6 ms·

itd be neat if microsoft opened up their web engines now that they've moved to blink.

ygra 6y ago
That'd be a lot of work (clean up the code, look through everything to see whether things can actually be released and not covered under licenses disallowing that) for .. what benefit to Microsoft exactly? Trident and EdgeHTML are not really used anywhere anymore, or would that just be out of curiosity how things look inside?
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  There are optimizations and features on old edge that would benefit to be backported to chromium. E.g http live streaming
- userbinator 6y ago
  clean up the code, look through everything to see whether things can actually be released and not covered under licenses disallowing that AFAIK, IE/Edge was developed only by Microsoft, so there wouldn't be much if any thirdparty code?
  - ygra 6y ago
    Especially if the end result is a closed-source product you still license code you don't want to write yourself. See stories like this one: - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180515-00/?p=98755 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180515-00/?p=98...
interrupt_ 6y ago
https://github.com/microsoft/ChakraCore https://github.com/microsoft/ChakraCore
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Link is to "chakra core", part of the JavaScript engine that powers edge, apparently. I thought edge was reskinned Chrome, why don't they use V8?
  - dlkmp 6y ago
    They do, taken from the above github page: "As you may have heard Microsoft Edge no longer uses Chakra. Microsoft will continue to provide security updates for Chakracore 1.11 until 9th March 2021 but do not intend to support it after that."
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      FWIW the headline on the page is still present tense and I want expecting the strap longer of a project to be wrong about what the project is.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    The old Edge had its own rendering and JS engine. The new Edge uses Blink for both.
sanxiyn 6y ago
Obviously it would be of great historic interest, but as a living software, just no. Go read this: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/04/19/modernizing-dom-tree-microsoft-edge/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/04/19/modernizing-d... IE implemented DOM without using tree. No, really. Up to 2017. After reading the article, all my questions why IE was so buggy evaporated and replaced by how could IE work at all. MSVC up to 2015 also didn't create AST. Unbelievable, I know. The question is not why MSVC's C++ support was so buggy; the real question is how could MSVC implement C++ at all. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/rejuvenating-the-microsoft-cc-compiler/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/rejuvenating-the-micr... After learning about IE and MSVC, I gained respect for Microsoft developers and disdain for Microsoft. Tightrope walking is amazing display of skill. Letting your employees to commute by tightrope walking for years is amazing display of stupidity.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  These are great reads. Thank you for sharing those links.
- other_herbert 6y ago
  They made word for the web! That text centric view sounds so much like the way word works _now_
- lioeters 6y ago
  Excellent article on Microsoft's journey of refactoring IE's DOM model. I actually felt sympathy reading how it all started with a linear text-based data structure, which must have seemed reasonable at the time. (In hindsight, a tree should have been the natural shape, and they should have been aware of parsers and ASTs. But can we blame them?) And how the layers of complexity were added, using parallel data structures that needed to be synced on every DOM operation. By the time the article reached "Modernizing the DOM tree", I could just imagine the years of devs suffering that the whole architecture must have caused. > According to an internal investigation, from IE7 to IE11, approximately 28% of all IE reliability bugs originated from code in core DOM components. The second article is quite relevant too, how the C/C++ compiler used token streams instead of a real AST, until 2015! There are parallels to the above issue with the DOM model, how the original design of the data structure was inadequate, so they had to keep adding more layers of complexity. It's understandable how it happened, but makes me wonder if they should have had more experts in parsers/compilers during the design phase. To give credit where due, both articles describe major successful refactorings of core design. I'm with you, that after learning about their struggles, I have more respect for developers at Microsoft.

ygra 6y ago

That'd be a lot of work (clean up the code, look through everything to see whether things can actually be released and not covered under licenses disallowing that) for .. what benefit to Microsoft exactly? Trident and EdgeHTML are not really used anywhere anymore, or would that just be out of curiosity how things look inside?

The_rationalist 6y ago
There are optimizations and features on old edge that would benefit to be backported to chromium. E.g http live streaming
userbinator 6y ago
clean up the code, look through everything to see whether things can actually be released and not covered under licenses disallowing that AFAIK, IE/Edge was developed only by Microsoft, so there wouldn't be much if any thirdparty code?
- ygra 6y ago
  Especially if the end result is a closed-source product you still license code you don't want to write yourself. See stories like this one: - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180515-00/?p=98755 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180515-00/?p=98...

interrupt_ 6y ago

https://github.com/microsoft/ChakraCore https://github.com/microsoft/ChakraCore

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
Link is to "chakra core", part of the JavaScript engine that powers edge, apparently. I thought edge was reskinned Chrome, why don't they use V8?
- dlkmp 6y ago
  They do, taken from the above github page: "As you may have heard Microsoft Edge no longer uses Chakra. Microsoft will continue to provide security updates for Chakracore 1.11 until 9th March 2021 but do not intend to support it after that."
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    FWIW the headline on the page is still present tense and I want expecting the strap longer of a project to be wrong about what the project is.
- int_19h 6y ago
  The old Edge had its own rendering and JS engine. The new Edge uses Blink for both.

sanxiyn 6y ago

Obviously it would be of great historic interest, but as a living software, just no. Go read this: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/04/19/modernizing-dom-tree-microsoft-edge/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/04/19/modernizing-d... IE implemented DOM without using tree. No, really. Up to 2017. After reading the article, all my questions why IE was so buggy evaporated and replaced by how could IE work at all. MSVC up to 2015 also didn't create AST. Unbelievable, I know. The question is not why MSVC's C++ support was so buggy; the real question is how could MSVC implement C++ at all. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/rejuvenating-the-microsoft-cc-compiler/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/rejuvenating-the-micr... After learning about IE and MSVC, I gained respect for Microsoft developers and disdain for Microsoft. Tightrope walking is amazing display of skill. Letting your employees to commute by tightrope walking for years is amazing display of stupidity.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
These are great reads. Thank you for sharing those links.
other_herbert 6y ago
They made word for the web! That text centric view sounds so much like the way word works _now_
lioeters 6y ago
Excellent article on Microsoft's journey of refactoring IE's DOM model. I actually felt sympathy reading how it all started with a linear text-based data structure, which must have seemed reasonable at the time. (In hindsight, a tree should have been the natural shape, and they should have been aware of parsers and ASTs. But can we blame them?) And how the layers of complexity were added, using parallel data structures that needed to be synced on every DOM operation. By the time the article reached "Modernizing the DOM tree", I could just imagine the years of devs suffering that the whole architecture must have caused. > According to an internal investigation, from IE7 to IE11, approximately 28% of all IE reliability bugs originated from code in core DOM components. The second article is quite relevant too, how the C/C++ compiler used token streams instead of a real AST, until 2015! There are parallels to the above issue with the DOM model, how the original design of the data structure was inadequate, so they had to keep adding more layers of complexity. It's understandable how it happened, but makes me wonder if they should have had more experts in parsers/compilers during the design phase. To give credit where due, both articles describe major successful refactorings of core design. I'm with you, that after learning about their struggles, I have more respect for developers at Microsoft.