than ever, but it seems like we're in the process of reverting back to the bad old days when IE6 was the only browser people supported, but it's Chrome now instead of IE.

mtgx 7y ago

Will this be update-able independently, or did they repeat the Edge mistake once again and tied its update to OS updates?

srhngpr 7y ago

Is this also susceptible to the same issues that resulted in developer of uBlock Origin to no longer create new versions for Chrome?

Slashbot 7y ago

Is it better than Vivaldi(Chromium based) ... nope Just another shit bare bones so called browser. Its crazy to think that literately 20 fucking years ago, there existed browsers (like MyIE2 Trident Engine based (ie IE)) that had more features and customisation options than the fucking shite that is released to public now.

doctor_eval 7y ago

So if I remember correctly this is another step in the history of KHTML -> WebKit -> Safari -> Chrome -> Edge. I’m sure much has changed internally but still, who would have imagined that KDE and Apple would be the ones to produce the dominant core browser architecture for the whole world?

miohtama 7y ago

Are there interviews why they based it on Chromium, not Gecko? From business point of a view taking a direct competitor's effort is somewhat blurry.

exacube 7y ago
Presumably because Chromium and related technologies (e.g. V8) have far more investment by the community than Gecko and SpiderMonkey. MS already uses Chromium/v8 in some of their products like VS Code.

rejectfinite 7y ago

Installed it on my home PC and work PC. I like it. Customised the front page with some useful links and turned off the news. Real serene image, non-distracting new page. I like the interface overall and it has ublock origin, basically the one extension that is a must. This will be big for corporations too. Users wont need to have Google Chrome deployed anymore to use certain web apps. Ill use it as a secondary browser to Firefox when I need a Chromium based browser, as this is already installed in Windows 10 soon. Best browser for Netflix too. I am using the "Add website to app" function for it already, or just browse to it. Old Edge was also really good for video performance and battery performance in general, hope this has that too.

toper-centage 7y ago
Unlock origin will soon be se verily nerfed though, which is a pity.

kirstenbirgit 7y ago

Tried to download it for macOS. It displayed a license agreement/download page in Polish (I assume.) My browser language is English, and I'm in Denmark. Maybe some other day.

AsyncAwait 7y ago

I don't get why Microsoft gets a pass here vs Google, given its insane mal/ad/spy/ware crap default settings in Windows 10, including sending MS all kinds of telemetry, logging into Windows via an online login etc. Firefox over this crap all day.

skalsk 7y ago

is this too fast

Sirikon 7y ago

The video they prepared for the launch is basically what happens when you downloaded Chrome like a year ago.

okareaman 7y ago

I've been using it all afternoon and I must say it is very snappy, crisp and pleasant to use. Microsoft has cleverly copied Chrome and made it better. A bit of the ol' Embrace and Extend of the past? I've tried Firefox but it never feels right and I switch back to Chrome. I'm not switching back this time. They even restored a feature that Chrome inexplicably took out -- the option in history to restore all your open tabs that went away when you accidentally closed the browser. Edit: I even like Bing better. What miracle is this that the top links aren't advertisements?

chensformers 7y ago

I see it supports Mac. Does it mean we can now test webpages without a Windows PC?

chensformers 7y ago

Does it finally support Blink element?

CriticalCathed 7y ago

I love Edge. It's very quick and feels super stable. However that new icon is terrible. It looks like laundry detergent branding and it only vaguely resembles an e.

petilon 7y ago

I love that I can now use Edge when using Google services such as Gmail and Chrome when accessing Microsoft sites such as Office 365. That way neither company can log me into the browser itself when I log into their sites. This should reduce abuses by both companies. Google has an option that says "By turning this off, you can sign in to Google sites like Gmail without signing in to Chrome." But it doesn't work, which is a blatant abuse by Google. Adios, Chrome! I will now be using Edge when logging into Gmail.

sys_64738 7y ago

Microsoft makes the coolest software these days. Who knew.

mda 7y ago
Except it is 80% Google's work.

niuzeta 7y ago

I know this isn't contributing to the discussion, but Vimium extension is honestly my only reason to keep using Chromium-based browser. I should give this a try.

rym_ 7y ago

Not completely related but does anyone know of an epub reader with the quality that Edge had? The EPUBReader extension in FF works but the rendering and UX is a lot worse. Calibre on the other hand is a great management system but with a horrendous reader.

mlang23 7y ago

I wish Microsoft wouldn't alpha-test their browser-experiment on real-world-users. Since Edge is out, I find it totally useless. It has also been a total fail on the accessibility front. To release something that is inaccessible from the start is no longer acceptable in 2020 methinks, especially from a big player like MS. The word that comes to mind is embarrasment.

axilmar 7y ago

One of the reasons there are so many incompatibilities between browsers in every era is that the web is not built out of a small set of primitives: everyone that wants to provide a web interface must implement the whole set of WWW standards (html, scripting, css, etc), which is very difficult and error prone. If there was only a handful of primitives to implement, and everything else was built on it, then it would be much easier to stay compatible. This is the kind of situation that has led to IE6 dominating the web, then motivating Google to create a browser, take the market and then Microsoft finally dropping their web engine and taking up Chromium.

jdlyga 7y ago

I switched over to Firefox about 6 months ago, and I'm surprised by how much I love it. It's great to be able to have separate home and work accounts while still being logged into the same gmail account. Plus, there's certain interface decisions like putting Undo Close Tab in more places that makes it a nicer experience. The only issue I run into with Firefox is my company's intranet site makes me login once per day where with Chrome it doesn't.

oaiey 7y ago

Is it just me or is edge with blink faster than chrome with blink

zsoltsandor 7y ago

Now, if only they released it for Android (before Surface Duo hits the market), and Linux (since they have teased us). Well, I'll wait.

Tom_Martin 7y ago

For those already using Edge for its greatly superior DRM, the new browser may result in a big nosedive in performance for streaming video! Providers will be happy to supply cheaper Widevine-encrypted content instead of Playready but this will cause a big increase in CPU cycles when watching encrypted videos. Fortunately users may opt out of using Widevine by disabling the Widevine DRM flag at edge://flags/#edge-widevine-drm.

cmroanirgo 7y ago

Was just about to have a look at the latest download for this for MacOS, and found out it downloads a .pkg rather than a .dmg (which is how standalone apps typically install). So, looking into the .pkg file I notice that it's also bundled Office16_all_autoupdate.pkg, which has a 'Microsoft AutoUpdate.app'. Inside the contents of that app is another app called 'Microsoft AU Daemon.app' which contains various M$ Root Certs and a string 'Microsoft Update Assistant launched'... It's stunts like this which make me not trust Microsoft very much. I want nothing to do with Office, nor a one-stop-shop port of Windows Update. God knows what telemetry MS will try to upload with these products, but I'm not buying it.