8 ms·

Am I alone in absolutely loving Edge? It has finally unseated Chromium for me. It has all the benefits of the latest Chromium build without having to rely on sk

Am I alone in absolutely loving Edge? It has finally unseated Chromium for me. It has all the benefits of the latest Chromium build without having to rely on sketchy binaries uploaded to some website, or giving Google total ownership of my web browsing. Sure Microsoft now fills that role, but they already own my OS anyways, so I'd rather reduce my "privacy surface area" as much as possible. Plus it has great built in privacy features like automatically deleting all browsing history after every session, and built in adblocking. I agree that the behavior outlined in this post is annoying, but the reality is that heavily managed automatic updating is the future for consumer grade software, and for good reason. If you're not a fan, just use Linux or an LTS Windows release.

joe_the_user 6y ago
Am I alone in absolutely loving Edge? You are now that Microsoft has done this. Seriously, forcing user preferences is terrible and completely unrelated to the virtues of Edge.
- solvorn 6y ago
  Google does exactly that in other ways. Hats off to Micros~1 for fighting fire with fire.
  - mike503 6y ago
    I am delightfully amused you ~1’ed Microsoft because it’s 9 characters.
millennialist 6y ago
Does it really matter? By nature, all web browsers are essentially the same, with identical features, except some are open source and others are not.
- recursive 6y ago
  I disagree. I find many browsers to be significantly different.
- zrm 6y ago
  They don't all have the same engines and some of what they do have is non-standard. Meanwhile from a user perspective some browsers differ in extensions and configuration etc. So if you get a monoculture which causes sites to start relying on non-standard features of only specific browsers, it makes it harder for people to use or create other browsers that aren't bug-compatible with the only one anybody is targeting. The "fast iteration" browser makers like is also damage, because it causes cruft to accumulate. Once you add a feature, sites start using it and you're stuck with it basically forever. See how long it took to get rid of Flash. But now they add features at such a pace that Chrome is now like 35 million lines of code, all of which is attack surface which causes all browsers to have disproportionately many security vulnerabilities. Having multiple independent browsers requires new features to go through a standardization process that requires buy in from multiple implementations before sites can rely on them, which causes the changes to be fewer and more carefully considered -- a good thing for something you'll be stuck with ~forever.
- esperent 6y ago
  If you think that, it's a testament to the skill of the web developers who have spent countless hours battling browser bugs and poorly or non-implemented standards to ensure that their site works and looks the same on every browser.
blackrock 6y ago
The text-to-speech on Edge is fantastic! Select any text, and speak it. Jump anywhere in the page. Works on both, regular web pages, and PDFs too. It works even better than what’s on the iPad Safari. And Chrome doesn’t have any working feature like this.
- evan_ 6y ago
  I'm using Chrome on OS X right now. I can highlight text and select "Speech -> Start Speaking" and it reads whatever I highlight. It also works fine on a random PDF file I found.
  - arm 6y ago
    I believe that’s a system-wide macOS feature whenever you select text in any program.
    - adiabatty 6y ago
      It is. Neither Discord nor Visual Studio Code have this feature surfaced, but they're both Electron apps that probably (accidentally) bury it.
gramakri 6y ago
> Am I alone in absolutely loving Edge? Isn't that besides the point that you love Edge ? I think the problem here is that they installed it without user consent.
- jscholes 6y ago
  > I think the problem here is that they installed it without user consent. That depends. The post doesn't clarify whether Edge was already installed in its legacy incarnation. If so, and they received an update, that's not ""installing without user consent". I recently installed the Chromium version of Edge manually and didn't encounter any of this behaviour. It's a shame that Microsoft are doing something Windows Update-specific, although maybe people who are the most averse to this behaviour are the more technical crowd who will have already grabbed an installer for themselves anyway?
  - gramakri 6y ago
    "shoving Edge down our throats" to me implies without consent. But as you say, it could be that the user consented long time ago but doesn't remember :)
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      It's rather complicated I guess, but I've heard rumors of a concept of consent where it's something that can be revoked. Sometimes people get quite vehement about it.
  - wolco 6y ago
    I couldn't understand where it came from. Turned off updates.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    Edge was installed as part of a previous update, 1905.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Mac OS and iOS install Safari, Android installs Chrome. It's a system component that was never removable to begin with. And now they updated it. I'm sad to see any Chromium based browser installed on my PC, but it's hardly harmful that they're upgrading a system component to the latest version.
jsmith12673 6y ago
Your conclusion strikes me as a bit defeatist. Managed systems might be 'better' for users now, but in the long term, they leave users with almost no agency, and that becomes a great opportunity for companies to abuse their position of power. I also thing think that saying that something is annoying is dismissing what is actually a pretty dark pattern. What comes to mind is how modern day censorship works the internet. If you outright block someone's ability to visit a example.com, they will spot the censorship and try to find workarounds. If on the other hand, you simply introduce a 5% packet loss to example.com, people will blame the _website_ and not potential censorship. What's to stop Microsoft for adding another 5 minutes of hassle to install chrome or firefox? You couldn't sue them for it, but it would be enough to destroy every other browser on the market.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  > how modern day censorship works the internet. It sounds like you're talking about something specific, are there examples of this happening that you can point to?
  - chrchang523 6y ago
    This sounds like a reference to the Great Firewall of China. (Though, on second thought, the GFW disrupts much more than 5%.)
    - gruez 6y ago
      There's two parts, I believe. One is the outright blocking of certain websites. The other is the throttling of every foreign website because the exchange points coming in/out of china are always congested. If both netflix and comcast's streaming service are similar in price and catalog, but netflix is always buffering because comcast is throttling netflix (intentionally or otherwise), then you might be inclined to go with comcast just for less hassle.
      - zenexer 6y ago
solarkraft 6y ago
> but the reality is that heavily managed automatic updating is the future for consumer grade software That's not even necessarily a bad thing (given there are ways around it) ... But that isn't what Microsoft did here.
humanlion87 6y ago
I was initially hesitant to try it out. But now that I gave it a shot, I am liking it since it is very similar to Chrome but without being tied to Google. I am currently using it as a secondary browser, but if I was forced to switch I wouldn't mind. Extension support is still lacking though.
- kyriakos 6y ago
  You can use all chrome extensions directly from chrome Web store, plus install from Microsoft which has most of the popular ones already published.
kitotik 6y ago
Microsoft is considered the lesser evil to Google? Possibly the best fit I’ve ever encountered for the adage “out of the frying pan into the fire”.
- Kneecaps07 6y ago
  Microsoft at least doesn't have a reputation for permanently removing access to all of your data because you did something horrible like dispute a false charge. Google, on the other hand...
  - tennineeight 6y ago
    yet.
Pmop 6y ago
Not absolutely loving but I do definitely am replacing Chromium TP distributed binaries with it.
ryan-allen 6y ago
You're not alone. I like it. I _really_ like that Windows ships with a Chromium based browser by default, and I am running the canary build as my day to day, and it performs great on Windows 10 ARM (I have a Galaxy Book S, which is also awesome!). Firefox is also fantastic! It's good to have some options besides Google Chrome these days!
thekyle 6y ago
No you're not alone. I also recently tried Edgium and I think it's a really nice browser. However, I'm going to keep using Firefox cause FOSS and whether I like the new Edge or not is besides the point. I don't like it when Microsoft changes things in an update that clearly only benefit them.
MaulingMonkey 6y ago
> Am I alone in absolutely loving Edge? I'm not even giving it a shot. It'd be one thing if word of mouth built up enough positive vibes for me to consider trying it for awhile. It's entirely another for my first experience with the latest Edge to be additional tech support requests from concerned and confused relatives in the middle of a goddamn pandemic. My mother has been a bit paranoid of Edge ever since scammers tried to get her to use it when Chrome blocked the malware she was being tricked into running - so Edge suddenly trying to take over her computer with no obvious way to close out of it made her understandably concerned! Fortunately we were able to muddle through it despite me not being able to see her screen over the phone, but this is another reminder that I should be strongly considering trying to switch her to a different platform, and poisons my perception of Edge to it's very core.
oehpr 6y ago
Let's presume for a moment that the new edge is like... Nirvana, it's the promise land, it's browsing utopia, let's assume that it really really is. Do you earnestly believe it will stay that way if an actual sizable chunk of the market starts using it? Or do you think Microsoft will do exactly what it did as described in this very article, which is use it's monopoly position to enforce its own interests to the detriment of society at large?
mmcgaha 6y ago
I do not know about absolutely loving Edge, but I just setup a new work computer and am using edge exclusively. I cannot promise that this is forever, but it is working for me right now.
userbinator 6y ago
IMHO the worst part of Edge is the UI and relative lack of configurability. I suppose you'd like it if you were already used to Chrome/ium, but I abhor the dumbed-down featureless "flat" trend that's infected everything "modern" these days, along with the lack of things like user stylesheets and zone-based security settings (both of which IE has had for a long time, and which I have used to much benefit.) I'd be far more welcoming of a new rendering engine in the normal IE UI, along with all the configurability it had. (Disclaimer: long-time IE user --- as well as Firefox and (pre-webkit) Opera.)
- modmans2nd 6y ago
  New Edge is Chromium.
modmans2nd 6y ago
I love it. I even use it on my iPhone and my Mac...I can’t wait for default browser settings in iOS14
notoriousjpg 6y ago
I'm on W10 with the latest Firefox, Chrome and Edge. Edge is the ONLY browser that doesnt consistently freeze my entire computer (and require a hard reset) when I watch Netflix. I have no idea why but its a common issue if you Google it. For that alone I am glad Edge exists.
- whereistimbo 6y ago
  Well Edge is using Microsoft's PlayReady DRM as opposed to Google's WideVine DRM. I assume PlayReady has better HW support.
flowerlad 6y ago
I have switched to Edge, not because it is necessarily a better browser, but because Google has become abusive. Consider for example, this Chrome setting: Settings > Sync and Google Services > Allow Chrome sign-in. The description says "By turning this off, you can sign in to Google sites like Gmail without signing in to Chrome". Turn this feature off and sign into Gmail. Chrome will sign you into the browser as well -- regardless of your setting -- so now the browser knows who you are. This is pretty abusive. For this reason I have made Edge my default browser.
- dabitude 6y ago
  Chrome developper here: do you have details about this? If it happens that's definitely a bug.
pjmlp 6y ago
No, I also use it quite a lot and have it as part of my checks for Web page validation.
adiabatty 6y ago
I wanted to like it, but its new tab page has a bunch of MSN cookies associated with it. To Edge's credit, it blocks some Bing cookies (giggle) and cookies from a 'scorecardresearch.com', but I'm still unimpressed. Putting my web-developer hat on, I _am_ happy that I'm not going to have to worry about Trident-in-Edge ever again.
stOneskull 6y ago
i like it ok. it's better than ie. i don't like bing as much as google but overall i found it redundant to have both edge and chrome installed, and i just use edge. if i used gsuite or was a youtube uploader it might be different. i really should use firefox again though. i think edge's novelty is wearing off. and chromium in general.
donmcronald 6y ago
I wouldn't say I love it, but it's the best experience with multiple profiles. It's super simple to log into multiple MS accounts and have each one pinned to the taskbar. There's also some integration with MS365 if you log in the an Azure AD domain.

joe_the_user 6y ago

Am I alone in absolutely loving Edge? You are now that Microsoft has done this. Seriously, forcing user preferences is terrible and completely unrelated to the virtues of Edge.

solvorn 6y ago
Google does exactly that in other ways. Hats off to Micros~1 for fighting fire with fire.
- mike503 6y ago
  I am delightfully amused you ~1’ed Microsoft because it’s 9 characters.

millennialist 6y ago

Does it really matter? By nature, all web browsers are essentially the same, with identical features, except some are open source and others are not.

recursive 6y ago
I disagree. I find many browsers to be significantly different.
zrm 6y ago
They don't all have the same engines and some of what they do have is non-standard. Meanwhile from a user perspective some browsers differ in extensions and configuration etc. So if you get a monoculture which causes sites to start relying on non-standard features of only specific browsers, it makes it harder for people to use or create other browsers that aren't bug-compatible with the only one anybody is targeting. The "fast iteration" browser makers like is also damage, because it causes cruft to accumulate. Once you add a feature, sites start using it and you're stuck with it basically forever. See how long it took to get rid of Flash. But now they add features at such a pace that Chrome is now like 35 million lines of code, all of which is attack surface which causes all browsers to have disproportionately many security vulnerabilities. Having multiple independent browsers requires new features to go through a standardization process that requires buy in from multiple implementations before sites can rely on them, which causes the changes to be fewer and more carefully considered -- a good thing for something you'll be stuck with ~forever.
esperent 6y ago
If you think that, it's a testament to the skill of the web developers who have spent countless hours battling browser bugs and poorly or non-implemented standards to ensure that their site works and looks the same on every browser.

blackrock 6y ago

The text-to-speech on Edge is fantastic! Select any text, and speak it. Jump anywhere in the page. Works on both, regular web pages, and PDFs too. It works even better than what’s on the iPad Safari. And Chrome doesn’t have any working feature like this.

evan_ 6y ago
I'm using Chrome on OS X right now. I can highlight text and select "Speech -> Start Speaking" and it reads whatever I highlight. It also works fine on a random PDF file I found.
- arm 6y ago
  I believe that’s a system-wide macOS feature whenever you select text in any program.
  - adiabatty 6y ago
    It is. Neither Discord nor Visual Studio Code have this feature surfaced, but they're both Electron apps that probably (accidentally) bury it.

gramakri 6y ago

> Am I alone in absolutely loving Edge? Isn't that besides the point that you love Edge ? I think the problem here is that they installed it without user consent.

jscholes 6y ago
> I think the problem here is that they installed it without user consent. That depends. The post doesn't clarify whether Edge was already installed in its legacy incarnation. If so, and they received an update, that's not ""installing without user consent". I recently installed the Chromium version of Edge manually and didn't encounter any of this behaviour. It's a shame that Microsoft are doing something Windows Update-specific, although maybe people who are the most averse to this behaviour are the more technical crowd who will have already grabbed an installer for themselves anyway?
- gramakri 6y ago
  "shoving Edge down our throats" to me implies without consent. But as you say, it could be that the user consented long time ago but doesn't remember :)
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    It's rather complicated I guess, but I've heard rumors of a concept of consent where it's something that can be revoked. Sometimes people get quite vehement about it.
- wolco 6y ago
  I couldn't understand where it came from. Turned off updates.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Edge was installed as part of a previous update, 1905.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Mac OS and iOS install Safari, Android installs Chrome. It's a system component that was never removable to begin with. And now they updated it. I'm sad to see any Chromium based browser installed on my PC, but it's hardly harmful that they're upgrading a system component to the latest version.

jsmith12673 6y ago

Your conclusion strikes me as a bit defeatist. Managed systems might be 'better' for users now, but in the long term, they leave users with almost no agency, and that becomes a great opportunity for companies to abuse their position of power. I also thing think that saying that something is annoying is dismissing what is actually a pretty dark pattern. What comes to mind is how modern day censorship works the internet. If you outright block someone's ability to visit a example.com, they will spot the censorship and try to find workarounds. If on the other hand, you simply introduce a 5% packet loss to example.com, people will blame the _website_ and not potential censorship. What's to stop Microsoft for adding another 5 minutes of hassle to install chrome or firefox? You couldn't sue them for it, but it would be enough to destroy every other browser on the market.

Godel_unicode 6y ago
> how modern day censorship works the internet. It sounds like you're talking about something specific, are there examples of this happening that you can point to?
- chrchang523 6y ago
  This sounds like a reference to the Great Firewall of China. (Though, on second thought, the GFW disrupts much more than 5%.)
  - gruez 6y ago
    There's two parts, I believe. One is the outright blocking of certain websites. The other is the throttling of every foreign website because the exchange points coming in/out of china are always congested. If both netflix and comcast's streaming service are similar in price and catalog, but netflix is always buffering because comcast is throttling netflix (intentionally or otherwise), then you might be inclined to go with comcast just for less hassle.
    - zenexer 6y ago

solarkraft 6y ago

> but the reality is that heavily managed automatic updating is the future for consumer grade software That's not even necessarily a bad thing (given there are ways around it) ... But that isn't what Microsoft did here.

humanlion87 6y ago

I was initially hesitant to try it out. But now that I gave it a shot, I am liking it since it is very similar to Chrome but without being tied to Google. I am currently using it as a secondary browser, but if I was forced to switch I wouldn't mind. Extension support is still lacking though.

kyriakos 6y ago
You can use all chrome extensions directly from chrome Web store, plus install from Microsoft which has most of the popular ones already published.

kitotik 6y ago

Microsoft is considered the lesser evil to Google? Possibly the best fit I’ve ever encountered for the adage “out of the frying pan into the fire”.

Kneecaps07 6y ago
Microsoft at least doesn't have a reputation for permanently removing access to all of your data because you did something horrible like dispute a false charge. Google, on the other hand...
- tennineeight 6y ago
  yet.

Pmop 6y ago

Not absolutely loving but I do definitely am replacing Chromium TP distributed binaries with it.

ryan-allen 6y ago

You're not alone. I like it. I _really_ like that Windows ships with a Chromium based browser by default, and I am running the canary build as my day to day, and it performs great on Windows 10 ARM (I have a Galaxy Book S, which is also awesome!). Firefox is also fantastic! It's good to have some options besides Google Chrome these days!

thekyle 6y ago

No you're not alone. I also recently tried Edgium and I think it's a really nice browser. However, I'm going to keep using Firefox cause FOSS and whether I like the new Edge or not is besides the point. I don't like it when Microsoft changes things in an update that clearly only benefit them.

MaulingMonkey 6y ago

> Am I alone in absolutely loving Edge? I'm not even giving it a shot. It'd be one thing if word of mouth built up enough positive vibes for me to consider trying it for awhile. It's entirely another for my first experience with the latest Edge to be additional tech support requests from concerned and confused relatives in the middle of a goddamn pandemic. My mother has been a bit paranoid of Edge ever since scammers tried to get her to use it when Chrome blocked the malware she was being tricked into running - so Edge suddenly trying to take over her computer with no obvious way to close out of it made her understandably concerned! Fortunately we were able to muddle through it despite me not being able to see her screen over the phone, but this is another reminder that I should be strongly considering trying to switch her to a different platform, and poisons my perception of Edge to it's very core.

oehpr 6y ago

Let's presume for a moment that the new edge is like... Nirvana, it's the promise land, it's browsing utopia, let's assume that it really really is. Do you earnestly believe it will stay that way if an actual sizable chunk of the market starts using it? Or do you think Microsoft will do exactly what it did as described in this very article, which is use it's monopoly position to enforce its own interests to the detriment of society at large?

mmcgaha 6y ago

I do not know about absolutely loving Edge, but I just setup a new work computer and am using edge exclusively. I cannot promise that this is forever, but it is working for me right now.

userbinator 6y ago

IMHO the worst part of Edge is the UI and relative lack of configurability. I suppose you'd like it if you were already used to Chrome/ium, but I abhor the dumbed-down featureless "flat" trend that's infected everything "modern" these days, along with the lack of things like user stylesheets and zone-based security settings (both of which IE has had for a long time, and which I have used to much benefit.) I'd be far more welcoming of a new rendering engine in the normal IE UI, along with all the configurability it had. (Disclaimer: long-time IE user --- as well as Firefox and (pre-webkit) Opera.)

modmans2nd 6y ago
New Edge is Chromium.

modmans2nd 6y ago

I love it. I even use it on my iPhone and my Mac...I can’t wait for default browser settings in iOS14

notoriousjpg 6y ago

I'm on W10 with the latest Firefox, Chrome and Edge. Edge is the ONLY browser that doesnt consistently freeze my entire computer (and require a hard reset) when I watch Netflix. I have no idea why but its a common issue if you Google it. For that alone I am glad Edge exists.

whereistimbo 6y ago
Well Edge is using Microsoft's PlayReady DRM as opposed to Google's WideVine DRM. I assume PlayReady has better HW support.

flowerlad 6y ago

I have switched to Edge, not because it is necessarily a better browser, but because Google has become abusive. Consider for example, this Chrome setting: Settings > Sync and Google Services > Allow Chrome sign-in. The description says "By turning this off, you can sign in to Google sites like Gmail without signing in to Chrome". Turn this feature off and sign into Gmail. Chrome will sign you into the browser as well -- regardless of your setting -- so now the browser knows who you are. This is pretty abusive. For this reason I have made Edge my default browser.

dabitude 6y ago
Chrome developper here: do you have details about this? If it happens that's definitely a bug.

pjmlp 6y ago

No, I also use it quite a lot and have it as part of my checks for Web page validation.

adiabatty 6y ago

I wanted to like it, but its new tab page has a bunch of MSN cookies associated with it. To Edge's credit, it blocks some Bing cookies (giggle) and cookies from a 'scorecardresearch.com', but I'm still unimpressed. Putting my web-developer hat on, I _am_ happy that I'm not going to have to worry about Trident-in-Edge ever again.

stOneskull 6y ago

i like it ok. it's better than ie. i don't like bing as much as google but overall i found it redundant to have both edge and chrome installed, and i just use edge. if i used gsuite or was a youtube uploader it might be different. i really should use firefox again though. i think edge's novelty is wearing off. and chromium in general.

donmcronald 6y ago

I wouldn't say I love it, but it's the best experience with multiple profiles. It's super simple to log into multiple MS accounts and have each one pinned to the taskbar. There's also some integration with MS365 if you log in the an Azure AD domain.