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Comment by iamleppert | Hacker News Reader

They can start to compare themselves against Chrome when they are at least at feature parity with HTML5, CSS3, Ecmascript6, work cross-platform (not just on Microsoft-owned platforms), and have useable developer tools. I'm not sure I know of any professional web developers that don't view IE/Edge as an afterthought still. We build our applications in Chrome/FF, using Chrome/FF, and occasionally test to make sure the experiences don't totally suck in the others. They are also missing something like Electron, which is used a lot to build native cross-platform apps using web technologies.

Power efficient is nice, but today's mobile phones have much lower hanging fruit -- you could run the CPU for days at 100% if you didn't care about the display/backlight, cellular radio, or GPS. If you don't believe me put your phone in airplane mode and play a video or game on loop with the brightness turned all the way down.

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>when they are at least at feature parity with HTML5, CSS3, Ecmascript6

Edge 14 has 90% on kangax, putting it on par with current Firefox 48.

>work cross-platform (not just on Microsoft-owned platforms)

Valid concern.

>have useable developer tools

Have you tried them recently? They've made massive improvements.

>They are also missing something like Electron

UWP for Windows 8+, HTA for older platforms.

Does Edge implement WebRTC now?

Edge implements ORTC, working on WebRTC 1.0 for interop.

> They are also missing something like Electron, which is used a lot to build native cross-platform apps using web technologies.

While I am not a Windows developer in the slightest, this is sort of missing quite a bit.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/get-started/cre...

https://github.com/Microsoft/node-uwp

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/develop/winjs

Microsoft support using JS to develop desktop applications using web-tech as a first-class citizen.

> They can start to compare themselves against Chrome when they are at least at feature parity with ... We build our applications in Chrome/FF, using Chrome/FF, and occasionally test to make sure the experiences don't totally suck in the others.

And by "don't totally suck" you apparently don't mean battery life? Having my wife switch from Chrome to Safari on her macbook was the best thing that ever happened to her battery [1] - it literally can make the difference between needing a power adapter or getting a full days work done.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/10/8381447/chrome-macbook-bat...

edited for formatting

Why would cross-platform or developer tools be of any relevance when comparing energy efficiency while browsing the web on a Windows laptop? It's possible to use one browser when doing one task, and another browser when doing another. This article suggests that using Edge while consuming content on a battery powered computer would enable you to work longer, if you can do without the things you mentioned. Most people can.

Different strokes for different folks. I'd personally rather have a power efficient browser than one that implements every single experimental W3C spec.

Now, I don't use Windows, but I've switched from Chrome to Safari because it's easier on my aging MacBook battery.

This type of fanboy comments are getting sick here, must be the summer.

This post is not about those subjects, and for the normal user, who uses his laptop unplugged, this is much more important than a browser being available on the Mac and Windows, or developer tools, etc.

I see comments like this a lot on HN. People here think a browser is "complete" with it supports all the corner cases that developers want.

But MS, like Apple with Safari, are developing a browser that is useful for users, not necessarily for developers, at least initially.

None of what you just said negates that Chrome is a notoriously bad battery hog on PC and Mac. Opera, Edge and Safari are better than Firefox and Chrome both.

It's pretty clear you don't like Microsoft, which is fine...but your opinion added nothing to the discussion, all things considered.

" and have useable developer tools." - Let us know how we can improve your experience.

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