Microsoft's Chromium-Based Edge Browser Looks Just Like Chrome (neowin.net) 128
Last December, Microsoft announced that it has embraced Google's Chromium open source project for Edge development on the desktop, a move that shocked many. We now have some leaked screenshots of the browser in its current state, and they appear to show a browser resembling Google Chrome. Neowin reports: A lot of the design language and icons have remained similar to what they were like before, but there are definitely many changes that will be familiar to Chrome users. For one, the options to see all your tabs and to set aside the currently open tabs have been removed compared to the current version of Edge. To the right of the address bar, you'll be able to find your extensions, as well as your profile picture similar to what Chrome looks like. Bing is integrated into the browser -- as you'd expect of a Microsoft-made browser -- and the New Tab background can be set to rotate based on Bing's image of the day. Scrolling down will reveal a personalized news feed powered by Microsoft News, similar to the old Edge. The layout of the feed can be customised based on your preference from among a number of options.
The settings options for the browser have also changed. While Edge settings are currently available via a slide-out menu from the right, the new Edge's settings are accessible through a new tab similar to Chrome. It'll show the Microsoft account you're logged into, as well as the usual array of toggles and tidbits you'd expect. Ominously, the about page for the browser now acknowledges the contributions of the Chromium project, as well as other open source software, a stark reminder that this isn't the Microsoft of yesteryear. This is a new browser, and a new Microsoft.
The settings options for the browser have also changed. While Edge settings are currently available via a slide-out menu from the right, the new Edge's settings are accessible through a new tab similar to Chrome. It'll show the Microsoft account you're logged into, as well as the usual array of toggles and tidbits you'd expect. Ominously, the about page for the browser now acknowledges the contributions of the Chromium project, as well as other open source software, a stark reminder that this isn't the Microsoft of yesteryear. This is a new browser, and a new Microsoft.
Chrom-i-edge-i-um (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Chrom-i-edge-i-um (Score:2)
IE is a huge success. It's one of the reasons that migrating away from Windows is harder than it needs to be. Windows 10 hasn't failed either. Win7 has just over a year left of support so many orgs have already moved or are going to.
Wrong giant I think... (Score:3, Interesting)
The GIANT was Microsoft. They had a 20+ year lead! They blew it. Over. And Over. And IE7-11... It's beyond even posting a link about for chrissake. Google came in, saw barely-eaten lunch, and the rest is monopoly-for-a-reason-instead.
As much as Google is xyz_bad_thing, Microsoft has been xyz_bad_thing for 20 years, in every single direction including search monetization. Google is simply not as completely incompetent in every single thing they have attempted.
Horse-race won, windows 10 by a lap.
Frankly IMO i
Re: (Score:1)
I typed about:config into Chrome and it threw an error screen back at me.
Re: (Score:2)
Would Chrome be used by as many people as it is if it wasn't side loaded with so many other programs?
I really don't know but it would be an interesting study I think.
People complained about Microsoft bundling IE with Windows but I don't remember Google getting much flack for side loading Chrome (there was some but not really that much).
Re: (Score:2)
People complained about Microsoft bundling IE with Windows but I don't remember Google getting much flack for side loading Chrome (there was some but not really that much).
It wasn't a very good decision at the time, the 'browser ballot' was a mess and the result would have just been that people would have had to acquire a browser separately to install on their system even if that browser wasn't their browser of choice they would need it just to download their browser of choice. Netscape didn't lose because Microsoft bundled IE, they lost because Navigator wasn't a better browser (it wasn't necessarily worse though) so even though people had the choice they used IE. This was p
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefox is notoriously difficult to use for this purpose. It's why you never see it done outside of just rebranding it entirely like Waterfox and Ice Weasel.
Mozilla has rested stubbornly on their laurels for 20 years. Turning that ship around and making changes will be hard. The other part of this though is that people do not see Google going away any time soon. Using their engine is a safe bet. Mozilla could be dead in a year based on market share, declining interest and a general perception of being last
Re:Chrom-i-edge-i-um (Score:4, Informative)
Mozilla has rested stubbornly on their laurels for 20 years.
And by stubbonly resting on their laurels you mean creating an entirely new language and surrounding ecosystem for the sole purpose of being able to write a stable multithreaded browser engine.
Something which no one else managed.
That's pretty much the polar opposite of resting.
Re: (Score:2)
Mozilla has rested stubbornly on their laurels for 20 years.
And by stubbonly resting on their laurels you mean creating an entirely new language and surrounding ecosystem for the sole purpose of being able to write a stable multithreaded browser engine.
Something which no one else managed.
That's pretty much the polar opposite of resting.
No one cares that they wrote a new language. It's completely irrelevant to the choice someone would make to using it. 99.9999% of the people have no fucking clue what the language is, what it does, or why it matters. It was also pointless on Mozillas part. Google didn't need to do it and they are eating their lunch. Maybe if they had just fixed their shit to begin with and not wasted all that time making a new language their browser wouldn't suck?
Re: (Score:2)
No one cares that they wrote a new language.
People want a faster browser. That's something they care about. Firefox these days is more responsive on modern machines because it makes better use of multiple cores. That's all down to the new language. People don't care directly, but they certainly care about the implications.
It was also pointless on Mozillas part. Google didn't need to do it and they are eating their lunch.
Ah yes, Mozilla should have spent their money on becoming the world's largest adversiser
Re: (Score:2)
Are you kidding? Firefox had severe memory management problems for well over 10 years, resulting in chronic freezes and pauses every few seconds. They spend hardly any time trying to fix that and kept redesigning the UI many times over, despite users balking about useless cosmetics and "brand experience."
Mozilla only ramped up efforts when market share severely tanked.
Re:Chrom-i-edge-i-um (Score:5, Insightful)
Mozilla has rested stubbornly on their laurels for 20 years.
You didn't notice that they replaced the entire add-on ecosystem, replaced the JS engine and ripped out tonnes of legacy code? Strange because a lot of people on Slashdot were complaining about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Mozilla has rested stubbornly on their laurels for 20 years.
You didn't notice that they replaced the entire add-on ecosystem, replaced the JS engine and ripped out tonnes of legacy code? Strange because a lot of people on Slashdot were complaining about it.
No they just took Chromes extension ecosystem with a handful of very small modifications. They rested on their laurels.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Chrom-i-edge-i-um (Score:3)
the fact that its news here that when you clone a source folder, the ui looks just like the build of the folder you cloned is somewhat depressing.
Re: Chrom-i-edge-i-um (Score:2)
Presumably because chrome is otherwise a spyware infested shit show they don't want to be associated with.
Re: (Score:1)
I find this highly relevant to the Microsoft experience.
One less browser to test against (Score:5, Funny)
So now, if someone complains that a site doesn't work in Edge, we can just check it in Chrome. And if it works in Chrome, we can tell the user "file a bug with Microsoft, they didn't copy Chrome correctly".
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
One fewer browser to test against...
Yes. Now instead of testing against Firefox and Chrome, we only need to test against Firefox and Chrome. Much simpler!
Re: (Score:1)
When did Apple rename Cyberdog?
Does the dog wear a pith helmet?
Come on, squared tabs, its totally different! (Score:2)
Embrace Extend (Score:1)
One more time, "Embrace Extend"
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
One more time, "Embrace Extend"
.....Extinguish.....
Re: Embrace Extend (Score:2)
Great news! (Score:3)
Still using Firefox, though. 'Cause, maybe they've changed, maybe they haven't. I'm going to give it a little longer and see.
What I'd like to know, is what are we going to do with all those website that require Internet Explorer to work properly?
Re: (Score:3)
This won't make any difference for those sites. If they require IE, then they won't work in edge or edge chromium.
Re: (Score:2)
The Bank of Japan's web site requires Internet Explorer. Part of it runs on an ActiveX control.
When Microsoft announced that IE is being retired, they went into panic mode. Having stubbornly resisted making a proper site for two decades now, they now have to redevelop it from scratch.
Re: (Score:2)
IMO Microsoft's decision of starting from scratch when developing the engine for Edge was the right one. Trying to emulate all the broken IE's behaviours would've been madness.
Re: (Score:2)
IE is still shipped with Windows 10 as a completely separate browser from Edge so I guess the answer is...just use IE for those sites.
IMO Microsoft's decision of starting from scratch when developing the engine for Edge was the right one. Trying to emulate all the broken IE's behaviours would've been madness.
Oh I agree that starting over with Edge was the right thing to do, and not having backwards compatibility probably reduced the size of Edge by a couple orders of magnitude. :-)
Yes IE still ships with Windows 10. My current company issued me a mac (Part of my responsibility is mac support) and IE is no longer supported on the mac. So for the two or three IE-only websites I have a Windows 10 instance running in a virtualbox. Which is kinda cool and kinda ridiculous at the same time. [1]
[1] Cool in that it
Re: (Score:2)
They'll probably end up contributing back to the chromium project once they've got the hang of it too.
It's already happening. [googlesource.com]. You're right, they need a standards-compliant browser because they don't own the platform anymore and it's pretty clear they don't want to, Microsoft want their software and services to run everywhere which means compatibility with web standards is critical. There's no point building your own standards-compliant HTML engine when you can just use and contribute to a collaborative one that way you know the software and services you build for your browser will run on others too.
Re: (Score:3)
There's no point building your own standards-compliant HTML engine when you can just use and contribute to a collaborative one that way you know the software and services you build for your browser will run on others too.
For most people no.
For Microsoft, I htink this is a mistake, personally. I mean they're one of the largest companies in the world. They can certainly afford to do so by scraping some change out of the back of Bill's old sofa.
Given how strategically important it is, and they they have integr
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft has been failing with IE and then Edge for decades, and there is just no sense in continuing to throw money at it.
They had everything. Beat Netscape, were they default and uninstallable on Windows. MSN was the default homepage, and most people didn't know how to change it. And they failed. MSN failed, Bing failed, IE became a joke - the browser you use to download a decent browser.
Edge was their last ditch effort to gain some traction. Since that also failed, they are left with just needing a brow
Re: (Score:2)
This is Microsoft's play to take control of the browser people use. They offer an Edge that works just like Chrome, so lazy Windows users go ahead and use their default Edge instead of installing Chrome. Once they've got 80% market share back, they can fork Chromium to add Windows-only components and get websites to implement those, and ta-da they've got lock-in again like in the good old ActiveX days.
Re: (Score:2)
Once they've got 80% market share back, they can fork Chromium to add Windows-only components and get websites to implement those, and ta-da they've got lock-in again like in the good old ActiveX days.
Even if they managed to get 80% of the browser market on Windows that would only be about 25% of the browser market overall and nobody is going to develop websites that only work on 25% of people's browsers.
Re: (Score:2)
Given how strategically important it is, and they they have integrated browser rengering all over their OS, it seems an odd choice to me to not keep control of it. Thinking in terms of years rather thna quarters that is.
Well I suppose that's the benefit of free software, they can have control over it. They can fork it and take control whenever they wish but the browser engine is really just an implementation of the HTML standard so when a cross-platform one already exists it's hard to see what you bring to the table if you create another one. Kind of like Firefox, I can see niche reasons for using the browser side of it but it wouldn't really make any difference if they switched from Gecko to Blink, in fact I doubt anybody
Re: (Score:2)
but the browser engine is really just an implementation of the HTML standard
Maybe not for much longer. It's only a practical standard if there are multiple implementations of it. There are now twoindependent ones remaining, and a concerted effort from varous parties to get rid of the second.
wouldn't really make any difference if they switched from Gecko to Blink, in fact I doubt anybody would even notice.
Well, it'd be slower. People might notice that.
embrace extinguish (Score:1)
The best time to use Firefox is 10 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is a sad day for the Web when Microsoft shifts not to making Edge's code free software
If you wanted to spread STDs can't you just screw people in traditional ways?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Making the code open would be virtually no cost and maybe someone could get something useful from it.
What "useful" Edge feature are you interested in? A rendering engine that fails miserably to render a large portion of pages? A PDF engine which craps itself when displaying PDFs? Timeline integration (MS is writing plugins for that already).
And really, we can't know how bad the code is because we can't directly audit it.
The code quality itself is probably high. The result of running the code we can directly see, and even Microsoft has abandoned trying to maintain it. I don't think much good would come of making something open source and you're wrong that it comes at no cost. Edge is st
Re: (Score:2)
Shocking! (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean to tell me that a relatively new customization of an open source project... still looks a lot like the original!? I'm shocked!
Re: (Score:2)
No you don't understand. This is a leaked screenshot of the current state. If this wasn't what they were planning on releasing then they wouldn't hide it and it wouldn't need leaking now would it. Therefore it's a finished product. The only reason it will be released in November is because that's when they will finally get the March 1903 Windows 10 release in a usable state.
Re: (Score:2)
Was the story written by a blind person? (Score:1)
I had a look at the screenshots and as far as I'm concerned they look absolutely nothing like Chrome at all. They display the hideously ugly appearance the Microsoft currently seems to favour. i.e. Total lack of style. Even the style in Windows 1 was much more attractive.
Re: (Score:1)
wikipedia added some auth params to the url that stopped it from working on my end here [wikimedia.org] is the working link
Re: (Score:1)
never min local user erro, I managed to copy the spave ayt the end of the link oh well
Doesn't Matter (Score:1)
If nobody was using Edge (and nobody was), then nobody will suddenly switch from Chrome to Microsoft Chrome either.
It was very expected (Score:2)
FAIL (Score:1)
ntr
Only Chrome and Firefox now (Score:2)
For now.
How much longer until til they decide to switch to Chrome for their stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
One more motive to still on Firefox... (Score:2)
Nice!! (Score:1)
So the chrome downloader will look like chrome?
Thanks for that smooth user experience, Microsoft.
Not the same! (Score:2)
The menu dots in Chrome are vertical, in MS's version they're horizontal!
Nothing alike.