Microsoft’s New Browser Will Be Called Microsoft Edge | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft’s New Browser Will Be Called Microsoft Edge

techcrunch.com

81 pointsjdkanani51 comments

Looks like it supports both Chrome and FireFox extensions - http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/29/8515771/microsofts-edge-br...

This is a step in the right direction. If every browser extended the same APIs, browser extensions will become more mainstream.

Wow...this kind of levels the playing field. A big reason I stayed away from IE was because of the extensions. If people's favourite extensions start working on Edge, then I'm sure many will give it a serious go.

Edge will have to prove itself as a browser first. IE is inferior to all the others, currently. Edge, as "Spartan", has shown positive results in Microsoft's "lab tests" but they showed same results in the past so viewing such "reports" should be taken with a grain of salt.

Till then, stick with Firefox or Chrome.

In my humble opinion as an extension developer this is madness. Of course still probably better than rolling out their own.

They should stick to a single stack.

Why?

Many reasons. Leaky abstractions, possible slight incompatibilities/quirks due to having to maintain two extension layers at once. Generally development times split between two completely different environments.

If they can make this work seamlessly, its a great way to steal users from both the Chrome and Firefox camps. Single-browser extensions are in effect "bricks" for building a walled garden around a browser.

So I'm happy if MS is able to break down those walls and take us more toward an open browser standard, as yefim commented.

I have to stop and comment how I've never heard anyone make this analogy, or put it so well!

I wonder how they support FireFox extensions -- I was under the impression that FireFox extensions have free reign over the entire browser.

They have. MS probably only supports the ones based on Jetpack, the stable but limited add-on API for Firefox similar to Chrome's.

I wonder if they went with Edge so they could keep the 'e' icon? I could only imagine the confusion less computer-savy customers would have if they could no longer find the 'e' icon to access the internet.

"the blue e" is how pretty much every "normal" person I know refers to Internet Explorer.

My guess is that the icon is going to be something like a blue capital-e. Just similar enough to the familiar logo that end-users will take to it immediately, while different enough that tech staff will be able to tell the difference.

Maybe it's called Edge because it integrates Edge.js somehow?

"Edge.js - Run Node.js and .NET in-process" - http://tjanczuk.github.io/edge/

(I know that TJ worked at Microsoft, but I'm not sure if Edge.js is a Microsoft effort or not...)

Here's a video from Microsoft - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH1D31YHsgY

They're really selling the ability to draw on pages. Who needs that?

From the looks of it, users who subscribe to the lifestyle of Tablets/Mobile + Sharing Economy.

So, once again, focus on mobile, ignore the desktop. Cause that worked so well in the recent past for MS, didn't it? Guess some people just won't take a hint.

This looks like a excellent browser. It has a sleak interface and from all the news I hear it may support some very powerful web technologies and will finally be rapid release.

Still, it's a shame that it's still very much close source and Windows only.

"...rather than just open-sourcing EdgeHTML and letting anyone contribute, they’re approving individual “major web entities” in a piecemeal fashion. Microsoft is twisting itself into pretzels to get some of the benefits of being open-source without actually going open-source." - Chris Hoffman | PCWorld

That's unfortunate to hear.

I was actually fairly optimistic that their new Browser might be made open-source given all the new ground they've recently covered in that area.

I am guessing that by open sourcing the browser they may need to open source parts of Windows which they are not in a position to do yet, so they have to take a cautious approach.

Yes, bear in mind that MSHTML (and presumbly EdgeHTML) are tightly integrated with core Windows.

There is no reason they would have to open source any other parts of windows just because EdgeHTML depends on them. Thats what libraries are for.

I think they are simply against the idea of open sourcing it. At least that's what it looks like.

I'm still waiting for a browser with good native vertical tabs support. Something like this: http://i.imgur.com/PnpZwos.png

Tree Style Tab is the main reason why I use Firefox for all my day-to-day browsing, but the UX could definitely use some polish, especially when it comes to autohide behavior and handling touch input.

Will we have to do this from now on?

    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="Edge=edge">

no, because there are no document modes, and therefore no x-ua-compat modes

Joke [johk]

1. something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote

2. (as verb) to speak or act in a playful or merry way

3. (as verb) to say something in fun or teasing rather than in earnest; be facetious

Hmm, I don't like this name, it's still trying to be something special.

I surmised from the chatter until now that Edge would be called "Internet", "My Internet", or "Browse" or some other non-program entity thing. And quite frankly, that made me shiver a bit for Firefox and (less so) for Chrome.

See, what if Microsoft plain-wrapped their browser, made it seamless and ubiquitous? Perhaps this is what they were envisioning with the original Active Desktop style integration? (And no, I'm not talking about Metro tiles, blurgh.) A successful plain-wrapped browser is like an unstoppable ideology for me, there's no name to put to the enemy. Internet Explorer could be demonized - it had a marketdroid-crafted icon, it had a NAME.

I honestly can't conceive of what such a plain-wrapped browser experience would look because I like having multiple browser windows and I like tabbed browser windows. It does need to work something like an application, at least for me. For that matter, we can't continue Fisher Price'ing up our user experiences, apps like browsers need to be productivity focused and not cater to the 3 year olds and other neophytes. That Metro Internet Explorer browser experience in Windows 8 was a joke. Take up way WAY less screen real estate with the browser chrome, cut it out with hip, annoying animations, show me my information and be quick about it.

I feel the PRODUCT NAME needs to go - Edge needs to fade away and just be there in the background as a vaguely recognizable, essential, but rather bland and uninteresting part of the overall computing experience. If Edge did fade into the background and become this trusty thing with its own signature user experience and pleasant signature flourishes or painting style or whatever, then it would more easily make the jump to new devices, autos, televisions, billboards, etc. The exact same bland, trusty experience would be expected everywhere.

I feel egos probably drove this naming decision. Oh well, already stumbling out the gate; a visionary needs to wrest control. Hopefully not another opportunity for meaningful change squandered.

> we can't continue Fisher Price'ing up our user experiences

I wouldn't bet on that.

Just as a note in response to the suggestion the browser not have a name to make it harder to hate, most of the android default browsers for different phones have no distinguishable names yet you can still refer to them as the default browser if you wish to degrade them. People will have a name to call it if they wish to refer to it.

That Android Webkit thing is an odd internal politics story, though. The Android team was separate from the rest of Google, and the Chrome team always wanted to slip in and replace the Android Webkit browser.

But the Android team wouldn't have it because Chrome was too heavyweight for many years and would have led to a subpar experience.

Android Webkit made a lot of sense up until a year or two ago because it was so simple and fast. But now the mobile hardware and Chrome performance has caught up. Chrome should be the one and only browser from Google that runs on Android. The Android team should simply concede and upgrade Android Webkit by gutting it and turning it into a Chrome launcher, damn the consequences.

Edge, presumably, would be a much different situation than Chrome vs. Android Webkit. That would have Microsoft's full weight behind it and would be integral to their core strategies. God willing, the Edge team won't be competing with the zombie legacy IE maintenance team for resources and mindshare within Microsoft.

The point of my original comment was that a great/competitive evergreen browser from Microsoft without a name would be a scary foe, especially if it ever claimed a majority share of the market.

AOSP hasn't had its own web browser for a very long time now. It uses Chromium.

Internet Explorer is generally regarded as a reason we can't have nice things, so this is a huge step in the right direction for Windows users.

IE11 trident rendering engine was already renamed to "Edge", press F12 check it out (then see in the bottom bar -> top right). The step from IE11 to IE12 aka Edge from the render engine is not as huge an outside might think (reading only the PR) - it's still a great step forward so don't get me wrong. The GUI window app has been completely scrapped in favor of a WinRuntime app "Edge" instead of the old iexplore.exe that code can be traced back to at least Internet Explorer 3 (and maybe even IE 1).

Partially correct. EdgeHTML was in IE11, but wasn't a renamed MSHTML (check your system32, you'll see both DLLs in Win10). It's a departure from MSHTML that's been seriously changed, lots of cruft removed and a lot of interop added.

Fun anecdote - last week someone at Steam wrote one of the sale pages using entirely -webkit- prefixes. It showed up blank in Forefox, but rendered fine in Spartan and Chrome.

I don't find the fact a brand new browser already supports legacy 'webkit-' prefixes a fun fact...

In truth, neither do I. But Edge/Spartan follows the developers, and sometimes that involves being interoperable with poorly designed sites that have fallen prey to browser-specific prefixes.

From a business sense, it works because if it works in Chrome and fails in Spartan, it's our fault. From a user experience sense, it also works because they deserve to have their sites work.

It's not really that big of a change. It's a new UI, and a fork of Trident with some old stuff removed. But web developers who complain about Microsoft not instantly implementing everything Google comes up with will continue to complain, despite it having pretty good standards support and being perfectly modern.

Have you seen the compatibility table for ES6 [1]? They did not just remove old stuff they currently leading when it comes to JavaScript.

[1] https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

Sure, I am aware IE11/Edge is perfectly modern. I've been a fan for a while now: about three years ago, I remember that IE9 had far better 2D canvas acceleration than Chrome or Firefox (this may even still be the case).

However, I constantly see people complaining online about IE. What can I do.

All I need to hear is when is when "Edge 2" going to be released. If it's two years after this one then we'll have a "new" old problem.

Like IE11, Edge is evergreen.

hopefully not the same pig with new lipstick

Yet another engine to support. They are creating their own called EdgeHTML

It's replacing Trident for everyone except companies that use internal software designed for IE6, and you can pretty well ignore those users.

Same number of engines to support as before.

That's really not how browser support works ... if your customers are paying money, you don't trust a damn thing and you verify stuff on all browsers with any appreciable market share. jastanton is entirely correct.

Sure, but IE's rendering engine is probably not going to change appreciably from here on forward, it's just a legacy support thing.

If they'd called this IE 12, you'd be supporting IE 8-11 and IE 12. Instead, you're supporting IE 8-11 and Edge. Big difference?

Less of a big deal than the Webkit/Blink split, if you ask me.

In my real-life experience, you're simply incorrect here. If all those variants of IE are in use by paying customers (which is our situation), then you do have to account for the fact that they have sufficient individual quirks as to require individual testing.

If you don't have paying customers, or you can actually tell them what to browse with, you might plausibly not care. Ours tend to have locked-down desktops and very little personal choice in browser.

Yes, you have to test in multiple versions of browsers. My point here is that they are adding one new browser.

If they were making a new IE 12 instead of making Edge, you'd be in exactly the same boat of having to test one new browser from Microsoft.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll be surprised if the version of IE that they ship for enterprise users is practically different from the current version in Windows 8.

You underestimate people's ability to hold on to old software.

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