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Microsoft Builds Open-Source Browser Using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS

Posted by Soulskill on from the opposite-day dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft's new browser, Edge, has a new rendering engine, EdgeHTML. Like Edge, the new rendering engine is only available in Windows 10, but it does more than just power the company's new browser: It's also readily available to developers. To show off what EdgeHTML can do, Microsoft has built a browser using predominantly JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Next, the company released the browser on the Windows Store and the sample code on GitHub.

34 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Still uses WebView by OverlordQ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You could write a web browser in any language as long as you could call out to external libraries.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:Still uses WebView by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I think the point is to show that it's not just iphone apps that can be crippled browsers masquerading as an app.

    2. Re:Still uses WebView by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You could write a web browser in any language and claim it is open source, even if you call out to external proprietary libraries to do all of the grunt-work.

      FTFY, but only to properly frame the BS that Microsoft is trying to perpetrate. You see, EdgeHTML is quite proprietary.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    3. Re:Still uses WebView by radarskiy · · Score: 2

      What's the last language you used without calling out to an external library?

    4. Re:Still uses WebView by mrbester · · Score: 2

      English. I have an extensive library of my own...

      --
      "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
    5. Re:Still uses WebView by Merk42 · · Score: 2

      You've never said any of these words?
      "Gesundheit"
      "Voilà"
      "Tacos"

    6. Re: Still uses WebView by MasterOfGoingFaster · · Score: 1

      Forth, you insensitive clod.

      --
      Place nail here >+
    7. Re:Still uses WebView by davester666 · · Score: 2

      yeah, how many apps are just a webview and an iAd view, basically monetizing somebody else's content.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    8. Re:Still uses WebView by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Hmm, C, if you count me writing the parts of the library I needed. Especially C/C++/Assembler if you count statically linking and building all libraries from full source code, which is actually very common. But using a third party proprietary object-only library, that's really really rare for me.

    9. Re:Still uses WebView by bbelt16ag · · Score: 1

      Embrace, extend, and extinguish. remember people they have done this before.

      --
      NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
    10. Re:Still uses WebView by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      English absorbs words and they become part of the language, albeit ones with roots in different languages.

      Dude, we didn't even change the pronunciation of "taco", or those other words (much). They're not loanwords if you're trying to use them faithfully and you know what language they belong to. Ice-a creamu, that's a loanword. CD pray-er, debatable.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Sounds like turtles by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

    This almost sounds like it is going to be turtles all the way down.

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    Time to offend someone
    1. Re: Sounds like turtles by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Browsers are not for cows. It is not cows all the way down. There is no need to moo.

  3. I heard you like browsers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I heard you like browsers, so I put a browser in your browser so you can browse while you browse

    1. Re:I heard you like browsers by Dagger2 · · Score: 2

      Firefox did it first, of course: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

    2. Re:I heard you like browsers by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I heard you like browsers, so I put a browser in your browser so you can browse while you browse

      Came here to look for this comment. Did not leave disappointed.

    3. Re:I heard you like browsers by daveime · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and as of version 40.0.3 it still manages to lock up tabs and refuse to close them when you click on the little X. Want to take a guess what appears in the developer console when this happens?

  4. Duh by jones_supa · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's just a WebView component embedded inside a web page.

  5. Er.. by krkhan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I work at Microsoft and generally feel glad about open-source advancements made around the company but this hardly warrants a "open-source browser" headline. Welcome to 2005.

    1. Re:Er.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I work at Microsoft and generally feel glad about open-source advancements made around the company but this hardly warrants a "open-source browser" headline. Welcome to 2005.

      But doesn't this integrate better with Win10 than the Mozilla engine you linked to? MS is trying to make WIn10 appealing and it appears that the future of desktop applications will really be a better integrated browser which is the ultimate irony when one considers the legal battles MS encountered when it made IE so tightly integrated with the desktop.

  6. Re:More spyware and ads? by erikkemperman · · Score: 2

    Oh wait, I just read it again and guess I misunderstood the first time.. This browser written in HTML/CSS/JS is the sample, demonstrating the awesomeness this EdgeHTML engine.

    Anyway, I'm not going to be able to check it out due to my Unamerican OS.

    --
    Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
  7. Re:More spyware and ads? by JackieBrown · · Score: 1

    lso I thought open source was Unamerican according to MS?

    You are referencing a statement made almost 15 years ago. Shocking that a culture can change, right?

  8. Re:More spyware and ads? by erikkemperman · · Score: 1

    True enough. Still, I wasn't aware of any major change of heart in their part. I haven't been following them too closely, but I would expect to have heard about something that significant. Would love to be wrong, actually.

    --
    Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
  9. Re:More spyware and ads? by JackieBrown · · Score: 2

    I'm a linux / android guy who only uses windows on my work assigned locked down laptop. But my desire to run those OSs stems from their open source nature (although it did start with a frustration of windows - but that was over 10 years ago.)

    But I have been reading a lot of stories on slashdot that at least some divisions are becoming open source friendly.

  10. Re:More spyware and ads? by thoromyr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    yeah... it isn't a browser, its a skin for the HTML/CSS renderer and JS engine. I'm not sure what they are trying to prove: Mozilla's gecko hasn't exactly taken the application world by storm... and *it* is actually crossplatform.

  11. What License? by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 1

    If it's not GPL but another "you can look, but we own everything you add, you cannot distribute it to anyone, and we can close it up anytime we want" license, I think I'll pass.

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
  12. A browser written in HTML, JS and CSS? by TeknoHog · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Well I just wrote this shell using nothing but Bash, so nyah nyah nyah!

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    1. Re:A browser written in HTML, JS and CSS? by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      That's nothing...one time I moved a file from one place to another using only the command line.

      I think I know how you did it. It's true you generally need a mouse and a GUI to actually _move_ a file, as you need to drag it one pixel at a time, otherwise you run into Zeno's paradox. You can't just instantly quantum-leap a file into another position, at least not without reversing the polarity and crossing the streams. However, there are command-line utilities such as xautomation to control the mouse pointer, so presumably you used one of those to automatize the movement.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    2. Re:A browser written in HTML, JS and CSS? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      I think I know how you did it.

      I hate to reveal my secret, but I will tell you that it involved typing mysterious, cryptic things that are better left to the imagination.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    3. Re: A browser written in HTML, JS and CSS? by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      I know how to use the pip command in CP/M too.

  13. This is a replacement of MSHTML by H0p313ss · · Score: 1

    This is to get people away from using the ubiquitous MSHTML ActiveX control.

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    XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
  14. Re:More spyware and ads? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 2

    So fork it. It's open source. Or is it? The title suggests it is but TFS mentions "sample code" on GH. Which is it?

    Also I thought open source was Unamerican according to MS?

    No, it's a "cancer", as per Steve Ballmer (although technically he was referring to the Linux software kernel).

    Steve Ballmer said that "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches," during a media interview with the Chicago Sun-Times.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  15. Re:More spyware and ads? by mrbester · · Score: 1

    It's more shocking that it can, but doesn't.

    --
    "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
  16. Re: More spyware and ads? by jmac_the_man · · Score: 1
    Microsoft IS doing a whole bunch of Open Source stuff, though, most of which has been covered on Slashdot. They're working on opening the source to .NET, which is probably the biggest one.

    They're also developing a bunch of cross platform stuff that isn't open source, but legitimately runs on other platforms. Like Cortana, one of the big new features they're using to market Windows 10? That's in open beta on Android, and they will be releasing it for iOS as well.