Windows 10 Edge: Standards kinda suck yet better than Chrome? Weary old web warhorse Internet Explorer (known to thousands of Reg readers' spouses and parents up and down the land simply as "the internet") is destined soon for the dustbin of tech history. After decades of dominance through proprietary lock-in and anti-trust-busted software bundling, the monster lurking in web developer …
I agree. IE will ONLY be removed from a good many companies (and HMG) dead cold hands at the turn of the next decade (at the earliest) no matter what MS might try to do.
There are just far too many internal applications that just won't work on any other browser. This might be by design (job contimuation) or accident (even more job continuation). Who really knows.
Also, MS seems to still be having problems with its own website not working all that well with Edge.
It is almost as if Bono has deviced to go it alone and form U1.
There are just far too many internal applications that just won't work on any other browser. This might be by design (job contimuation) or accident (even more job continuation).
I worked on a browser-based project a couple of years back. The intent of the spec was that only IE need be supported. The spec actually said that only IE would be usable...
Needless to say, we accidentally forgot to implement that bit.
Vic.
What Edge doesn't do is implement CSS with "-webkit-" prefixes. If anything has embraced and extended web standards, it's WebKit.
Mozilla and MS (with Edge) are the only things preventing it from extinguishing them.
Like the first commenter, I'm not switching until there are equivalents of AdBlock, NoScript and Ghostery - I'll stick with Firefox until that happens.
After it happens (since Edge supports a plug-in architecture, it will happen), I might well switch. Some ad-hoc testing in a Win10 VM indicates that it's orders of magnitude faster in use than either Chrome or Firefox (although to be fair, this may be because there are no plugins).
Including Flash with Internet Explorer 11 was Windows 8's biggest of many sins in my eyes.
We're just at the point where binning it is a viable option, and Microsoft make it the flash and PDF Support the only "plugin" available in Edge.
Too late to do much about it now, But I'd really urge Microsoft to ship Windows 10 with the plugin off by default, rather than on by default...
I got a new work laptop in January this year and have not installed flash on it - despite the fact that i use it quite a bit for non-work (mostly out of office hours... ... mostly).
Can honestly say that i really don't miss flash to any significant amount. the only website that still seems to need it is the BBC with some of their content and generally, i don't feel like i'm missing out on anything as i prefer to read the news stories (not watch them) and i have the iPlayer app on my phone and xbox if i do need catch up.
As soon as they get rid of it, it will be a distant memory and i cannot wait.
Have an upvote.
I expressed almost exactly the same sentiment on a previous article about Flash. BBC is the only site I regularly visit to which lack of flash is a bit of nuisance, but i too prefer to read (even just the single paragraph accompanying a vidclip is generally all I want to know without siting through a clip that adds no extra info.
I'm sure that the written word is being phased out on the BBC news site, it's like Fahrenheit 451...
You miss the point - by including it and having it enabled by default, web designers can assume that anyone running that browser has Flash available.
The designers typically use different code for different devices, so while the Safari version will assume no flash, the Edge version will assume flash is present. Sites with Flash will probably break if you try to visit them in Edge with Flash disabled, because they will ignore the small percentage of people who change their defaults.
Actually, since IE9 the relevant developers have been working quite hard to implement web standards but were hamstrung by backwards compatibility due to the clusterfuck that is ActiveX. Edge is the result of the realisation by management that maintaining support for that kind of stuff, that they have been actively discouraging since Vista, was not compatible with actually updating the browser.
Where IE 8 is required it's easy enough to run a thin VM with IE 8.
"Windows 10, due in two weeks, will use Microsoft's latest browser creation: Edge"
Long live the king !
Microsoft has never bowed before standards before. The lip service it is paying at this point is because it no longer has any choice.
As soon as it can, it will revert to its true nature. And we all know what that is.
That is such a relief.
On the other hand, when you're starting from nothing, it's not difficult to improve.
Microsoft has lots of room to improve as far as respecting standards is concerned. Has everyone already forgotten the kerfuffle around the OOXML vote ?
Apparently they have.
"After decades of dominance through proprietary lock-in and anti-trust-busted software bundling, the monster lurking in web developer nightmares will no longer be the default browser for Windows."
"Regrettably, since Apple doesn't allow other browser rendering engines in the App Store there will never be any real competition there."
And yet Apple don't have to face any anti-trust action. Odd.
As always, XKCD says is best. https://xkcd.com/1118/
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You don't have to buy an iDevice you know.
There are plenty of alternatives from the Android world.
Apple do not have a monopoly on smartphones. IF they did then there might be a case for an anti-trust investigation.
On the plus side, that iDevice won't ever run flash.
Flash or a different browser? What would really be better for the user experience?
"Apple do not have a monopoly on smartphones."
Maybe not, but they're not doing too bad in having a monopoly of owning their customer's data, wallets and purses with their explicit consent no less! I guess (most) people will give up anything for simplicity (not having to learn or be responsible for their own actions) and consequently paying to be led around by the nose-ring Apple has inserted into them.
I can't help but really wonder where this is all going to end.. What will Apple do when everyone in the entire world owns one of their phones (I refuse to use their model name)? They'll probably sponsor SETI so that they can be the first to sell into a new market.
The iPhone has a ceiling on its market share because Apple chases only the high end market. Many will never be able to afford it, many others who can afford it will choose a cheaper option, others will never choose them because they dislike Apple, prefer Google, prefer Android, don't like the "walled garden", etc., etc. There's zero chance of the iPhone reaching even a third of the market, let alone enough to constitute what is deemed a monopoly share.
I'm by no means an Apple fan (don't own a single device) but Microsoft was busted due to an ILLEGAL monopoly. They coerced PC vendors to sell only Windows with ONLY IE on it. And, since Windows was at one time >90% of the PC market they controlled a monopoly on OS.
Apple, nor anyone else for that matter, has ever come close to that monopoly power. While Google may own a great deal of the search market they aren't forcing themselves on people. You can easily switch engines.
Just stop it with the why not Apple? Apple does not hold a monopoly on anything.
If you're going to critique someone for their ignorance - be sure of YOUR facts first.
There is no such a thing as an 'illegal' monopoly. Monopolies are quite legal. What is illegal, on the other hand, is the use of the power of your monopoly to distort the market unfairly or to act in a way that reduces the competitiveness of the market.
That's what Microsoft was charged with. it was questionable then, but like it or not, that's what they were charged with. They've done their time so to speak and so it's time to let go of that one.
Now, onto Apple. You don't have to have a monopoly in all markets. Apple has a monopoly position in music services and of all things, electronic books. No other electronic music sales company comes even close to iTunes in terms of sales - which is why Apple can demand exclusives - which distort the market.
They were actually indicted for conspiracy for colluding with several book publishers to fix pricing on ebook sales.
While I don't think it's likely to happen, the iPhone could become the majority phone - and because of Apple's 'ecosystem' that could easily lead to another claim of monopolistic practices. And this is where you make another mistake WRT Google: being a monopoly doesn't go away just because people 'could' switch. By that logic, Microsoft didn't have a monopoly because people 'could' have switched to Macs, or installed some other browser on Windows. Interestingly - even when given the chance to choose some other browser at first install time, most people still chose IE.
Google isn't just a browser - it's an entire ecosystem of interlinked services. It's Android which is also linked into it. It's apps are in iOS. Once you buy into the Google system - it's not that easy to pry yourself back out... much as once you buy into the Apple ecosystem, it's hard to break free of it. That difficulty of escape also factors into whether or not a company is or has a monopoly position.
This is a strange advert that proclaims "our new browser will be brilliant compared to our old browser, but to use it you will have to buy into our crufty, malware desktop environment".
It is not opensource, so it cannot be trusted. It doesn't run on other platforms so why would anyone *choose* this browser unless they had no choice?
Oh yeah. Free market. right....
P.
Hmm, you said most. Take a custom rom or AOSP and run it on the phone and you'd be hard pressed to notice any significant differences at first. SUre you won't find Google services but you can still download and run apps and the core functionality is still there, definitely not "most".
They claim that, but the real reason is quite different. By stripping Android proper of more and more functionality, it is harder for a phone OEM to go Google-free and take just Android. Google doesn't want that because they obviously don't make money giving away Android, but rake it in invading your privacy and delivering ads to you.
They make parts of it open source, but stuff like Maps and everything related to ad delivery is closed source. Pretty sure Chrome is open source, but that's mostly irrelevant - every Android user is running closed source code written by Google that does who knows what. The fact you have source to a lot of other stuff is no more relevant than the fact that significant parts of iOS (the BSD Mach layer, not the GUI obviously) and WebKit from the browser are open source. Open source is all or nothing, once you are running a mixture you may as well be running all closed source.
I doubt that it really matters. The "Million Eye Army" is, for a number of reasons, a myth.
Reading other peoples code is difficult enough if the work in the same company and use the same naming/coding/documentation rules that you use. Reading other peoples code, even worse from multiple sources and standards, is something most people simply do not do.
There is a reason most long term stable OS software is backed by a single "big player" that sets the rules and does the major contribution. And another why "we rewrote much of it" is more common in OS projects as well.
You don't need to have everyone read the code, only a few people. There will always be enough people looking at the open source parts of Android, simply due to its importance. That doesn't guarantee they find all security issues of course, but it guarantees Google can't hide anything nasty within it. It is open source software with much smaller userbases that are more of a problem, because there may not be anyone motivated to examine the code.
Nothing to see here, move long. Download a better browser. In fact, the new browser called Vivaldi seems quite excellent despite still being in technical preview. You should check it out.
Edge, like IE, has only one purpose: to be used to download another browser.
I'm not impressed with the bundled Microsoft stuff e.g. Bing, Onedrive, and I sure am not impressed with the 'feature' to scribble on web pages in Edge. Microsoft always has a penchant for these exotic, non-mainstream stuff it likes to call 'innovation'. Remember Web Slices from IE7 or IE8? What was that about?
> In fact, the new browser called Vivaldi
Is actually a fancy shell on an old browser called "WebKit" which uses hundreds of proprietary extensions and is the single biggest danger of browser monoculture.
There, fixed that for you.
Vivaldi is also shit and highly crashy. You forgot to mention that, AC.
No.
In general MS products do not have fans (XBox seems to be the exception). They're just things you use to do stuff with.
This seems impossible to grasp for those who have declared affection for other tech manufacturers or advertising bureaux but it's true. MS doesn't have fans beyond some frankly rather embarrassing idiots on wpcentral. I know that frustrates them but it's true.
Could be worse though, Satya. You could be universally despised (note - the Reg's comment boards do not count as "universal"). Like Oracle.
One chooses a tool set that does the work efficiently with the least effort and the smallest amount of different tools necessary. That can be Solaris for reliable, long term stable servers, Oracle for handling large amounts of data and reliable data replication or Windows for a desktop that runs the business and privat software with no fuss, no third party tools, no extra configuration. Or something else for whatever reasons.
Fan(atict)s are are problem and what they praise is best avoided
It is very easy if you own the operating system to make sure your browser works faster than the opposition's browser...undocumented APIs that only your own browser can use.
Just like the old days, in fact, "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run"...for those with long memories.
Now you may say that they could have speeded up IE long ago, but at that point, the main aim was to try to slow the wholesale migration of computing onto the web, leaving the PC little more than a thin client.
Now that is irreversible, they don't mind speeding it up to keep control of the Internet entry point on PCs.
But I'm just an old fogey, take no notice.
All I care about is NOT seeing, "internet explorer has stopped working".
Give me a stable browser that can have at least 10 tabs open without one of them crashing, And then causing the page or tab to not be able to close, Usually requiring a complete browser shutdown and restart. Damn that was annoying in IE.
I like IE's easy layout, Firefox's functions and Chromes speed, Now merge them all into one browser. ;)
Very early on the author says this:
>> Developers who adhere to web standards can safely ignore Edge
The only people who say that understand nothing about development, design, testing, customer support and almost everything else there is to know about web development.
Given that's the case is the rest of the article even worth reading?
I'm another of the old guys. My first machine was a Commodore Vic-20! (long before the interwebs creation. Yes Darpa-net etc were out there but regular people had BBS's or nothing. 1200baud baby!) I then went to a DOS PC and have followed that train for a long time. (yes I've played with UNIX and Linux too) I used Netscape before it was cool, and when it began to suck I moved on. I have bounced around the different browsers over the years and the basic truth has come to me. They are all the same. Any differences are subtle and almost unnoticeable. I uninstalled Firefox a few years ago as I tired of having to upgrade it all the time. I currently have IE and Chrome on my i7 laptop and frankly Chrome is much slower than IE on my system. Now I'm not a gamer so my browsing is on forums and university sites for the most part. So I'm definitely not a power browser (whatever in hell that would be) but frankly I don't understand all the anger heaped on a web browser! If you don't like it, cool. Move on. But bit&*ing and moaning about it all the time seems silly to me.
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