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Microsoft Edge On Windows 10: the Browser That Will Finally Kill IE
An anonymous reader writes: Windows 10 launches today and with it comes a whole new browser, Microsoft Edge. You can still use Internet Explorer if you want, but it's not the default. IE turns 20 in less than a month, which is ancient in internet years, so it's not surprising that Microsoft is shoving it aside. Still, leaving behind IE and launching a new browser built from the ground up marks the end of an era for Microsoft. “Knowing that browsing is still one of the very top activities that people do on a PC, we knew there was an opportunity, and really an obligation, to push the web browsing experience and so that’s what we’ve done with Microsoft Edge," Drew DeBruyne, director of program management at Microsoft told VentureBeat.
If not, then Microsoft will not have the opportunity "to push the web browsing experience" for me.
That means webs will need now to support another browser.
Because if so, it'll be just as dangerous as it ever was.
I think Firefox dealt it the mortal blow, and then Chrome finished the job.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's normal for products that are ... Bleeding Edge
New Browser code from Microsoft written from the ground up? Time to go look up details on Microsoft's Bug Bounty program.
You might be wondering, why didn’t Microsoft put Cortana in a different place in Edge; why the address bar? DeBruyne spelled it out for us: “Second to the start menu, it’s probably the most trafficked place in the Windows user interface.”
So why did you remove the start menu in windows 8?
"He then laid out Microsoft’s three goals with Edge:"
1) Build a browser that feels “responsive, fast, and lightweight” but that is also “clean, doesn’t get in your way, and also works great with the modern web.”
No, idiot, build a browser that IS responsive, fast, and lightweight. I don't care how it makes me 'feel'.
2) Build a browser that is trusted and lets people feel safe.
Again, no, I want the browser to BE safe, and don't care how it makes me 'feel'. All this touchy feely crap you can leave to the hippies. Also if you want me to trust your browser, then make the code open-source and the software FREE (as in speech, not beer)
3) Build a browser that is “personal and productive,” fitting in with what Microsoft is trying to do overall as a company.
No, I don't want a personal browser, I want a simple browser that answers 1 and 2 without the bloat that is IE (or worse Office)
You can point your finger at Microsoft, Windows and IE and point out a lot of problems. One thing they do a pretty good job of however, is supporting their systems for a long time. Contrast with Apple... my company bought me an iPad in 2010 shortly after the first version came out. Less than 3 1/2 years later, no more iOS updates were available on it (5.1.1 was the last version) and over time apps stopped supporting this version of the OS.
Microsoft supports their OS's for a decade or more and even unsupported versions tend to just keep working. IE was a leading edge browsers for quite a while before they got mired down in ActiveX controls and other issues that caused it to become a huge security hole and recently I began preferring it over Firefox again. I am actually looking forward to trying out Windows 10 and the new browser... we'll likely be using both this time in 2025.
...still needs work. Here's what I saw this morning on twitter from Jeff Atwood (of CodingHorror / StackExchange fame)
errr.. is there any way to use MS Edge browser in fullscreen mode on tablet? I see a lot of wasted toolbar space here.
Richard Gregg @odgregg 10h10 hours ago
@codinghorror No. And even F11 doesn't go fullscreen
Jeff Atwood @codinghorror 10h10 hours ago
@odgregg :( so much screen space wasted, toolbar at bottom, 2 toolbars at top. Bad regression now I see what @drpizza was on about
Richard Gregg @odgregg 10h10 hours ago @codinghorror @drpizza Yeah, edge definitely seems only 2/3rds there so far. Web notes should have been lower priority
pretty good...only filed about 450 bugs
Only Microsoft can lower expectations so much that 450 bugs is considered "pretty good."
"IE turns 20 in less than a month, which is ancient in internet years , so it's not surprising that Microsoft is shoving it aside."
Hard to get into the article when the summary is already so full of B.S.
Let's see now, the internet itself is over 25 years old; guess it's got to go. Linux is also nearly 25 years old; what a fossil. Heck, Windows is nearly 30 years old; how can Microsoft justify selling such an outdated P.O.S?
The reason I.E needs to go has little to do with it's age and more to do with it's design/implementation. As with many high-profile Microsoft products, the focus on useability for novices has caused severe problems over the years:
Microsoft Windows nearly single-handedly created the antivirus industry by neglecting security (and still does to this day).
Microsoft Outlook (aka Outbreak) allowed these problem to be sent/received from people all over the world.
Microsoft Internet Explorer just spread the problem beyond the people on your mailing lists.
Think about all the other security problems Microsoft introduced as 'features' (like ActiveX and embedded scripts).
What do we get in return, operating systems that constantly ask the novice user if they are sure they want to run this program (for seemingly any program to be run). Novice users don't know any better and the constant annoyance means they click yes faster than an I Agree on a EULA.
I just wish Microsoft could put a little more effort into making an operating system that is still usable by novices without sacrificing the security that we all need and deserve in the 'internet age.'
IE is like the horror movie killer that keeps coming back after repeated stabbings, burnings and exorcisms. Call it Chuckie, Freddie or a Leprechaun, it will be back.
I don't see why people think IE can be "killed." Until you convince curmudgeony old people (like governments) whose web-based tools break on anything other than IE to pay green money to update their websites, IE will stick around. And, since some people (mostly governments) will never be willing to pay money to fix something that "isn't broken" (as long as you use it on IE), IE will never, ever be completely dispensable.
Other than superficial UI bullshit, does Windows 10 have any features? Was there any kernel development? If so, what was produced?
Yes, they've now added an "Ex" suffix to every system call. You now have to specify an average of 17 flag constants each with a name that averages of 30 upper-case characters, as well as initialize and provide "long pointers" to an average of five large C structures for each request you make to the OS.
Not true. Around 2000-ish, your only options were IE (crap), Netscape (at the end of its life it was a crashy, bloated warthog), and Opera (yay, ads). Of those three, IE was the most palatable (I'm not going to pay for a browser). Even open-source Mozilla, when it first came out, was unbearably huge. Now, when Firefox née Phoenix came out, I was done with IE forever and ever, amen. But before that it was the best of the bunch, for better or worse.
I feel like I'm on the peak of the icy mountains in Nepal. Oh wait that's a peppermint patty.
What's new from a developer perspective; different than a system/admin or user perspective though https://dev.windows.com/en-us/...
Don't badmouth Windows 10 users- about half of them are going to be in your QA department.
IE turns 20 in less than a month, which is ancient in internet years
Look, the Internet has been around more than 25yrs. Can we stop this internet speed "really moves fast" thing. Really. Facebook has been around since 2008 and Google since 1998. And look at their progress. Not much since 2006-2008. If you want beta, crappy apps and ideas, and stupid trends, yes, the Internet "moves fast" in that context. If you want services & products that you incorporate into your life, aka the real "Internet" (ignoring the hipsters that adopt anything), it's actually a slow process on par with other industries.
That many testers for Mine Sweeper?
in my opinions windows 10 excellent tool for surveillance users
The core browser functionality is there and working, but there is still a lot missing. For example, the right-clicking on a hyperlink only has options for opening in a new tab or new window. All the other options (Copy Shortcut, Properties, Save Target As..., etc.) are missing. As previously mentioned, F11 doesn't do anything and there doesn't seem to be any way to run full-screen at all (just maximized, which leave the title bar). Also, when first launched, the address bar is not shown - this feels very strange (I'm not in the habit of typing URLs into search boxes, and it makes actually searching for pages containing a URL to not work as expected.).
Hopefully with their new "continuous releases" process, these things will come incrementally and regularly.
Hey Cortana, how can I block ads when I'm using Edge?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Thank you for that insightful and informative comment which has added so much to the discussion.
Oh, wait, no it didn't, you just wanted to remind everyone that you don't own a television.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
MS can call it whatever they like... the chances that at its core this thing isn't going to be IE are small.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So IE is old and badly maintained, so just "trust us" that our new Edge browser will get better maintenance and support after it replaces IE. Never mind that it will be the same pile of schlubs maintaining the thing as were maintaining IE. It will be different this time, just "trust us".
If MS ever officially apologizes for the Ribbon interface and throws it into the same burn pile as Clippy, then I might start trusting them a little more. So far they have a nasty habit of shoving garbage down their customers throat, being horrified by the public outcry, temporarily mending their ways, then reverting to old behaviors on the following product cycle. But "trust us", this time is different, we promise to force updates that won't wreck your machine...
I know this is completely anecdotal and very short-term data, but for the three developers we upgraded to 10 last night they haven't had a crash yet or even had to reboot because Windows becomes too slow to use. We typically reboot three times a day, so assuming they can make it another couple hours before they reboot tonight, that means they will have cut the number of reboots per day by a third! That is signification since it usually takes us almost an hour to get VisualStudio, SQL server, IIS, etc. back up and running. For our typical ten hour work day, that's three hours per day wasted! If we can cut that to one hour, we've saved ten hours per week. I'm hoping 10 remains working as well as it has so far!
That's pretty bad. If I have to reboot at all during the day I assume something is seriously wrong with the computer. I am on Windows 7, which is fairly stable. At home, I don't ever reboot Windows 7. It runs until the stupid updates makes it reboot. It literally never gets slow or crashes.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Pretty sure there will be a competing browser running on another device other than an xBox which utilizes screens. Pretty sure most of our blade servers make your desktop machines look like ancient Ford jalopies.
The vast majority of work done in the world is done by machines which don't talk to humans most of the time. Including the vast majority of work done on the web itself. Which is just a framing representation of various inputs and outputs we built to allow disparate machines to intercommunicate and occasionally present the data to humans.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Http2 support in IIS is only available on windows 10
Everyone join
http://www.saveie6.com/
The best browser ever! Don't submit to a post Gates Microsoft!
The only things holding back people to Windows, I thought - IE and VB style client server apps. There are still ao many websites, specially banking and so-called inhouse web apps that rely on ActiveX and Craptive things on the Windows Ecosystem. So with Edge, the intrwebs will be forced to support a standards-compliant browser on the Windows desktop. Very good.
Once that is complete, the only reason for Windows on the desktop will be gone, and browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Opera - which are all standards-compliant, more so than IE at any rate; will become first class citizens again. And there will be nothing to hold back Linux in the Enterprises which have moved on from VB crap.
Good to hear.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Sorry to change the subject here, but I see a trend recently, where posts - like the one I am replying to - get modded down unreasonably. Modding down simply because you are annoyed that somebody makes a joke about your pet fetish, is petty and immature.
I know there is a feature in /. called 'meta-moderation', but it is too long-wided to use, or it was when I looked last time, so could we have a button beside all posts that have been moderated (up or down), that would allow logged-in users to agree or disagree with the moderation? And then you could use the stats on how people's mods were agreed or disagreed with to affect the standing or karma of modders.
Does anyone even use the Windows API directly? I'd have thought people would avoid it for exactly the reasons you mention.
I just installed windows 10 yesterday as an upgrade to windows 8.1.
it kept all my settings, in a very accurate way except for one : it replaced my browser with edge. So at the first reboot I launched chrome, and it whined about not being my defaut browser, so I clicked the "make chrome my defaut browser" button, and a window came, recapitulating my prefered apps for music / videos / etc, I thought to myself that it was thoughtful to show me all those settings, but I had other things to do, so I closed that window.
Well, next reboot, same problem : chrome wasn't my default browser, you actually have to go to the bottom of the window that pops up, and the deselect edge for your prefered browser at the bottom of the window. So I finally did it.
I thought about the same thing : " ... browsing is still one of the very top activities that people do on a PC" yes, so why the hell don't they change the browser as chrome requested, and why the hell do they put this option on the bottom of the window, which is not visible unless I scrolled down (I have a 1920x1080 screen) ?
well I think I know why, I'll be sure to check edge's market share in the next months.
-- moo
The irony here is that Microsoft never had interest in 'web browsing' on the internet. IE was simply a response to the popularity of Netscape in the 90s. Microsoft envisioned an internet where desktop apps would use web services under the covers to get data over the internet. Being locked in and locked down is essentially what they wanted. Also Microsoft attempted several times to kill off development of the browser once IE had marketshare. They also claimed there was no more innovation to be had in the modern web browser. So after all of this, perhaps Microsoft is changing their mind.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...in less than a month, which is ancient in internet years"
Because people have been using the exact same version of IE for the past 20 years. It's not like there hasn't been new versions and code changes along the way to which only the name has stayed the same while the underlying browser engine has changed. No that hasn't happened...*eye roll*
Moron.
Poor Edge... Oh well... at least U2 doesn't have a bass player named Cortana.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
" IE turns 20 in less than a month, which is ancient in internet years,"
No, IE is not 20 years old. IE 11 bears no resemblance to IE8, which bears no resemblance to IE3, which bears no resemblance to IE 1.5.
This sort of description is like declaring the 1978 Saab 900 was anything like the 1994 Saab 900.
There have been 11 major versions of IE. Better to state that the name has been around for 20 years, or a product named that, but then we have to consider that 'Windows' has been around for 29 years. Does anyone even consider 'Windows 1.0' from 1985 is anything like current Windows, and shares the name only?
Lazy writing, worse thinking.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
So why do we see the exact same flaws and shortcomings in Edge as we did in IE11? Are we made to believe that Microsoft's developers were utterly inept twice in a row? I think it is more than the IE rendering engine got all the backwards compatibility removed but otherwise did not change by much. Even worse, simple JS that works in IE11 fails on Edge. Return to sender.....