The death of Edge

[pendell]

Seen on ZDNet (https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-reportedly-looking-to-ditch-edge-for-chromium/)



Microsoft could soon shift to a Chromium-based browser in Windows 10, according to Windows Central.
The publication says the project is called Anaheim, and speculates that it would appear in the 19H1 development cycle.
Should the reporting be true, it would be the final capitulation of a company that straddled the internet, and attempted to stop it from developing further, after its victory in the 2000s browser war.


There's a link in-line to Windows Central, which is as authoritative as you can get.

I say it can't come too soon. I already support too many browsers and the simpler my life is, the happier.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Nifft]

They out-grew their bullying phase*, and now they're out-growing their Edge phase... in a few decades, Microsoft might become a respectable grown-up.


*) With some help from the Justice Dept.

[Mechalich]

There's also the fact that US government hasn't adopted Edge as a secure browser and is still using IE, with no intent to migrate over. As such, resources that would otherwise be tasked to improve Edge have been stuck maintaining IE instead.

[deuterio12]

Anaheim (http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/Anaheim_Electronics) technology stuff you say? That doesn't sound ominous at all.

Also Edge can't die if it was never alive to begin with.

The only reason I ever use it is because my Windows defaults it for opening pdf documents and won't let me set Acrobat reader to do it instead.:smallmad:

[GloatingSwine]

I'm sure they'll put just as little effort into their Chromium implementation as they have with Edge.

The problem with Edge has never been the core HTML handling, it's been the pathetic lack of effort put forth with everything else.

[factotum]

I'm sure they'll put just as little effort into their Chromium implementation as they have with Edge.

Which doesn't really matter, because most of the work with a Chromium browser has been done for you--you can't mess up the HTML rendering because it's all there. All they need to do is some UI tweaking.

[aspi]

Should the reporting be true, it would be the final capitulation of a company that straddled the internet, and attempted to stop it from developing further, after its victory in the 2000s browser war.

I say it can't come too soon. I already support too many browsers and the simpler my life is, the happier.
Hm, do you not see the irony in that?

Having less competition for browsers is not going to be a good thing. It will just lead to further weird constructs that are preferred by few people instead of having a solid standard that is implemented across a variety of platforms. Moving towards a Chromium monopoly is not a good thing.

[warmachine]

Competition in user products is good. That's why Microsoft should not be forgiven or forgotten for their behaviour in the browser wars. There's a line between convincing OEMs to install your browser and threatening to pull Windows licenses. There's a line between buggy implementation of CSS and deliberately breaking it. The death of Edge will be a reminder to Microsoft that some sins must never be committed in the first place.

[pendell]

Hm, do you not see the irony in that?

Having less competition for browsers is not going to be a good thing. It will just lead to further weird constructs that are preferred by few people instead of having a solid standard that is implemented across a variety of platforms. Moving towards a Chromium monopoly is not a good thing.

*Shrug* Market is as market does. Microsoft tried to make IE dominant. And it was ... for a time. I don't expect a Chrome monopoly to last forever, or if it does to remain in the domain of one company. TCP/IP and the various RFCs are the foundation of internet technology, with no serious competitors, and that doesn't greatly restrict our freedom.

I still remember having to treat IE special compared to other browsers, all the special purpose handling which we still need. Purely from a selfish perspective, ditching edge means one less browser to run through regression testing before shipping.

The irony is that my windows 10 machine was programmed to constantly tell me how much faster and more secure edge was than Chrome, and yet all that "Free" advertising seems to have paid off not at all. People would rather use Chrome than a system that came built directly into their desktop as a freebie , one that was moreover advertised by Cortana and with popups whenever you tried to use another browser. It probably tells us something that this marketing initiative utterly failed.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Erloas]

I still remember having to treat IE special compared to other browsers, all the special purpose handling which we still need. Purely from a selfish perspective, ditching edge means one less browser to run through regression testing before shipping.
I know what you're saying but I also know you're being prematurely optimistic. Your programing life isn't changing any time soon.

After all IE still has a larger market share than Safari and Opera combined, and it is about even or a bit ahead of Edge. Depending of course on exactly whos statistics you go with.
Even then I would bet that 95% of Chrome's market share hasn't came from people switching to Chrome on their PC, it is coming from the fact that everyone is surfing more and more on their phones.

You'll still be supporting IE and Edge for years to come.

[deuterio12]

The irony is that my windows 10 machine was programmed to constantly tell me how much faster and more secure edge was than Chrome, and yet all that "Free" advertising seems to have paid off not at all. People would rather use Chrome than a system that came built directly into their desktop as a freebie , one that was moreover advertised by Cortana and with popups whenever you tried to use another browser. It probably tells us something that this marketing initiative utterly failed.


Playing devil's advocate, Chrome's marketing was from the king of online marketing, Google itself. Edge may've actually been good and it would've probably still struggled to beat Chrome's numbers.

[An Enemy Spy]

Who even uses Edge? Edge is the browser you use to download Chrome when you get a new computer.

[factotum]

Who even uses Edge? Edge is the browser you use to download Chrome Firefox when you get a new computer.

Fixed that for you. :smallsmile:

[GloatingSwine]

Which doesn't really matter, because most of the work with a Chromium browser has been done for you--you can't mess up the HTML rendering because it's all there. All they need to do is some UI tweaking.

Yeah, but HTML rendering is not Edge's problem.

It's the UI and user features like user data management, password management, etc.

Edge is a perfectly servicable HTML renderer wrapped in a painfully barebones user experience.

I have every expectation that Anaheim will be the same.

(The same problem extends to basically all the modern apps. What they do isn't the problem, the problem is that they have such low manageability that when something goes wrong there are few to no options to fix it other than "nuke it and start again", and for the longest time you had to use Powershell to do that

This is all a legacy of how Windows 8 and these new modern apps were designed in a tablet oriented fashion, and tablet oriented design largely assumes that data is being accessed/mirrored from an online source rather than stored locally, which is more commonly the case on a desktop OS).

[Lvl 2 Expert]

So if I start using Edge now and keep doing that for long enough I'll be a hipster and an Edgelord?

[GloatingSwine]

So if I start using Edge now and keep doing that for long enough I'll be a hipster and an Edgelord?

Only if you use dark theme.

[veti]

You'll still be supporting IE and Edge for years to comre.

This. When I was last responsible for a commercial website, Edge was not yet released, but Explorer was on version 11 (which was pretty good, I thought). And yet I still had to maintain stylesheets for versions going right back to 6.

I forget now how many variations there were, but I remember Explorer - specifically, old versions of it - was the only browser that needed this coddling. Everything else (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, even IE from about version 10) worked fine with a single sheet. Heck, you could browse my site in Lynx without any special treatment. But for the stubborn 4% who refused to upgrade from a 12-year-old version of IE - there was a whole regression suite just for them.

[snowblizz]

So if I start using Edge now and keep doing that for long enough I'll be a hipster and an Edgelord?

"Start?". I've used it for years. Dang whippersnappers.:smallbiggrin:

[Vinyadan]

So if I start using Edge now and keep doing that for long enough I'll be a hipster and an Edgelord?

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