Microsoft forcing Edge browser webview on Outlook for Android app users | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft forcing Edge browser webview on Outlook for Android app users

outlook.uservoice.com

42 pointsalok-g38 comments

I don't really care that it's Edge they're using. But I do really object to applications that open links internally rather than in my browser. Where my cookies and bookmarks and passwords are. And I'm already logged in to the sites I use most.

They can do this in a way that preserves your cookies, bookmarks etc by using the custom tabs API and it'll even respect your browser choice (e.g. it works with Firefox).

Particularly annoyingly, my password manager (Lastpass) stops working, as it thinks the website context is a Microsoft domain, so suggests irrelevant usernames/passwords.

To be fair the same happens with any app that does this (e.g. LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook), so maybe it's Lastpass's bug. But I get zero value from the captured webview, so on balance I'd strongly prefer if app developers stopped doing this.

Although it's annoying for logins, I really like that LinkedIn doesn't seem to retain cookie state in its in-app browser.

It's a bit like using a private browsing window. Every time I go to something from LinkedIn, it asks me for permission to hold cookies all over again, and this gives me confidence that the site isn't getting any cookies, and my logged in identity on Google (in my regular browser) isn't being tracked by the visited site.

It was annoying when I wanted to follow links to my regular browser, until I noticed that from the WebView there's a way to "share" to another browser (and also an "open in Firefox Focus"), and I can take it forward from there if I want.

Microsoft is so aggressive pushing edge. Not just at consumers but at work as well. Personally I don't see the benefit since it's become a Chrome clone, why not use the real Chrome if you want it. Though I'm a Firefox person.

But for me personally MS has proven not being able to handle a browser monopoly with IE which became stale when they reached that goal. I don't want to support them getting there again.

Because it uses the Chrome rendering engine alongside Windows specific features.

It is much more than just a Chrome clone.

One might even say they've ... embraced & extended it?

A rare special case where even the extinguish part is welcome

How so? Chromium is the single most important reason Linux is now a viable desktop option, with even all of the M$ Office apps, Outlook etc. working as PWAs. Not to speak of i.e. Discord, WhatsApp, Slack, Teams ...

The Web is the reason why Linux desktop doesn't matter at all, as proven by ChromeOS. Android and WebOS.

Whatever kernel is running under the browser is meaningless to userspace.

Hence why many just get whatever Electron apps one throws at them.

Yeah, but that's awesome! The end user has the free choice of what OS they want to use. What's the problem with that?

2% market share. The end user doesn't care.

Chromium is cool, Google Chrome is not. However yes, I would like healthy competition, not MS to take over completely.

Arent they all available using firefox? Ffox/ linux Is my daily driver and I never find it too cumbersome to use those sites

Not necessarily. Any monopoly-like situation is unhealthy, no matter who controls the market (remember when Firefox was the king? The apparance of Chrome was a breath of fresh air). What we need is real diversity and power balance.

I agree! Having more than one (or two, if we include WebKit - but Blink is a fork of it, so ...) relevant browser engines would be great. But as it stands right now, the fact that I can build apps that have all capabilities that the end user would expect (push notifications, background sync, "Add to homescreen", offline capabilities) in the most popular browser out there and the fact that the latter is FLOSS (Chromium - obviously Chrome is not) means that IMHO we are in a much better place than a few years ago when web dev meant JQuery and IE8 polyfills. And that shows - I can now use only a browser, independent of the host OS, to do all of my days work (using Theia/VSCode in the browser is a joy) and even entertainment (remember when a proprietary OS and a proprietary native app was required to stream video?) completely from a free/libre and open source software. If that means that I have to accept a libre browser monopoly for now than that's much better than having to accept a proprietary host OS IMHO.

Firefox was never “the king”, you clearly live in a bubble. I don’t think it ever even reached 40% of the market, businesses were still eating whatever Microsoft told them they should eat.

> The appearance of Chrome was a breath of fresh air

Not really. The appearance of Safari was a game changer, and only because Apple was basically forced to give WebKit/KHTML back to the community thanks to the LGPL. Webkit triggered the wave of embedding that made its engine a de-facto standard in development circlets, so that it was the obvious choice by the time Google had to pick one for strategic reasons.

There is an alternative timeline where KDE just used BSD, Apple just took their code and kept it closed, and Chrome never happened.

An argument to use Edge: because it's not Google. That's enough for me. Anything that brings competition to any Google owned property is something good in my humble opinion.

I've found Ungoogled Chromium very satisfying lately. https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

You are effectively still supporting the Chrome monoculture. It’s like people “fighting capitalism” while wearing 2nd-hand Nikes: somebody already paid for those Nikes, and you still really want to show you have Nikes, reinforcing the perception of Nike as a valuable and powerful brand people should wear.

The only real alternative is Firefox.

You're talking about a different problem.

I would support virtually any company competing with Microsoft in the OS space, not because I'm afraid of a Windows monoculture but because I'm afraid of the effect and power monopolies can have. Let's say Microsoft open source Windows' kernel (now that would be interesting!), and a new company comes with their own custom OS built on top of it, I would definitely support them, even though the technology is the same.

Would it be better if there would be a different, new system, based on new technology? Perhaps, from a technology point of view at least, but that's a completely different topic.

Nobody that builds on technology owned or controlled by somebody else is independent in practice. Google makes choices in Chromium development that will condition the market even when the final browser is not Chrome.

Say google wants to "accidentally" sabotage GMail for Firefox users, as they've done in the past. They make a slight change, and it will just silently percolate to all Chromium clones, who will never have enough manpower or money to scrutinize all updates and understand what they are for (that is the whole point of reusing someone else's code).

So no, it's not a different problem. If your tech depends on someone else's tech, you are still commercially and strategically helping the parent company. I know this sounds annoying and preachy, I wish I could state it in more appealing terms, but it's the unvarnished truth.

> Let's say Microsoft open source Windows' kernel

The point of building an "alternative" on top of this codebase would be to have compatibility with other Windows software. Hard forks rarely ever succeed even in opensource, let alone when the parent group of developers is still going strong; so "altOS" would have to stay close to the Windows standards. MS could still steer the market by tweaking APIs, and your "alternative" build would have no choice but to follow suit. And of course, desktop developers would still target Windows and take the fact that it also runs on "altOS" as a bonus. So, effectively, you'd still be aiding the MS monopoly stay in place.

This is what all those Chromium derivatives (Vivaldi, Brave, Ungoogled, etc) effectively do: they maintain Chrome's entrenchment and let Google stay in control of web standards.

I understand your point of view. I use Firefox exclusively in private. But I need to support Chrome in development, and Ungoogled Chromium is a good alternative for me - it's neither Google nor Microsoft. Most of us do live in capitalist societies, and therefore, I think, we have no other choice than to have to use it's tools to try to improve them.

Thanks for sharing Ungoogled, I didn’t know about it

if you office 365 at work, the browser login is shared with office 365 and the home page can be set to a page that integrates with your onedrive/teams/groups/sharepoint files.

On a side note, it is somewhat insane to me, that the new edge limits syncing of work account info to enterprise only customers, and non office 365 users.

If they would allow sync functions for all tiers, it would be really hard to advocate chrome over edge.

other than their complete asshole force update method, which is a different topic, but insanely frustrating.

The do it in tiers they choose, so random people across the company are getting it at different time. Even if it is undo, and rolled back, they will redo the upgrade the next time updates are done. Because of this, there is a growing amount of bad blood against the new edge.

And let us not forget the stupid fucking name, having a conversation and researching shit, "new edge", "old edge", "chrome edge." Have the stones to rebrand when you make a significant product change.

To play the devil's advocate here. There are many app that have the option for opening link in them (facebook, twitter, reddit, the HN client Materialistic...). The reason for that I'm guessing is that when you are in the "reading mode" which can be the case for links in email, you don't want to go to another app an back, you just want to read/skim the thing and go back to your master view with the rest of the emails. In addition, actually think this is a good thing to shield user from tracking and unintended authorization. You're just one more touch away if you really need to be logged in some services.

I wish there was a way to disable "WOULD YOU RATHER USE THE APP OR CONTINUE IN YOUR BROWSER" popup forever. It's a webpage. I'm going to open it like a webpage

I think a good part of the reason is so Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Metiralistic can continue to track the user.

I want everything to open in Firefox on Android, so uBlock etc can operate as normal. I don't know how it works, but often pressing "back" takes me back to my email etc, leaving other open Firefox tabs as they were.

I don't think Materialistic uses it to track users.

The browser tab on the side, is quite handy for switching between article and comments.

It's just a good feature, and they don't roll their own Webview either. It's open source too: https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic

> you don't want to go to another app and back

Why would the user care?

Switching to your default browser on mobile is usually instantaneous. I.e. there's no downside compared to launching a webview.

there is an annoying animation, hardly instantaneous

Well I've never really noticed so it can't be that annoying.

another example is master detail horizontal layout, more convenient than constantly switching back and forth between the app and a browser.

Gmail does the same on iOS. And they also lie about it.

On iOS, it prompts if you want to either download Chrome, or use Safari. If you tap safari, it doesn't open safari, but a webview inside Gmail.

Note that, while the rendering engine is the same, an app can't spy on my navigation on safari, but it _can_ on a webview it spawned.

Gmail on iOS uses SFSafariViewController, which runs in a separate process from Gmail.app and can’t be interacted with, unlike WKWebview.

My guess is that they ran metrics and decided that keeping users in the Gmail app window led to longer engagement than opening Safari..

The rendering engine of a webview is irrelevant to the end user, Edge is just as capable.

What I hate is that all of these apps unnecessarily wrap a web view at all.

I’m surprised that Apple allows Google and Facebook to break the native browser experience for no good reason. I hope Apple starts blocking this and Android follows suit.

Here are excerpts from my communication with support on the issue. The paragraphs starting with >> are written by me.

>> How to open links in external default browser directly

>> Details: For the last few updates, when I click links in an email, Outlook app first opens the links in an embedded browser, which then has a menu command to open in (an external) browser. I would like to open in the default browser directly like it used to be before. Thanks.

Due to the new Edge Webview feature that is rolling out, links open in the app, but we are listening to your feedback! Feel free to help us make Outlook better by suggesting it as a feature if you think that would be a nice addition. Just go to Settings -> Help and Feedback -> Suggest a Feature. Developments are made based on the statistics generated by the users in this area, so don't forget to voice your wishes there! Thanks! Bye!

>> Edge webview may be rolling out, but that is no reason for Microsoft to impose Edge browser onto users. My preferred choice for browser is not Edge.

>> Why should this thing even be under suggest a feature? I am not asking for a feature. I am asking what Microsoft is imposing as a 'feature' onto the users to be taken out.

>> https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/293346-outlook-for-andr...

>> https://www.reddit.com/r/Outlook/comments/hndgxn/outlook_for...

>> I guess it's getting into the old habits, hmm!

Sincere apologies for any inconvenience this problem has caused you. At the moment, all the links will open in the "Edge Browser" an inbuilt browser of the Outlook Mobile app. To view the links on your default web browser you need to tap on "3 Dots" at the bottom and tap on "Open in my browser" However, I believe this is a great suggestion hence I do recommend that you suggest this feature on the direct channel which directly reviewed by the development team. Developments are made based on the statistics generated by the users in this area, so don't forget to voice your wishes there! Just tap the App Settings Help and Feedback Suggest a Feature page. Vote it up!

We might not have all the features you are looking for but we are getting there slowly.

>> No, Outlook for Android was already opening links in the browser of my choice. It's getting 'away' from that. Just because Edge browser is rolling out!

That has been changed, but we may have the feature back per users' requests!

What if Edge isn’t installed? Or does the the Outlook app include Edge in the app itself just for that webview?

The Outlook app is 60 MB, Edge is 70 MB.

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