Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android: What developers need to know | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android: What developers need to know

blogs.windows.com

40 pointsrobin_reala19 comments

Look at that user-agent string:

    Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 8.0; Pixel XL Build/OPP3.170518.006) 
    AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.0 Mobile Safari/537.36 EdgA/41.1.35.1

I'm curious as to what good reason there is to have the Android user-agent string contain "Mobile Safari"...

The rest of it looks like fairly standard user-agent string antics.

chrome on android also has Mobile Safari in their UA

Ah, okay, that makes more sense.

I guess maybe it was to enable touch on some websites?

The reasoning is probably pretty similar to why all browsers claim to be "Mozilla".

well, they even say it, it's a thinly wrapped webkit on ios (as to be expected given the restrictions) and a thinly wrapped chromium on android

Tldr; Edge on iOS is a WebKit engine wrapper and on Android it’s the Blink engine.

The most interesting part is that they're redefining what "Edge" means. I appreciate the coherent philosophy of working with the OS rather than against it. Edge isn't a particular browser anymore, it's the edge between the OS and Microsoft's vision of web services.

Edge means offloading cloud computation to thick clients.

"The app/OS identifier is chosen so that it does not contain the string “Edge.” This is to avoid triggering any existing UA detection logic that might accidentally decide that these browsers are Microsoft Edge for Windows 10, resulting in a desktop site or something equally confusing."

So this is the reason behind "EdgiOS" and "EdgA"

When will this hell end

when web developers stop relying on user agent strings and start doing feature detection instead.

tldr: > On iOS, we are using the WebKit engine, as provided by iOS in the WKWebView control.

> On Android, we are using the Blink rendering engine from the Chromium browser project.

What on earth could possibly be the point to this? Bookmark sharing between mobile and desktop Edge? Is that what we have to thank for more fragmentation?

I use desktop Edge and welcome bookmark and reading list sharing, since Google refuses to adopt modern Windows standards and integration with their Windows products such as Chrome, resulting in a sub-par Windows experience on modern touch & pen enabled Windows devices and many frustrated users, not to mention worse battery life than needed.

https://np.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/6hozrf/new_surface_...

https://np.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/6o8t9m/what_interne...

Google is notorious for their half-baked Windows support

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835776

Chrome has nothing that's on par with the Edge's built-in "Set Tabs Aside" session manager (even retaining tab history)

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/01/31/micro...

among a few other things https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/microsoft-edge

and more coming in the Fall Creators Update

And since Edge is a modern UI UWP app, it has better fullscreen multi-tasking

https://np.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/65t3tg/so_edge_ha...

I'm not clear what the benefit of using Edge is on these devices if the underlying engine is just Webkit and Blink?

> Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android brings familiar features like your Favorites, Reading List, New Tab Page and Reading View across your PC and phone, so, no matter the device, your browsing goes with you. But what makes Microsoft Edge really stand out is the ability to continue on your PC, which enables you to immediately open the page you’re looking at right on your PC—or save it to work on later.

If you use Edge on your desktop, this would be a good companion app. Similar to Chrome on iOS.

Most likely for upcoming Windows 10's continuity feature

Extensions?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com