4 ms·

Benchmarks are good but the overall experience is what matters the most. I'm really impressed by the startup time of Edge. I type some query in the Cortana sear

by vmarsy 11y ago

Benchmarks are good but the overall experience is what matters the most. I'm really impressed by the startup time of Edge. I type some query in the Cortana search bar and press Enter, it launches Edge extremely fast. So far I really love the performance. However to make it my main browser I'm still waiting for adblocking extensions. I browse with a few tabs opened, one of them start randomly playing an ad video, at least it shows the sound icon on the tab so I know which one to kill. I also noticed a few UI problems: When pressing the back button with "Ctrl" on, it does not open the last page in a new tab. Surprisingly, I use this feature very often on Chrome & Firefox. Sometimes when opening a new tab, the focus is not in the address/search bar, forcing me to click on it (or pressing Tab until I get it)

viggity 11y ago
I don't have edge, but opening last closed tab can also be triggered via ctrl+shift+t. Perhaps they have that shortcut enabled?
- liviu- 11y ago
  He means opening the previous page history-wise in a new tab.
  - gknoy 11y ago
    I didn't even realize that WAS a feature. Neat. I use Control-Shift-t VERY often, but never thought about this one.
    - mahouse 11y ago
      You can also click the back button with the middle mouse button. I use it very often.
      - gcb0 11y ago
        i always pressed back, middle clicked the link i had just clicked ... /facepalm
notNow 11y ago
CTRL + L to highlight the address bar and gain focus. Thanks for the tip.
- lewisl9029 11y ago
  Alt + d also works, and I feel it's more convenient since it can be easily triggered using just the left hand.
  - ygra 11y ago
    Alt+D sadly doesn't work in every language, Ctrl+L is independent of the UI language.
    - gcb0 11y ago
      not on windows for some time, but i recall F4 also does that on all languages. i think ^L just focused the address bar, F4 focused the address bar and already opened the recently typed dropdown.
      - iso8859-1 11y ago
        Don't you mean F6?
        ygra 11y ago
        F6 focuses the address bar (or rather, different "panes" of the application in order; you can use it similarly in Explorer, for example). F4 indeed works in the way they described by focusing the address bar and opening the drop-down.
  - globuous 11y ago
    This is a great example of why I prefer using alt or cmd with shortcuts rather than ctrl. I find altGr+L or cmd+L much more convinient than ctrl+L. Actually, I wouldn't use that shortcut nearly as often if I had to deal with the ctrl key. I hate that pinky stretch. So thanks for that alt+D tip, 'did not know of it ;)
higherpurpose 11y ago
> I type some query in the Cortana search bar and press Enter, it launches Edge extremely fast. Probably something to do with the fact that Edge/Cortana is already loaded at Windows start? So in a way it's a "trick" to starter "faster".
- AaronFriel 11y ago
  Cortana is, but the Edge process is not that I can find. but that's only part of the story. If the libraries utilized by Edge are already loaded by other processes, they benefit from being in memory already. Still, I notice Edge launches faster than Chrome even when I have a separate "Chrome App" open (e.g.: Hangouts). But you have to remember that Chrome essentially re-implements the ChromeOS on top of Windows. Much like how iTunes performance degraded as Apple ported more and more of OS X to Windows just to get it to run, I think Chrome suffers from the same bloat on Windows. I wanted to check though. How much of Chrome is already loaded when Windows starts? How much of Edge? I used VMMap from Sysinternals. "DLLs" includes every library plus the executable. Non-system DLLs excludes anything I found loaded by another process on the system, which included all the standard Windows libraries. Unique DLLs excludes anything loaded by any other process, so at a minimum it's the process itself (see: Chrome.exe). Chrome.exe run as a child and a parent share a handful of code. EdgeCP.exe is the child to Edge.exe, and it shares about the same amount of stuff. The EdgeCP process is lean for Windows, the executable is only 300K. Here's what I found. Process DLLs (#) DLL Size (MiB) Non-System DLLs (#) Non-System DLL Size (MiB) Unique DLLs (#) Unique DLL Size (MiB) Chrome.exe 179 159 3 31.3 1 30.4 Chrome.exe (child) 54 90.6 4 41.3 2 40.3 MicrosoftEdge.exe 131 170 5 15.2 3 9.8 MicrosoftEdgeCP.exe (child) 98 154 3 1.9 1 0.3 The upshot: both Chrome and Edge use a huge list of system libraries. Chrome's application code is larger, but it's probably not just the fact that Edge has an advantage with much more of its code already loaded into memory. The simple answer is probably that Edge starts faster because it doesn't have to run on top of a ported layer of ChromeOS, which adds many layers of abstraction. The Edge process seems to be a very lightweight shim over a rendering engine that works pretty well. I don't know how they'll make that work with extensions or sandboxing, but the size of the executable code and the way it looks reminds me of Servo. (Minimal UI code, stays out of the way of renderer and JS processes.) Finally, I checked to see if Cortana loads many of the same DLLs as Edge. Yes it does. I don't think that's an optimization though, I think that's because Cortana might be using a WebView to display results. (That would help in porting it to iOS and Android, of course.) I haven't disassembled it or inspected its XAML, but I think I'm done messing with Windows 10 for the day.
odonnellryan 11y ago
Two things prevented me from making it my main browser: 1) It did lock up randomly. Not sure why. Seemed to happen often on many different sites. 2) The one or two pixel buffer on the left of the back button! (I should just use keybinds... but you know)

by vmarsy 11y ago

viggity 11y ago

I don't have edge, but opening last closed tab can also be triggered via ctrl+shift+t. Perhaps they have that shortcut enabled?

liviu- 11y ago
He means opening the previous page history-wise in a new tab.
- gknoy 11y ago
  I didn't even realize that WAS a feature. Neat. I use Control-Shift-t VERY often, but never thought about this one.
  - mahouse 11y ago
    You can also click the back button with the middle mouse button. I use it very often.
    - gcb0 11y ago
      i always pressed back, middle clicked the link i had just clicked ... /facepalm

notNow 11y ago

CTRL + L to highlight the address bar and gain focus. Thanks for the tip.

lewisl9029 11y ago
Alt + d also works, and I feel it's more convenient since it can be easily triggered using just the left hand.
- ygra 11y ago
  Alt+D sadly doesn't work in every language, Ctrl+L is independent of the UI language.
  - gcb0 11y ago
    not on windows for some time, but i recall F4 also does that on all languages. i think ^L just focused the address bar, F4 focused the address bar and already opened the recently typed dropdown.
    - iso8859-1 11y ago
      Don't you mean F6?
      - ygra 11y ago
        F6 focuses the address bar (or rather, different "panes" of the application in order; you can use it similarly in Explorer, for example). F4 indeed works in the way they described by focusing the address bar and opening the drop-down.
- globuous 11y ago
  This is a great example of why I prefer using alt or cmd with shortcuts rather than ctrl. I find altGr+L or cmd+L much more convinient than ctrl+L. Actually, I wouldn't use that shortcut nearly as often if I had to deal with the ctrl key. I hate that pinky stretch. So thanks for that alt+D tip, 'did not know of it ;)

higherpurpose 11y ago

> I type some query in the Cortana search bar and press Enter, it launches Edge extremely fast. Probably something to do with the fact that Edge/Cortana is already loaded at Windows start? So in a way it's a "trick" to starter "faster".

AaronFriel 11y ago
Cortana is, but the Edge process is not that I can find. but that's only part of the story. If the libraries utilized by Edge are already loaded by other processes, they benefit from being in memory already. Still, I notice Edge launches faster than Chrome even when I have a separate "Chrome App" open (e.g.: Hangouts). But you have to remember that Chrome essentially re-implements the ChromeOS on top of Windows. Much like how iTunes performance degraded as Apple ported more and more of OS X to Windows just to get it to run, I think Chrome suffers from the same bloat on Windows. I wanted to check though. How much of Chrome is already loaded when Windows starts? How much of Edge? I used VMMap from Sysinternals. "DLLs" includes every library plus the executable. Non-system DLLs excludes anything I found loaded by another process on the system, which included all the standard Windows libraries. Unique DLLs excludes anything loaded by any other process, so at a minimum it's the process itself (see: Chrome.exe). Chrome.exe run as a child and a parent share a handful of code. EdgeCP.exe is the child to Edge.exe, and it shares about the same amount of stuff. The EdgeCP process is lean for Windows, the executable is only 300K. Here's what I found. Process DLLs (#) DLL Size (MiB) Non-System DLLs (#) Non-System DLL Size (MiB) Unique DLLs (#) Unique DLL Size (MiB) Chrome.exe 179 159 3 31.3 1 30.4 Chrome.exe (child) 54 90.6 4 41.3 2 40.3 MicrosoftEdge.exe 131 170 5 15.2 3 9.8 MicrosoftEdgeCP.exe (child) 98 154 3 1.9 1 0.3 The upshot: both Chrome and Edge use a huge list of system libraries. Chrome's application code is larger, but it's probably not just the fact that Edge has an advantage with much more of its code already loaded into memory. The simple answer is probably that Edge starts faster because it doesn't have to run on top of a ported layer of ChromeOS, which adds many layers of abstraction. The Edge process seems to be a very lightweight shim over a rendering engine that works pretty well. I don't know how they'll make that work with extensions or sandboxing, but the size of the executable code and the way it looks reminds me of Servo. (Minimal UI code, stays out of the way of renderer and JS processes.) Finally, I checked to see if Cortana loads many of the same DLLs as Edge. Yes it does. I don't think that's an optimization though, I think that's because Cortana might be using a WebView to display results. (That would help in porting it to iOS and Android, of course.) I haven't disassembled it or inspected its XAML, but I think I'm done messing with Windows 10 for the day.

odonnellryan 11y ago

Two things prevented me from making it my main browser: 1) It did lock up randomly. Not sure why. Seemed to happen often on many different sites. 2) The one or two pixel buffer on the left of the back button! (I should just use keybinds... but you know)