Edge Chromium Release on January 2020 | Hacker News Reader

Edge Chromium Release on January 2020

blogs.windows.com

63 pointscyptus79 comments

I have to commend Microsoft on the new Edge logo. It's different enough from the IE and old Edge logo that savvy users will notice the change, but similar enough that the users who "just click on the blue e to go to the internet" probably won't notice the change.

Sure looks a lot like the Firefox logo, if you ask me.

It looks like a fox tail. :)

Or a curling Armadillo

It looks like an e

As someone who read a lot of Slashdot in the 90's... what is the world coming to, when I'm rooting for Microsoft products because I don't want monopolies in browsers and operating systems?

Of course, you may get more bang for your rooting buck if you supported a browser that didn’t use Blink as its rendering engine.

I hear that sentiment a lot on this site, but don't understand it.

Since Blink is available under a very permissive license, why does it matter?

It seems to me that the notion that it is important to have multiple implementations of a standard (and the notion that a formal standard is even necessary) derive from a time when those implementations had proprietary licenses.

Matters because if at least two engines are equally popular (in terms of market share) or close to that, then no one entity will be able to disregard or exert undue influence over the standardisation process of web technologies. They will be forced to work together and presumably if one entity tries to do something evil the other will resist and since they have roughly equal market share, the evil proposal will be dead in water. Diversity of implementations is important as a means of checks and balances.

I continue to fail to understand.

Is it not the case that if the popularity of Edge Chromium becomes close to that of Google Chrome, then your argument will apply just as well, i.e., if either Google or Microsoft tries to do something evil the other will resist?

Why is whether the 2 project descend from the same codebase the decisive factor? I would've thought that the decisive factor is whether the second project is willing to deploy developer (and managerial) resources to the same extent as Google is willing to, i.e., many hundreds of full-time developers, each earning over 100,000 usd per year (and sufficiently competent managers).

True. But there still remain subtle bugs in rendering engines that become 'features.' On the other hand if there are multiple popular engines (deep forks count too), those bugs will be exposed and there will be incentive to fix them and align towards a single standard behaviour.

Mozilla alone is the reason we couldn't have Web SQL and instead we have that stupid piece of shit known as Indexed DB.

So, how did that happen? They had less market share and they still got their way.

https://nolanlawson.com/2014/04/26/web-sql-database-in-memor...

IIRC WebSQL failed more because it was too dependent on Sqlite being the only implementation. So it's not just about the rendering library.

Yes, they were against it for that reason. Microsoft was meh. Google and Apple were for it. So, my point stands I think.

Having only one (very good and stable) implementation for something isn’t a good enough reason to lose such great functionality IMO.

Google de-facto controls the development of Blink, so it goes where Google would like to take it regardless of how “forkable” it is. Having a significant fraction of the web browser market share come from a single engine encourages website developers to program for the monoculture and not to the standard; we’re already seeing this today to some extent and it increases the control of a single company on the web.

>Google de-facto controls the development of Blink

So you believe that Google will continue to de-facto control Blink's development even if Microsoft allocates as much money to the development of Edge Chromium as Google does to that of Chrome (which by the way I'm guessing is closer to 1000 full-time developers and security experts than it is to 100 developers and security experts) and if the management of the development of Edge Chromium is at least as competent as that of Chrome?

I think that a high-performance team of even a hundred would probably be able to match Google’s efforts on Blink; another browser engine is doing this already. But when you’re working on an engine with another company, I think it’s generally difficult to have too much control of the direction the project is going without hard forking, as Google probably realized themselves when Blink was created. Plus I’m not sure how much effort Microsoft is putting into this and whether they’re trying to exert any control on the engine.

It's not so much about the money as it is about the market share. What gives Google so much control is that if they unilaterally make the change, it goes out to all the existing Chrome users - and it becomes the de facto standard simply because they are the majority.

If and when the new Edge can take enough market share, that might change. But I don't think this is happening anytime soon.

Well, supporting Edge will help prevent a developer monopoly (at least two major corps will contribute to Chromium base), but it won't do anything for the engine monopoly and hence the vitiation of vibrant implementations of the web standards (which will be increasingly defined as whatever Chromium implements).

Eh, Microsoft never cared much what you did as long as you did it on their OS or Browser.

It used to be an issue because we wanted to do it on any OS we wished, and it still is in the back of our mind, but now we're facing the much bigger issue of Google/Apple/Whatever not just wanting us to do it on theirs, but also controlling what we can or can't do or say, and suddenly Microsoft's proposition looks much much better.

Google has shipped Manifest v3 in Chrome Canary, which severily limits how extensions are allowed to block and modify requests. What is Microsoft's plan regarding Manifest v3 in Edge Chromium, are they going to deprecate the blocking capabilities of the webRequest API?

here are some more infos about manifest v3 and edge chromium:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Discussions/Manifest-...

and

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were...

as its not a clear statement that they will support manifest v2, they definitely are going to support extensions with the strong ability for blocking ads.

What will happen to manifest v2 extensions once manifest v3 lands in Chrome stable? Will they suddenly stop working or would there be a time period to update them?

Nothing. The plans for the deprecation and removal of support for v2 have not been announced yet, see: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/migrating_to_manifes...

Is it easier to submit extensions to the Microsoft store? Last time I looked it was very closed off to a selection of hand picked extensions. To be fair this was probably over a year ago.

There is no public service yet for submitting extensions: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Discussions/How-do-yo...

Don't think so, at least not yet... on the flip side, about 3/4 of the extensions I tried from the chrome store did work without issue.

Aside: I do like the edge ux slightly better than chrome itself at this point.. still not a daily driver, but very close.

You can use chrome extensions without issue. At least all of the extensions I am using right now came from the chrome store.

Is anyone familiar with embeddability of Chromium-based Edge? MS web engines have been able to be used in shared libraries in the past and I'm hoping a win32/xaml control will be available for use. Even better if they contrib'd back the ability to leverage chrome DLLs.

I believe this is what you're referring to: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/hosting/webv...

Exactly, thanks! I have been using CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) for a while now, but as my needs for cross-platform dwindle (and I highly doubt Edge Chromium has any non-Windows plans), I might consider using this instead.

From the first paragraph:

> On January 15th, we expect to release the “Stable” channel, at which point Microsoft Edge will be generally available to download on Windows and macOS.

I work with the Chromium-based Edge, and yes, we have a new embeddable control that will work in native apps: WebView2 [0]

We currently don't have a .NET wrapper for it yet, but plan to in the coming year.

[0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/hosting/webv...

This is great news for privacy. We can now use Edge when accessing Google services such as Gmail, and Chrome when accessing Microsoft services. That way we can prevent the browser from helping the services track you (such as by logging you into the Browser itself when logging into services such as gmail.)

Or we could just use Firefox, whose tracking protections have been enhanced a lot. Make it even better by adding a bunch of popular extensions (uBlock Origin, NoScript, Privacy Possum, Cookie Auto Delete, Multi Account Containers, Decentraleyes and a few others).

Another alternative for those who use Apple devices would be Safari, which is also strong on tracking protection. But the lack of good extensions on the latest Safari makes it a poorer proposition compared to Firefox.

Since Microsoft owns Github, and since Github leads the development of Electron, and since Microsoft leads the development of one of the most important Electron apps (VS Code), does Microsoft have any plans for increasing the sharing of code and developers between Edge Chromium and Electron?

Alternatively, do they have any plans for eliminating VS Code's dependency on Electron?

I would love it if Microsoft integrated parts of Electron (or at least Chromium Edge) as the new WebBrowser component (or alternative Electron component) in .NET.

This would be such a major game changer for me as someone making apps using the built in WebBrowser component. It would also help reduce the footprint of Electron apps as third-party developers wouldn't have to re-distribute libraries and Windows would be able to manage resources between the different Electron apps more efficiently.

Why don't we have shared electron runtimes?

1) Bundle electron release with app (bandwidth is cheap)

2) Find if that specific release is installed to your user directory.

3) If not copy

4) If yes, use it and don't copy it over.

5) Enforce semver for this of course.

Arch Linux tried to do something like that if this next web page is any indication although whether they succeeded or not I do not know:

https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/56686#issuecommen...

I saw @maryjofoley refer to it as 'Chredge' the other day which gave me a chuckle

Edgium sounds better

Any word on a Linux release?

Edge switching chromium has made me care even less about it.

Isn't that half the point though?

Developers didn't "care" about Edge, so sites break (or are incompatible), and users weren't buying in because the upsides of Edge didn't out-weight the downsides (breakages).

Now nobody has to "care" about Edge-Chrome because if it supports Chrome, it supports Edge-Chrome, and therefore users can use it for a lower perceived cost via the lack of breakages. Then it is just up to Microsoft to add just enough unique features/value-adds on top of Chrome to outweigh the little to no downsides.

Plus Microsoft likely saves money over developing/maintaining their own HTML rendering engine. So the amount of gain they need is much smaller to make it successful.

>Developers didn't "care" about Edge, so sites would break (or be incompatible), and users weren't buying in because the upsides didn't out-weight the downsides.

Was that the actual problem with Edge tho? My problem with Edge was always the UI and lack of customization. Edge was already very standards compliant and didn't require an abundance of special testing like IE

Unfortunately in a browser monoculture being highly standards compliant isn't enough.

Take one of the top posts on HN today, left is a Chromium based browser and right is Edge: https://i.imgur.com/C6WRaAD.png

To be fair it also doesn't look correct in firefox either.

Firefox manages to do decent but the point is that just because a browser is standards compliant doesn't mean websites will look good in it if everyone is only developing for Chrome. It's not that Edge or Firefox are bad.

Maybe but that was a terrible example IMO. It was purposefully built to work with chrome

It's not that it was made to work only in Chrome - it was only tested in Chrome. Whether or not it worked in other browsers didn't matter. That's EXACTLY what I'm trying to point out, it's not a bad example it's literally the example that made me comment in the first place.

The other browsers are very standards compliant, doesn't matter - still broke.

>The other browsers are very standards compliant, doesn't matter - still broke.

because it wasn't made to be standards compliant. It's just an art project someone threw together in 2 hours, not an actual website.

The problem being highlighted is precisely that sites are no longer being made to be standards compliant they are being made to work with Chrome. It's not a question of WHY it doesn't work in other browsers or WHY it was made that way, it's just that things aren't made based on being standards compliant anymore.

Also I recommend checking out the post/page if you think it was just a 2 hour pump and dump css show off. It's multiple pieces made by handwritten LESS on the order of 4,000 lines over hundreds of commits per drawing.

The actual problem was Microsoft gave up too quickly and switched to Chromium. Had they put in the resources (which a company of their size ought have no problem acquiring), they could've made it very competitive with Chrome and Firefox. They just stopped developing new features a long while back and it was essentially in maintenance mode, and then came the death knell announcement that they're abandoning their own browser effort after well over two decades in the area. That must have been among Google's happiest days.

In fairness I did say it was "half" the problem. :)

When I tried to use Edge, I found the same as you, but I also had a lot of sites (particularly "app"-like experiences) break in unusual ways or outright refuse to load. But I am also looking at developer-targeted stuff more than a normal user might so YMMV.

My problems with edge were definitely not with the rendering engine.

I dislike both but maybe they can fork it and de-google it. MS is in a position to care about privacy if they want,at least to lure Chrome users where as Google will always be big-brother.

Chromium based Edge is de-googled. However it is Microsofted and Binged instead.

At least there is now choice which company gets to have all of your data.

Or you could not give either of them your data and use Firefox. I hear it's been around for a little while.

Mozilla’s track record in that regard isn’t stellar either though between episodes like the pocket integration and that forced iRobot marketing promo extension.

I think browsers have become so complicated that maintaining them is so expensive that you need to sell user data one way or another in order to cover the maintenance costs.

I can see a future where Edge is a better Chromium than Chrome is.

You can just use Chromium: https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/download-chromium

But you'll be missing the auto updates.

Chocolatey is good for that

Sadly, no, it's not.

Often enough Chocolatey packages lag behind, sometimes even multiple versions and months.

No it is not. Their Chromium got stale about a month and a half ago.

I had to switch to Brave because of that.

I switched to Brave, as it is also degoogled, but unlike Chromium has automatic updates.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with the chromium web engine. Lot's of open source browsers use it's backend without having to communicate to google whatsoever.

It's fast and it works everywhere

And where Google goes, it goes too. Forking and keeping up is likely too expensive.

> Forking and keeping up is likely too expensive.

There are no limits to the number of open source projects that suggest otherwise.

Those forks of Chromium don't make changes to the core. Things like ungoogled-chromium restrict themselves to smaller changes around the edges (no pun intended).

And somehow it's supposed to be more efficient to totally duplicate the effort like Firefox does?

If anybody is duplicating the effort, it's Chromium/Blink/KHTML or whatever it is now. Firefox pre-dates it all by years. I love how twisted up the history of the web browser has become.

Firefox is mostly funded by Google at this point too. I don't have solutions, but I don't like that the web standards are fully owned by an ad company.

I called for this to happen over 5.5 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7909383

I am thrilled that we're nearly there. I happily favor using apps from companies that don't base their primary existence on gathering and exploiting data about their users.

Is Microsoft now contributing to Chromium development?

Yes, we are contributing to Chromium and have been for most of 2019.

Would you be able to raise the issue of adding an optional dedicated search bar to the new Edge, a la Firefox? The lack of container support is one thing, but using a dedicated search bar with DuckDuckGo bangs is something I just can't give up. It's also a good privacy point, not doing any prefetching.

I've submitted this feedback but I think it's extremely low priority (understandable), and likely outright dismissed as that "old fashioned, useless search bar".

To preemptively answer why I don't just use Firefox, I do, but Firefox on iOS is horrible and I'm fed up, it's a critical feature that the mobile partner works well.

Awesome. As a pure Chromium user, thank you!

It is healthy for key web infrastructure to be driven by multiple large stakeholders.

I like the new logo a lot. But i very much dislike the fact that they seriously crippled the pdf and ebook functionality in the new browser. Especially since they also killed the old pdf Reader app and forced people to use the old Edge browser instead as their ebook and pdf reader.

Epub capability is going away from old Edge. In fact it may already be removed. It can still read PDFs, as can new Edge. Didn't try Epubs with the latter though. I just bear with the UI of Calibre's Ebook Reader... it is raw to say the least at this point, but gets the job done.

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