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Microsoft Removes Google's Chrome Installer From the Windows Store (theverge.com)
Not too long after Google published a Chrome app in the Windows Store, Microsoft removed it, claiming it "violates our Microsoft Store policies." The Verge reports: Citing the need to ensure apps "provide unique and distinct value," Microsoft says "we welcome Google to build a Microsoft Store browser app compliant with our Microsoft Store policies." That's an invitation that Google is unlikely to accept. There are many reasons Google won't likely bring Chrome to the Windows Store, but the primary reason is probably related to Microsoft's Windows 10 S restrictions. Windows Store apps that browse the web must use HTML and JavaScript engines provided by Windows 10, and Google's Chrome browser uses its own Blink rendering engine. Google would have to create a special Chrome app that would adhere to Microsoft's Store policies. Most Windows 10 machines don't run Windows 10 S, so Google probably won't create a special version just to get its browser listed in the Windows Store. Google can't just package its existing desktop app into a Centennial Windows Store app, either. Microsoft is explicit about any store apps having to use the Edge rendering engine.
And they wrote chrome for iOS....
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
To the three people who still use the Windows store.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Diagnosing failures is for web developers. I'm pretty sure Windows 10 S is intended for K-8 (primary school, kindergarten through eighth grade), not for serious developers. If it were, Microsoft would have seen to it that some substantial subset of Visual Studio be available on the Windows Store at the launch of Windows 10 S.
Look, you can hate me for being a Facebook user, I don't give a shit. My life, not yours.
That aside: Facebook's port of their iOS app to Universal Windows Platform doesn't use EdgeHTML, either. They bring a full port of the WebKit engine, on top of their own reimplementation of the Cocoa Touch (iOS) APIs (which Facebook got by acquiring a stealth-mode startup called OSmeta in 2013.) WebKit is clearly used, in DLLs JavaScriptCore_osmeta.dll, WebCore_osmeta.dll, WebKit_osmeta, and WebKitLegacy_osmeta.dll. It becomes more painfully obvious if you e.g. make a post or comment with a link to a page that displays the browser's User-Agent, as opening the link in-app should (by default, unless configured otherwise) use the in-app webpage preview, revealing the User-Agent string for the WebKit engine embedded and used, instead of Microsoft's EdgeHTML.
If Microsoft was to be truly fair, Facebook's apps would get yanked from the Microsoft Store as well.
I can't count how many times I've encountered mobile versions of websites that crash both safari and chrome on iOS, but works fine in Chrome on Android. I can sometimes get around it on iOS by loading the desktop version of the site, but not always.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I seriously doubt that any slashdot member is going to be using Windows 10s, so this is a non event.
What's a "Windows Store"?
Just like every other stupid, non-standard Windows version ever produced.
It's a waste of time, effort, money and people's patience with Micro$3it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Personally I've just never upgraded beyond Windows 7, as I just don't see any utility for any of the latest updates. Yes, I a am concerned about keeping my security updated. But other than that I just don't care. And of all the people I know that do use 10 I have not yet met a single person that gives a damn about the S version at all. The two people I know that had a device with S eventually got ride of the device entirely thanks to their dislike of the product as a whole.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
To be entirely honest, after using Windows 10 for an entire year at work, I've gone and acquired an app from the Windows Store exactly once only. That app? Ubuntu for the Windows Subsystem for Linux. I think this about sums up how relevant the Windows Store is.
Out of my many many many contacts NO ONE uses Microsoft Store. I don't see this as a problem. If you want Chrome just download it as simple as that.
Until MS devises garden wall technology to keep foxes out.
If Microsoft's products were better then people would use them, instead of them hacking to resort to anti competitive practices
You clearly don't know the history of Microsoft and its friendly, patented way of dealing with competitors.
It is very tiresome when Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc demand than ISPs being regulated as Title II common carriers who must be network neutral and then ban each others products from their platforms.
But yeah, it's like in One Million Years BC where the humans can watch the dinosaurs fight each other rather than hunting them. Though of course the dinosaurs didn't managed to achieve regulatory capture to stop the mammals taking over, unlike tech megacorps.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Windows Store apps that browse the web must use HTML and JavaScript engines provided by Windows 10.
So all those apps include Windows 10 telemetry?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
That presumes that the failure is on account of some error in the data being provided by the server, and not on account of some obscure bug in the html renderer and javascript engine, which because every browser on the platform must reuse, means that every browser on that platform has the exact same issue while the page may load fine in any browser on every other platform on the planet.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Google and facebook already did this, to prop up $hillary.
It's a web developer's responsibility to make "the data being provided by the server" conform to the behavior of "the html renderer and javascript engine". If your web application triggers a bug or missing feature of Apple WebKit, for example, then it won't display correctly on iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.
This. This is Windows RT all over again - it's as bad as Apple's forced use of Webkit on iOS.
It would run really slow and they could tell you to buy a Chromebook for a better experience.
Or display at all, as the app uncerimoniously crashes while its trying to run some javascript code.
The device developers may eventually get around to fixing the issues, assuming they even find out about them, but in the meantime, the only way to even *visit* the site is to use a different platform entirely, because all the web browsers on that platform use the same rendering engine.
Meanwhile, the same version of the site loads perfectly fine in an android browser as well as every current browser on desktops.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Windows 10 S is essentially Windows 10 RT for intel devices. I'm gonna go with no.
An end user should stop visiting the site that doesn't work, notify its operator, and start visiting the competing site that does work.
My point is that there can be absolutely nothing wrong with the site, or its javascript... rather, the crash can be caused by bugs in the javascript engine on the device itself. A developer might follow all of the published standards, but that means dick-all if the renderer being used isn't actually implementing all of the relevant standards correctly.
And with every browser on that device being forced to use the same javascript runtime, they can all crash if it didn't implement some things right.
And meanwhile, as I said, such sites can load fine on other devices, demonstrating conclusively that the problem is not with the site, but with the specific html renderer and javascript.
If browsers were allowed to use different rendering engines, then a person on an otherwise so restricted platform would generally still be able to visit sites that don't render properly in one browser by using another.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Impositions are mostly meant to provoke failure, rejection even hate and, ultimately, losses. If you want to create some kind of monopoly to impose your rules, you should rely on a different approach; something on the lines of: coming up with a comprehensive but incompatible with anything else format, allowing everyone to freely rely on said format and, once most of people have accepted that format as the new standard, enjoying your monopoly-like benefits. A real-life example? What Microsoft could have done with Windows 10.
Imposition can only be delivered by those being relevant under the given conditions; a nobody in that context trying to impose whatever on others is a sad joke. Even in case of actually being in a position to impose something, having this behaviour is rarely a good idea because of its negative effects on your dominant position and rarely delivering the best possible outcomes. Nobody accepts impositions unless getting what they want; some people might even not mind lose something valuable to them on exchange of not tolerating random impositions. If you have nothing of value to offer to the given audience, trying to impose whatever isn't just non-optimal but plainly ridiculous.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
I may be alone in hoping this drags on.
It's one of those cases where neither side deserves sympathy - it would be good if both could 'lose' after much public mudslinging.
Though as someone once said "when elephants fight it's the grass that gets trampled" - still nice to watch these two waste time, money and energy squabbling
I agree with everything you wrote. But because neither end users nor web developers are in a position to fix it, they must work around it.
End users End users can switch rendering engines by selling their iOS or Windows 10 S device and using the money to purchase a device capable of running a different rendering engine: either a desktop or laptop PC or an Android device. Web developers When only one web browser engine is allowed to run on a particular platform, and this engine has defects, I guess whether a web developer would find it worthwhile to attempt to work around these defects depends on the platform's usage share among the website's target demographic. As of fourth quarter 2017, iOS is probably worthwhile, while Windows 10 S isn't."Don't use ... Chromebooks ..."
No. I will use my Chromebook (in addition to my Arch-running X1 Carbon).
That presumes that the failure...
In what world are web developers not responsible for ensuring that their code runs properly on all supported platforms?
It's not like this is a new thing. Web sites have been presenting different markup or style sheets to IE, NN, Opera, Chrome, etc for years---just so a page will look the same.
If you are seriously concerned that developers can't test against the Edge engine, then you are worrying about some low-tier morons that you don't want writing code for your business in the first place.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Right, they should make sure their code works on all supported platforms. Is Edge on 10 S worth supporting, when anyone running a real OS can get Chrome or Firefox? If this is a commercial website of some sort, how much money would it take to make it work on 10 S and how much money would it bring in? If it's a hobby site, why should I bust my butt because some people buy broken OSes from Microsoft? Let them learn something.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The restriction in question is listed under "Security" in the Microsoft Store rules so they are probably worried about 3rd party web engines being insecure if used to render arbitrary web content (e.g. think about the times devices like the iPhone and the PS4 were hacked into via a bug in WebKit)
With Edge they can push a fix for any such holes right away and not have to wait for 3rd parties to fix it (and while they wait for a 3rd party fix any locked down systems like Windows 10 S are potentially vulnerable to being "jailbroken" via the exploit)