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Making the browser less tied to the OS would actually make it "heavier" by pulling technology out of the OS and into the browser. The obvious example is Direct
by bri3d 12y ago
Making the browser less tied to the OS would actually make it "heavier" by pulling technology out of the OS and into the browser.
The obvious example is Direct2D/DirectWrite, the very reason why IE10 doesn't work on Windows XP.
Firefox "solved" this problem by having tons of pluggable OS-specific pieces, resulting in a whole morass of confusion and inconsistency which Microsoft are probably trying to avoid. As an example, many Linux users from 2009 will recall disabling Pango to try to make their Firefox run faster.
- TD-Linux 12y agoFirefox also has to run its CI tests on all sorts of combinations of hardware and operating system: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=mozilla-central https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=mozilla-central By limiting to the newest OS, Microsoft can much more easily do quality control - of course, at the cost of shutting out many users.