7 ms·

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
      Search for UMA metrics.
      - iudqnolq 7y ago
        Firefox does something similar, but calls it Firefox Health Reports. See https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/fhr-faq/ https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/fhr-faq/ (note that I think there's nothing wrong with this at all, just pointing out that this isn't chromium-specific)
  - rdsubhas 7y ago
    Chromium is not the same as Google Chrome. Chromium is open source and vendor neutral. Google Chrome adds the Google stuff on top of it. Both chromium and Firefox can be customized and vendor branded (see the countless privacy oriented browsers built on top of Firefox).
    - ndarwincorn 7y ago
      > Chromium is...vendor neutral. That's pretty misleading. When you want to sync state across Chromium installs, you use a Google account, and that's really just scratching the surface. Chromium comes with quite a bit of Google baked-in.
    - endothrowho333 7y ago
      Chromium still has Google endpoints. Iridium was developed specifically to degoogle all attempts at phoning home.
- dubcanada 7y ago
  Sadly Chromium is WAYYYY easier to development on than Firefox. Had Mozilla spent effort making the base of it as a framework in the same way Chromium is, they may have considered it. There is a reason why Electron, QT etc use Chromium.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mactunes 7y ago
    Curious, what makes Chromium better in your opinion? I have probably just touched the surface of the dev tools on both and haven‘t used any features that I would be missing on either.
    - dubcanada 7y ago
      It's a blank browser, has barely any "Google" specific stuff in it ready to go. It is easy to develop for, doesn't require cross language compiling (rust/c++), builds fast, easy to understand how the different parts work (at least for a browser developer it should be), has documentation, is meant to be used to develop your own browser.
      - withinboredom 7y ago
        Are you sure Chromium builds fast? lol, it takes my laptop with 12 cores and 64gb of ram over an hour to compile from scratch, not counting the ~20gb of git history to download (I maintain an internal build at work).
        dubcanada 7y ago
        Well lol it is a rather complex piece of software, so maybe take that one back. Firefox is comparable in that department.
        bzbarsky 7y ago
- zerr 7y ago
  Interesting, I thought FF being a XUL app should've been easier to customize.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    I don't think FF is using XUL anymore or at least not as much as they used to. Even their docs for XUL shows it all as archived: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/XUL/XUL_Reference https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/XUL...
  - vtail 7y ago
    Firefox is actively moving away from XUL.
    - cptskippy 7y ago
      I thought they finished that recently when they announced the UI was no longer XUL based. Is there still more work to go?
    - zerr 7y ago
      I guess they are moving towards web standards? (like Vivaldi). I don't think they will ditch XUL in favor of native (C++) tech.
  - TheKIngofBelAir 7y ago
    AFAIK Pale Moon and Basilisk are the only XUL-based browsers left. https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.basilisk-browser.org/ https://www.basilisk-browser.org/
- aquova 7y ago
  I suspect that their work in using Electron for things like VSCode made switching Edge over to Blink more enticing. I wonder if they ever considered looking at the Mozilla frameworks
- mook 7y ago
  Unfortunately historically there was a history of Mozilla not being a very stable platform to develop on top of (though I have no idea if Chromium was worse). There had been at least two separate embedding APIs that have been abandoned (the original one in the ActiveX control era and the external one after they moved to Hg), at least three Electron-like things (prism, XULRunner, and positron), and the field of corpses of Mozilla-based apps (I've worked for two, there were lots more). Maybe they're better at API backwards compatibility now? Not sure; I'm unlikely to try again given previous experience. Which is a shame; I still use Firefox since it was called Phoenix… If anybody has more recent experience working on their stack, I'd be happy to be correctly though. Preferably with examples of projects that _haven't_ been burned.
tcd 7y ago
They probably can't, especially if the engine interfaces with proprietary code or is deeply linked to the kernel for example. It's likely part of the reason why they never got it updating as frequently as the Chromeium counterpart can, as this is entirely userspace.

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
    Search for UMA metrics.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      Firefox does something similar, but calls it Firefox Health Reports. See https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/fhr-faq/ https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/fhr-faq/ (note that I think there's nothing wrong with this at all, just pointing out that this isn't chromium-specific)
- rdsubhas 7y ago
  Chromium is not the same as Google Chrome. Chromium is open source and vendor neutral. Google Chrome adds the Google stuff on top of it. Both chromium and Firefox can be customized and vendor branded (see the countless privacy oriented browsers built on top of Firefox).
  - ndarwincorn 7y ago
    > Chromium is...vendor neutral. That's pretty misleading. When you want to sync state across Chromium installs, you use a Google account, and that's really just scratching the surface. Chromium comes with quite a bit of Google baked-in.
  - endothrowho333 7y ago
    Chromium still has Google endpoints. Iridium was developed specifically to degoogle all attempts at phoning home.
dubcanada 7y ago
Sadly Chromium is WAYYYY easier to development on than Firefox. Had Mozilla spent effort making the base of it as a framework in the same way Chromium is, they may have considered it. There is a reason why Electron, QT etc use Chromium.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mactunes 7y ago
  Curious, what makes Chromium better in your opinion? I have probably just touched the surface of the dev tools on both and haven‘t used any features that I would be missing on either.
  - dubcanada 7y ago
    It's a blank browser, has barely any "Google" specific stuff in it ready to go. It is easy to develop for, doesn't require cross language compiling (rust/c++), builds fast, easy to understand how the different parts work (at least for a browser developer it should be), has documentation, is meant to be used to develop your own browser.
    - withinboredom 7y ago
      Are you sure Chromium builds fast? lol, it takes my laptop with 12 cores and 64gb of ram over an hour to compile from scratch, not counting the ~20gb of git history to download (I maintain an internal build at work).
      - dubcanada 7y ago
        Well lol it is a rather complex piece of software, so maybe take that one back. Firefox is comparable in that department.
        bzbarsky 7y ago
zerr 7y ago
Interesting, I thought FF being a XUL app should've been easier to customize.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  I don't think FF is using XUL anymore or at least not as much as they used to. Even their docs for XUL shows it all as archived: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/XUL/XUL_Reference https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/XUL...
- vtail 7y ago
  Firefox is actively moving away from XUL.
  - cptskippy 7y ago
    I thought they finished that recently when they announced the UI was no longer XUL based. Is there still more work to go?
  - zerr 7y ago
    I guess they are moving towards web standards? (like Vivaldi). I don't think they will ditch XUL in favor of native (C++) tech.
- TheKIngofBelAir 7y ago
  AFAIK Pale Moon and Basilisk are the only XUL-based browsers left. https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.basilisk-browser.org/ https://www.basilisk-browser.org/
aquova 7y ago
I suspect that their work in using Electron for things like VSCode made switching Edge over to Blink more enticing. I wonder if they ever considered looking at the Mozilla frameworks
mook 7y ago
Unfortunately historically there was a history of Mozilla not being a very stable platform to develop on top of (though I have no idea if Chromium was worse). There had been at least two separate embedding APIs that have been abandoned (the original one in the ActiveX control era and the external one after they moved to Hg), at least three Electron-like things (prism, XULRunner, and positron), and the field of corpses of Mozilla-based apps (I've worked for two, there were lots more). Maybe they're better at API backwards compatibility now? Not sure; I'm unlikely to try again given previous experience. Which is a shame; I still use Firefox since it was called Phoenix… If anybody has more recent experience working on their stack, I'd be happy to be correctly though. Preferably with examples of projects that _haven't_ been burned.

tcd 7y ago

They probably can't, especially if the engine interfaces with proprietary code or is deeply linked to the kernel for example. It's likely part of the reason why they never got it updating as frequently as the Chromeium counterpart can, as this is entirely userspace.