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Comment by Sephr | Hacker News Reader

It wouldn't surprise me if there is an internal conflict at Microsoft about allowing Edge extensions.

Back when Windows 10 came out, Cortana opened Bing searches in your default browser. Someone made a Bing2Google extension for Chrome, and Microsoft responded by making Cortana only open Bing searches in Edge.

Now that Edge supports extensions, I can make a Bing2Google extension for Edge, but Microsoft will never accept it. If I make a Bing2Google userscript for Tampermonkey[1], Microsoft will probably take down Tampermonkey eventually once they learn about the userscript. There is already a very simple userscript available[2] that you can install right now to get this "banned" functionality in Edge.

Edge's extension ecosystem is a walled garden. When it comes to browsers, I prefer freedom over performance and efficiency. This is why I'm still not switching to Edge. I'll give Edge another chance if/when they open up their extension platform to everyone. For now, it's useless without Microsoft approval.

I use Tampermonkey for some userscripts on other sites and I don't feel comfortable relying on Microsoft's goodwill to not remove this extension.

[1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/tampermonkey/9nblggh...

[2]: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/11308-bing-to-google/code

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> Edge's extension ecosystem is a walled garden. When it comes to browsers, I prefer freedom over performance and efficiency. This is why I'm still not switching to Edge.

That's one reason, I guess. My reason for not using Edge is that Edge still, after all this time, can't save files from the internet. That's, like, the second thing that I expect a web browser to be able to do after looking at files from the internet.

( You can test this at home. Go to visit some arbitrary text file in Edge. Let's say https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Microsoft/vscode/master/LI... for example. Now save it. File menu? Nope. Ctrl+S? Nope. Right-click? Nope. )

I know it's not what you're looking for, but there is built in functionality to save a raw text file directly from Edge. You can click the Make a Web Note button to save it to OneNote. This, of course, requires that you actually use OneNote, which is not ideal for everyone.

I can't tell if your comment is serious or sarcastic.

Well I did say it wasn't what he was looking for. :-)

In all seriousness, it is definitely a glaring omission in Edge. Though, I can see the OneNote integration being useful on a tablet.

Just right-click the link and choose save target as. Saying that it can't save files from the internet is a bit exaggerated.

Link? What link? Did I say there was a link? I just gave you a URL. I said to go visit it. Once you're there, figure out how to save it.

(props to morganvachon for figuring out that you can use OneNote, but omg)

Just tried this on my phone (Lumia 950) I never even noticed this was an issue until now. I tend to not download files on my phone and my pc has Linux.

Only option is to highlight it and save it using another program.

There is a link right in your comment, right click it to download the text file. There is usually a link to whatever file you want to download.

> There is a link right in your comment, right click it to download the text file

Go to the file. Then try to save it. Don't argue with a scenario that I'm not talking about.

HN adds that link, but not all links come from HN. I know this is asking a lot, but, maybe, just for the sake of argument, try to pretend like you were given the URL somewhere else that doesn't automatically hyperlink and that I didn't just make this up. Hell, pretend that you got it on a piece of paper and actually had to type it in like a caveman. Now save it.

> There is usually a link to whatever file you want to download.

If I understand correctly, what you're saying is that in some cases you just cannot save the file, and that in all other cases you just cannot save the file while looking at the file without knowing that you need to go...somewhere nebulously else? That's what I said too. I'm glad we're on the same page now.

You're right, there is no point in arguing this. You gave an example of a file that was "impossible" to download with Edge and I told you how to do it. If you really need to type in the URL yourself, just type in into Notepad's open file dialog and save it from there.

It doesn't seem to be possible to download a file you already have open in Edge that you have no link to, but how often does that happen, really? I'm sure you can come up with lots of other scenarios that you can't do with Edge either, or Chrome.

> You gave an example of a file that was "impossible" to download with Edge and I told you how to do it.

You told how to download something referenced by a hyperlink within the browser, a problem that I did not say I had. We call that moving the goalposts. It's very frustrating and I wish you would stop.

> If you really need to type in the URL yourself, just type in into Notepad's open file dialog and save it from there.

I 100% agree that the solution to a web browser not being able to do the 2nd most important function of a web browser is to use a different program. Suggesting Notepad instead of a more capable browser seems a tad strange though.

> but how often does that happen, really?

Why bend so far backwards to try to poke holes in my problem? Are you responsible for the decision to disallow saving documents? If I don't use Edge does your favorite nephew lose a toe? If you want to use Edge that's fine. Knock yourself out. I won't, and I gave my reason why.

Lack of save in Edge seems especially bizarre in view of IE's past. There were years when I used copy URLs from another browser to IE just to save them in mhtml (before extensions provided that on other browsers).

I can't remember for sure the usecase or which specific browser, but I remember sometime in the 90s (whatever IE W95 or 98 had? Possible Netscape?) having to create a barebone .html with just the href and opening that to have a link to right click.

I think it actually was specifically to save files, before content types, and saving binaries as raw text was unreliable at best.

I didn't expect the same to be true 20 years later.

I guess someone needs to write an extension for that.

BOOM!!

So I just spent the past few hours learning how and then trying...

msSaveOrOpenBlob currently silently fails in Edge extension content scripts.

My first workaround of creating an invisible objectURL download link from the document body text (trying to not re-download the file) and then programatically clicking it only partially works, because Edge currently ignores the download attribute value on links so you can't set the default file name and you get a disgusting GUID as the default filename instead. This is sadly the best option so far.

My second workaround of re-transferring the file using the document URL directly, again with injecting a hidden automatically clicked <a> tag, also only partially works. This is in fact worse than the first workaround, because it doesn't even prompt to save or choose a file name. It just pops the file open in Notepad with the right file name but the wrong file extension, changing, for instance, "constants.js" to "constants.txt".

And now I'm tired of this exercise. Back to just not caring about Edge.

Edge's right-click menu is a joke. It has to be a joke, right? Every so often I'll decide get my feet wet in Edge, maybe login to a few websites, and then I hit right click and it's right back to Chrome/Firefox.

> Someone made a Bing2Google extension for Chrome ... Edge's extension ecosystem is a walled garden. When it comes to browsers, I prefer freedom over performance and efficiency.

Maybe I'm reading your comment wrong, but to me it seems like 1. you use Google Chrome and 2. Google search.

If so, how are these not walled gardens? How do these promote freedom? I'm not sure I see how those are any better.

If I misread your comment and you use actual free software for browsing the internet (which leaves you at Firefox and seemingly only Firefox), please have me and my comment excused :)

The difference here is that the user chose to walk into those gardens, and can walk out at any time (although I don't use Chrome - is it possible to change the search client?). It's not like Edge forcing them to use Bing.

But nobody is forcing them to use Edge or Bing anymore than they were forced to use Goolge (which forces Google search on you).

There's absolutely nothing to these claims.

Cortana will only open links in Edge, so it is forced.

See my comment below...

Cortana forces both Edge and Bing on you.

You're not forced to use Cortana, but it's an integrated AI-based assistant, like Google Now or Siri. Bing provides the back end and stores personalization info for cross-platform use.

You can use your browser of choice in Windows 10, and your search engine of choice. Nothing forces you to use either Edge or Bing.

If you choose to use Cortana then you are asking Microsoft to deliver a different type of service, which it does.

Apple and Google control their own back-end systems in exactly the same way, and Siri also "forces" you to use Bing (among other things) without asking or telling you.

Yeah, Chrome ships with 12 search engines that you can pick from the settings menu (in the US version at least), and you can add custom ones too.

QUOTED

You can change the default search engine to any site that uses OpenSearch technology. In Microsoft Edge, first go to the website of the search engine you want. Then, select More actions (...) > Settings, scroll down, select View advanced settings, scroll down again, and then select Change search engine. Select your search engine's website in the list, and then select Set as default. If you don't see your search engine in the list, make sure that you've visited the search engine's website in Microsoft Edge, and that your search engine uses OpenSearch technology.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/instantanswers/390c87f8-...

That is not the question I was replying to.

Why would I need such "Bing2Google" extension if I can set Google as default search provider already?

Because Cortana, the chatbot thing, doesn't use your search default.

I've been using win10 for a while now, love it, never used contara.

I've been using win10 since it came out, despise it, never used the holographic blue lady.

Windows 10 is the best version of Windows to date. What do you despise about it.

1. I bought a laptop with Windows 10 with secure boot that cannot be disabled. I am stuck with it. FOREVER.

2. Forced updates and forced spying that auto-turns-on after updates

3. Cannot turn off updates

4. AntimalwareServiceExecutable uses 50% of my CPU constantly. With 2 cores at 2.2 GHz, that's A LOT.

5. Crashes due to driver issues that Windows installs itself from Windows Update

6. BSODs from drivers from WU

7. More spying

8. Explorer crashes constantly and sometimes the whole computer freezes and I have to restart

Please note that this happens on multiple new and old computers, so don't give me the "oh it's a hardware issue" bullshit, my best friend who works as a PC service technician also experiences the same complaints from many people.

I had a taste of the update madness just this evening; I was planning to use my wife's laptop to enjoy my screen time in the same room with her while she was reading. We hadn't used the laptop in a few months, so of course the first thing it did when I turned it on was try to catch up on updates. Three hours later, she's done with her book and I'm still at 37%. It literally just finished, she's asleep and I'm typing this as quietly as possible in the dark. Very, very frustrating.

I simply don't understand why Microsoft can't do what Linux and the BSDs (including macOS) have been doing for years; no matter how big the update, it can be done in the background and only requires one quick restart to complete.

I agree, especially for seldom-used Windows machines. The updates take so long, it's hard to imagine what they could be doing.

That said, Windows actually has real file locks so it can't update libraries and executables that are in use, unlike Linux. And I have recently noticed Mac OS updates taking a long time at bootup as well, the last one took 15 minutes, I assume because of System Integrity Protection--granted it's very rare unlike with Windows.

My experience with windows 10 has been pretty awesome. And a lot of the points on your list (which is only about 4 points long when eliminating dramatic duplication) come down to being an informed consumer. Secure boot, for example, might be an impediment for you, but I'd rather my grandma's laptop wasn't clandestinely red-pilled with a hypervisor by malware.

I agree with you. But people need to understand that just because someone uses the computer for more than just a browser (I'm not judging those people like my (grand)parents) doesn't mean they have to pay large amounts of money and waste lots of time just to get a computer like it was 5-10 years ago. I want a $200 laptop that I can buy that will let me do with it whatever I want. My salary from freelancing is only about $300/mo so I can't afford a $1000 Dell XPS 13 or something like that, and old Thinkpads are slow and noisy and the batteries don't last long... I was satisfied with a MacBook Air but my father got sick and I had to sell it, and that's why I mainly bought the horrible glorified tablet with a Atom Z3735F CPU.

Oh, and I forgot, my mom hates Windows 10 because Flash that she uses to play some games crashes because the display driver it automatically installed for an AMD E1-2100 APU is bad and incompatible. Meanwhile Windows 7 works fine, so that's what I installed for her. My grandparents share a Ubuntu 12.04 which I will upgrade to 14.04 sometime next year, but that's only because their computer can barely run XP and I don't want XP anywhere on my network...

Why not get a T420 then? I've been picking them up locally for sub-$100 and they'll blow an E1-2100 or a Z3735F out of the water any day.

He says old ThinkPads are slow and noisy. For reference though, my second hand w510 is an i7/16B RAM, practically silent and plenty fast. It cost me €200. Yeah the battery life is not great, even with a new battery it lasts maybe 2 hours with heavy usage. Hard to beat the power to price ratio though

I can understand the impression, but having owned similar chips to what he described, at that price/performance point you are gonna get within 20min of the battery life of either of those chips with a good condition used Thinkpad.

I guess it depends on which one you buy. I can't get 3 hours out of a new battery for the w510, but the HP Spectre x360 I have for work can go the best part of a day without charging

@trome I don't know, I usually buy new hardware, never thought of that, and I find it bulky, I like to carry a 11.6" in my backpack everywhere and a Lenovo 100s is so light. I don't know really, it's my fault anyways...

But no one is going to red-pill your grandma's laptop. They're going to own it the old fashioned way with userspace malware that still steals her bank password.

Yeah. Well, maybe having AntimalwareServiceExecutable use 50% of the 2.2GHz 2 core CPU constantly will help with that? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know. I mostly use Linux. But when I do have to use windows, I like windows 10.

> I bought a laptop with Windows 10 with secure boot that cannot be disabled. I am stuck with it. FOREVER.

I guess someone missed the news 5 or so years ago that Linux supports secure boot perfectly well.

It's an open spec any anyone is free to implement it. And Linux devs did! Amazing, eh?

Looking at your comment, I guess this is how life looks for the people who read and spread FUD on the internet without never actually checking out any of the claims them selves.

You've locked yourself down. And secure boot had nothing to do with it. Interesting eh?

I'm writing Ubuntu 16.10 to a USB now. Will report back if it works and how well it works. Thanks.

Debian works too, just FYI.

Don't like it, lack of proprietary drivers is a no-go for me and my cheap hardware.

The non-free repository is well maintained, it is not as if Debian is Trisquel or something, the Debian Developers are reasonable people.

I understand. I used to use Debian on an old Radeon card in 2009 on my first computer (was 9 yrs old at the time, got a family friend to install Debian Lenny for me). Used it up to Wheezy. Then I got new hardware, Debian wouldn't recognize the WiFi card and I kind of switched to Ubuntu. Then got other new hardware, Linux wouldn't work, shitty AMD APUs... I'm right now installing Ubuntu 16.10 on a new model netbook and it works pretty well, everything was recognized, and I'm typing this on it. It's very smooth and fast, but on an E1-2100 AMD APU it's extremely stuttering and slow and unreliable and crashing. And that's both with FOSS and Closed Source drivers.

Ha Ha it won't boot, because of SecureBoot which cannot be disabled without disabling UEFI which causes a delay of 10 seconds on power up. Stupid computers ugh!

You seem like a prime target for this article here:

https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/25/uefi-boot-how-does-...

Are you I/O limited perchance? I have a really low end x100e, and even that doesn't stutter. Your E1-2100 should be head and shoulders above it performance wise, hopefully it is less of a space heater too (tho the x100e gets 5hrs despite that)!

No, the laptop has an SSD.

You forgot to mention: ads inside the OS. Preinstalled crapware.

>1. I bought a laptop with Windows 10 with secure boot that cannot be disabled. I am stuck with it. FOREVER.

I really doubt this is the case. Microsoft actually mandated that all OEMs provide a method to disable Secure Boot and allow for loading in arbitrary, user-defined keys as part of the Windows certification process.

As for the rest of it though it sounds spot on.

I just checked, You're right. I'm sorry, I didn't look at it. Basically to disable SecureBoot you must disable UEFI. SecureBoot can't be changed but boot mode can and it's either UEFI or Legacy. UEFI is 32bit so it's somewhat of an issue, but not that big of a deal, Ubuntu handles it.

What laptop? That still wouldn't meet Microsoft's requirements for Windows certification.

O&O windows 10 shudup. Google it. You can disable a lot of stuff with that.

I simply don't understand how some people people (Such as you) are having so many issues. I'm not denying you have, but I've upgraded upwards of 10 PCs with hardware all the Way from Summer 2016 to Early 2008/2007, and except on the truly geriatric ex-XP hardware, I've had barely any issues. One Acer Laptop has a crashy sound driver, but apart from that...

Glad to hear someone else who shares my opinion. It's a great OS

> never used the holographic blue lady.

Cortana through the ages: https://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Cortana#Appearance

Cortana is partly a cloud-based AI service, which is somewhat like Siri and Google Now, and it works with Bing.

Does Siri give you any choice about using Safari? Does Google Now give you any choice about using Chrome?

With the exception of Siri on iOS, yes, they do. I don't think any of them let you choose the search provider.

OK, how do I use Google Now in Firefox or Edge on Windows?

Google Now, Cortana, and Siri are operating system features. Chrome on Windows has Google voice search, but that isn't the same thing.

To force Cortana's web searches to go through Google.

Let's not pretend Google Chrome is somehow less of a walled garden. You can only install extensions from their store, and yes, they've removed extensions for business reasons before.

The difference is that the extension platform itself is open. I can compile Chromium and create/install/redistribute extensions all without ever asking for Google's permission, and still have an acceptable user experience on non-Windows platforms. Afaik, Edge doesn't allow easy extension installation prompts from third party websites.

Yes, redistributing extensions for Windows Chrome users (not Windows Chromium) does require the Chrome Web Store. This is unfortunate, but at least Google has a better track record when it comes to banning extensions that modify their things on their own web properties.

Compiling UWP apps such as Chrome extensions doesn't "require Microsoft's permission" either and you can sideload them as well.

However, as you point out, Google prohibits side loading for the majority of real Chrome installs.

The time since I last found a malicious extension in the Chrome Web Store is five days[0]. They're terrible at policing this, which is a point I've actively complained about for years.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13111884

You can install a Chrome extension manually. The store is convenient but not required.

If you enable Developer Mode and load unpacked extensions on Windows, it complains about it every time you start Chrome. I'd call that a (major) inconvenience.

Does it? I have never experienced this.

It does. You can pay 5 bucks to get a dev account on the play store and then upload your extension there (unlisted if you want), and install it from there, and you won't get the nag popup

Yeah it shows a tiny little balloon-tip style thing over the hamburger menu.

I was going to say it's not a big deal but I quite distinctly remember it being the entire reason I switched to Vivaldi instead of Chrome. Full extension store compatibility with none of the nagging, and all the other cool shit it does is just a bonus at this point.

> yes, they've removed extensions for business reasons before

Interesting, which ones?

I tried searching for some examples of removed extensions, so far I've only found some awful stuff like this:

http://fortune.com/2016/06/03/google-chrome-jews/

It's an ad company that allows ad blockers, so it seems at most like a small chain-link fence garden.

YouTube downloaders.

And YouTube centre

No, you can "sideload" extensions.

Same is possible in Edge as far as I know.

You can do the same for Windows. People bring their religions in here without facts and end up at the top of threads. The parent post is baseless and wrong.

> People bring their religions in here without facts and end up at the top of threads

Only popular religions ;)

I agree. I pointed out that your statement "You can only install extensions from their store" is incorrect for Chrome. Thank you for adding information about Edge.

Ah, haha, yeah, that's fair. I usually disregard things that are "heavily discouraged" behind developer modes and checkboxes buried deep in menus.

Enabling local extension install in Chrome is a single checkbox at the top of chrome://extensions -- the same place where you manage the rest of your extensions. But point taken.

It can also be problematic if you want to author extensions on it... Google requires a $5 payment to be able to publish extensions. Reasonable, but what if you have issues making the payment? My 100% valid CC gets rejected though it obviously works everywhere else. Now, try to get support from Google for that...

I doubt they'd kill tampermonkey for that. Switching their own app to use edge is a soft response, taking down a general extension because it might be used for that would be very hostile, and MS are not in the business of being openly hostile to developers of software for their platform

It's also worth pointing out they allowed an Evernote extension, even though its a direct competitor to OneNote

I don't think that they care about tampermonkey/greasemonkey... a very small minority would be using it...

I am old enough to remember that Chrome didn't really take off until Google released an extension framework with many popularly supported extensions. There's likely a lot of room in the browser market for custom browsers curated and managed by trusted third parties but my sense is that a) given their history, people wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable having Microsoft fill that role and b) given their size, Microsoft wants Edge to compete directly with Chrome and Firefox for absolute majority market share, rather than chase single digit % niche markets (which would be a very exciting business for almost anyone else).

Interesting. My memory is probably hazy, but for me, Chrome took off because the choices at the time were IE and Firefox, which used to be an insane memory hog.

That was Opera. Chrome took off because it was and is advertised on any Google property.

Chrome took off because it had the ability to not take 15 minutes to cold boot during the era when firefox did.

I've been using Firefox continuously as my only browser since it was in beta and called Phoenix. This has never been even remotely true, at least on my experience.

To carry on with your anecdotal evidence, I'm going to disagree and say that yes, there was a time where firefox was just dog slow to open - on all 3 of the PCs I owned at the time, two using only 2-3 extensions and one using none. If there wasn't, I never would have switched to chrome.

IE was pretty bad but Firefox was decent. I interfaced a bit with the early Chrome team. Better performance was a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. Chrome was the fastest browser for at least six months but many early adopters wouldn't touch it without an extension framework. Certain extensions like Firebug had become extremely popular with developers by then. Google wanted these developers as early adopters. Once the extension framework was released then everybody hopped on the Chrome train (except for the Firefox purists), and Google proceeded to leverage their O&O sites (and spend billions of additional dollars) to pump distribution. Later on the extension frameworks (for all browsers) became riddled with malware and adware and are still a major source of vulnerability today.

Great point about Firebug. I can definitely remember using Chrome for pleasure and Firefox for work for a time.

I find it odd you mention freedom but run Windows. Bit of a conflict there, no?

I don't see much of a conflict. Windows doesn't abnormally restrict users' ability to do many things.

It abnormally restricts my ability to write software.

Does it abnormally restrict your ability to write software, or to publish software?

I imagine Windows doesn't do much to stand between you and writing your own code for personal use.

Both. I write middleware for games for fun, which is a kind of middle ground between game programming and systems programming. The Windows APIs are horrible compared to their Unix counterparts.

Care to explain? Oh you mean some APIs don't look the way you want, not that microsoft actively does something to stop you.

I feel like they secretly are.

It does things that are not in your best interest. Like spying on you and serving you ads.

Why don't you use an OS that you don't have to fight against?

Can I have your phone number so I can call and fight you personally instead every time I want to play a video game that didn't get a FreedomOS release?

It's amazing how Microsoft locks down every one of their products, from Edge to Cortana to Xbox, and then complains night & day when other companies do it.

I believe when they were astroturfing against Google, they also added a search experience to Xbox -- one that defaulted to Bing & one that you could not change to anything but Bing.

I don't consider Windows locked down.

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