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Comment by bepotts | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much the Edge's performance will affect the average person's decision to use it or not. Browsers one up each other all the time and I'm sure Google's next major Chrome update will show improvements over the Edge.

Renaming your browser won't change peoples' memory of Internet Explorer, even if Microsoft built Edge from the ground up. The average person is still going to be thinking IE when they see it.

Without extensions, I personally am not leaving Chrome - even if it's a resource hog. But it is nice to see how Microsoft is changing their behavior. Competition between products is always a good thing.

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IE is usually very competitive at each release... the problem is they tend to sit at 2+ years between releases, and even with IE10 and 11, it hasn't gotten much narrower.

The real test will be to see if IE can keep the pace set by chrome and firefox.

IE has been discontinued so won't keep pace with Chrome or Firefox. IE 11 is the last version ever.

Edge has replaced IE. Edge is set to receive continuous updates the same way Chrome/Firefox do today. It is not pinned to Windows or Service Pack releases like IE was historically.

I don't care if it's Trident, Edge, IE, whatever you want to call it... "The browser formerly known as Internet Explorer." has a history of infrequent releases.

If with the "Edge" release this changes, then I'll accept that... MS said when they released IE10 that they were planning on more frequent releases... that hasn't happened.

IE11 has been doing automatic updates for at least a couple years now, by default.

Has IE11 added new features since release, or has it only been security/bugfixes?

IE11 on Windows 8/8.1 got updated with EME and MSE for Netflix HTML5 video. Also new F12 devtools.

IE11 on Windows 7 is sadly not getting any new features, only updated with bug fixes and security updates.

So, for most of the users of Windows, no real IE11 updates for about two years now... I think my point really stands... most feature development is on IEvNext/Edge/Spartan ... When MS releases a browser with broad, rolling updates with significant new features keeping up with other browsers in a release cycle that isn't two years apart, I'll believe it when I see it...

So far, it really hasn't been the case since before IE6 came out.

To be honest, IE11 has been dealing with the web as well as the other major browsers since there haven't been any major new browser standards in the last two years. Maybe WebRTC, but no one is making a commercial service out of that yet.

With Windows 10 deploying en masse, IE11 is already in sunsetting mode. Windows 10 and Edge is on rolling updates so they are getting new features more frequently. Service Release 1 is out next month and Threshold 2 features update is out by year end.

> It is not pinned to Windows or Service Pack releases like IE was historically

and chrome was on android pre 4.2. though it was called "stock browser" then.

That's fair, but it really wasn't Google preventing newer android releases for handset manufacturers, or the carriers. It's also the main reason the browser was separated out, so that it could be updated separately.

>Renaming your browser won't change peoples' memory of Internet Explorer, even if Microsoft built Edge from the ground up. The average person is still going to be thinking IE when they see it.

Maybe I'm underestimating how culturally aware the average person is, but I doubt most people will care to make this connection between IE and Edge.

How could they not?

You upgrade your OS or buy a new computer, and you see a new application ( that you didn't install ) and you ( presumably ) can't uninstall it. Wouldn't any rational person assume it's a pre-installed application? Wouldn't it make sense to believe that the OS developer created it?

There's an old joke about IE when people purchase a new computer: It's the browser I use to install another browser. What are people going to think when they don't see IE anymore and they see a new browser?

Everyone will know the Edge is Microsoft's new browser, and everyone knows that Microsoft's previous browser was IE.

> Everyone

In my experience, you're dramatically overestimating how many people really understand what a browser is, what IE is, or can disambiguate between Chrome and Google.

Here's a great video that Google did back in 2009 that illustrates this pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

"Everyone" wasn't the literal everyone, "everyone" is the group of people that buy a Windows OS and install another browser. Those people know what a browser is.

Maybe I misunderstood, but I was replying to your overall message about:

> I wonder how much the Edge's performance will affect the average person's decision to use it or not.

About half of people using Windows continue using IE right now. So, "everyone" and "average" definitely refer to a lot of people who have absolutely no idea what any of us are talking about in this entire page of comments. It's so easy to underestimate how little truly "average" folks understand or care about these nuances in the real world outside of a few tech bubble areas.

I have an excellent example of this. Despite having both Chrome and Firefox installed on my home desktop computer, my wife continues to use IE 11. Even with her own profile for Chrome, and using an Android phone with Chrome, she still sticks with IE for some odd reason.

Maybe you're right, but I feel like if there's one thing that will tip them off, it's the graphical similarity of the icons, rather than all the OS connections you've described.

I think with the name change, people might actually think of trying it out.

The reason the browser is named "Edge" is so the icon can remain very close to the Explorer "E". The average person is going to make that connection which was entirely the point.

"I'm sure Google's next major Chrome update will show improvements over the Edge"

What makes you so confident the next one will be faster if the current one is slower? Are you on the dev team?

Extensions are coming later this year. Supposedly it will be able to run Chrome extensions.

To be clear: Microsoft did NOT build Edge from the ground up. Edge is IE without legacy code; that is all.

Really?

I thought they wrote a new rending engine and some other key features?

The Spartan rendering engine (edgehtml.dll) is a new component and separate from Trident (mshtml.dll). The new engine began as a fork of Trident, but has since diverged rapidly over the past many months, similar to how several other browser engines have started as forks prior to diverging. The new rendering engine is also being built with a very different set of principles than Trident - for example: a focus on interoperability and the removal of document modes. - MS statement

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