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Author here. No, this isn't "a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge". It is, as explained in the first sentence, a write-up of a presentation I've giv

Author here. No, this isn't "a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge". It is, as explained in the first sentence, a write-up of a presentation I've given at an event. It is on my personal blog that I've maintained since 2006 and very much my own message. > This is a talk that I’ve given at CityJS this September. I am a principal product manager for developer tools in Microsoft Edge and these are things I encountered during working on the tools, documenting them and going through user feedback. Microsoft Edge is a browser based on Chromium and we joined the project quite some time ago, fixing hundreds of bugs, making the developer tools themeable, localisable and accessible to assistive technology. All of these changes have been submitted back to the Chromium core, so that Chrome, Brave and all the other browsers based on the same open source project also benefited from that. We work closely with the Chrome team and share a lot of ideas and plans for the future of the Chromium platform. We differentiate in the UX of the developer tools, much like all Chromium based browsers differentiate in the interface for the end user. I spent about 10 hours on the presentation and this morning about 3 hours turning the slides into this blog post. If my goal were to promote Edge, I could have done a much simpler, shorter and to the point post. If you read the article, you might realise the things we're adding exclusively to the Edge devtools based on user feedback and demands, the focus mode and in-context explanations being one of the efforts, and the deep integration with VS code being another one. As to whether these things are useful, I think I pretty clearly explained that this is exactly what we'd like people to tell us. Which is why there are several ways to contact the team and provide feedback.

hutzlibu 5y ago
"No, this isn't "a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge". It is, as explained in the first sentence, a write-up of a presentation I've given at an event. It is on my personal blog that I've maintained since 2006 and very much my own message." I am pretty sure, private blog posts promoting your day jobs work, are beneficial to your career as well (and I can imagine it is encuraged). And the language used, "We are open to your feedback and many of the recent changes to the tools are direct results from demands from outside developers" sounds definitely official. "I spent about 10 hours on the presentation and this morning about 3 hours turning the slides into this blog post. If my goal were to promote Edge, I could have done a much simpler, shorter and to the point post." And I don't think so, because many people still have a bias against edge, who would have just skipped reading it, if it would be plainly stated, edge only. So burying the promotion inside some general useful tips, combined with what awesome plans you might have for edge dev tools - worked apparently quite well for promotion, but not for clarity. Basically, what I am missing, was a paragraph like this: "Microsoft Edge is a browser based on Chromium and we joined the project quite some time ago, fixing hundreds of bugs, making the developer tools themeable, localisable and accessible to assistive technology. All of these changes have been submitted back to the Chromium core, so that Chrome, Brave and all the other browsers based on the same open source project also benefited from that. We work closely with the Chrome team and share a lot of ideas and plans for the future of the Chromium platform." And more importantly: to differentiate what of your "secrets" work everywhere. And what works only with edge. A normal technical blog post would have covered this, as they are usually neutral. You are not neutral (and you do not have to be), but just tell me, why edge is superior and what does it do better. But maybe do so clearly. "If you read the article, you might realise the things we're adding exclusively to the Edge devtools based on user feedback and demands, the focus mode and in-context explanations being one of the efforts, and the deep integration with VS code being another one." So I did read most of the article, but this is my criticism. Finding out what of your features were edge only, was very hard - as it was not plainly stated. And if you read the comments here, that kind of confirms it. Lots of confusion and general web dev tips mixed with edge only stuff. That limits its usefulness.
- chriscodepo8 5y ago
  I updated the article with a preamble and flagged up on each heading which browser supports what.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Thank you. That adds a lot of value in my opinion.

hutzlibu 5y ago

"No, this isn't "a technical PR blog post promoting Windows Edge". It is, as explained in the first sentence, a write-up of a presentation I've given at an event. It is on my personal blog that I've maintained since 2006 and very much my own message." I am pretty sure, private blog posts promoting your day jobs work, are beneficial to your career as well (and I can imagine it is encuraged). And the language used, "We are open to your feedback and many of the recent changes to the tools are direct results from demands from outside developers" sounds definitely official. "I spent about 10 hours on the presentation and this morning about 3 hours turning the slides into this blog post. If my goal were to promote Edge, I could have done a much simpler, shorter and to the point post." And I don't think so, because many people still have a bias against edge, who would have just skipped reading it, if it would be plainly stated, edge only. So burying the promotion inside some general useful tips, combined with what awesome plans you might have for edge dev tools - worked apparently quite well for promotion, but not for clarity. Basically, what I am missing, was a paragraph like this: "Microsoft Edge is a browser based on Chromium and we joined the project quite some time ago, fixing hundreds of bugs, making the developer tools themeable, localisable and accessible to assistive technology. All of these changes have been submitted back to the Chromium core, so that Chrome, Brave and all the other browsers based on the same open source project also benefited from that. We work closely with the Chrome team and share a lot of ideas and plans for the future of the Chromium platform." And more importantly: to differentiate what of your "secrets" work everywhere. And what works only with edge. A normal technical blog post would have covered this, as they are usually neutral. You are not neutral (and you do not have to be), but just tell me, why edge is superior and what does it do better. But maybe do so clearly. "If you read the article, you might realise the things we're adding exclusively to the Edge devtools based on user feedback and demands, the focus mode and in-context explanations being one of the efforts, and the deep integration with VS code being another one." So I did read most of the article, but this is my criticism. Finding out what of your features were edge only, was very hard - as it was not plainly stated. And if you read the comments here, that kind of confirms it. Lots of confusion and general web dev tips mixed with edge only stuff. That limits its usefulness.

chriscodepo8 5y ago
I updated the article with a preamble and flagged up on each heading which browser supports what.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Thank you. That adds a lot of value in my opinion.