The Reg takes a trip over the New Edge. Mmmm... New Coke with extra fizz Having gripped our claws on Microsoft's shiny new Edge browser we have... thoughts. And they aren't all good ones. The reaction to Microsoft's surprising announcement last year that it was abandoning the EdgeHTML rendering engine of its browser in favour of Chromium was generally well received (unless you were Mozilla). In …
As will I, being one of those stubbornly old fashioned people who see web browsers as a means of accessing information I want, rather than a means of supplying giant tech companies with information about myself that they want.
Firefox may have been testing its users patience with certain behaviour in recent years, but it does at least remain the easiest to customise in order to stop all the crap that goes on on the web that you don't want.
I've mostly switched to Pale Moon, though I'm considering trying out some other Firefox forks to see if I like any of them better.
When I absolutely need a Chromium-based browser, e.g. to test something that someone claims "will work in Chrome", I've been using Comodo Dragon. It's not that I trust Comodo any more than I have to (they are a prominent CA, after all), but it does have some privacy features and, hey, it's neither Google nor Microsoft.
the big problem here comes from the text surrounding this quote from the article:
"if you're using a Microsoft account"
Guaranteed that everything you do will, in some way, be tracked for marketing purposes. Because they CAN.
I already assumed "the 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE" because, Chrome _AND_ Micro-shaft, but I was mostly curious about the initial reception.
So what does "New Edge" do for you that Chrome does NOT ? Other than, NOT be Firefox, that is... (because Chrome vs Firefox post-Australis is no real choice at all)
Mozilla SHOULD DISTINGUISH ITSELF from this by actually BEING DIFFERENT, that is, being NOT a 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE 'Australis' version...
"Classic Firefox" UI anyone? EVERYONE?!!!!
Edge does do some things very well. From 4k support (the only browser to do so) for Netflix, power consumption and PDF rendering there'll are genuinely things that the competition could learn from. It was also pretty nippy too.
Sadly the awful UI and reliability is what has put me off. If that's changed due to using Chromium's engine and interface then I'm all for it.
Regarding the (well founded) privacy issues; if I'm using anything that's touched Google, Microsoft or - God forbid - Facebook I assume I'll have none. Not saying its right, but I fear that battle has been lost.
Well recieved, yeh I don't believe that either. In fact, isn't that clearly a lie?
1. Factually, the majority didn't care enough to use it let alone care about its development.
2. The few that did use it probably used it because they liked how it worked.
3. How many people that use Edge are going to notice, especially if it's the same skin?
I suspect that comment of "well received" is a Chrome fanboy comment, because it just can't be.
simple check here: https://www.whatismybrowser.com/detect/what-is-my-user-agent
I'll check back and maybe add something snarky to an existing web page, for grins, based on the user-agent
I'd also be interested in whether or not the 'micro-shaft logon' is in any way transmitted in the request headers. Spitting this information back as web page content might have interesting results
What I would really like to know is if Microsoft has figured out how to beat memory hogging sites into submission. It's ludicrous that I need to close one or both of Gmail or Facebook every few hours or my not too old laptop grinds to a halt.
Of course that machine has "only" 4 gigs of RAM.
Considering that Google is MORE of a competitor to Microsoft than the old Netscape organization ever was, Microsoft should have teamed up with the Mozilla organization, if for nothing else so they could spit at Google. And they could have used Thunderbird as a replacement for Outlook while they were at it.
But while MS may be conniving and evil, they often aren't very smart.
On my 4gb laptop, Old Edge was far better than Chrome in terms of resource usage (to the point that I uninstalled Chrome and consumed even Google's services through Edge). I also think its sad that now there are only 2 major browser technologies. We all need to support Mozilla I feel.
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