For a couple years now, I would have instantly switched to IE on my touch enabled Windows machines if there were equivalent versions of my Chrome extensions available for IE. Overall performance, especially during touch scrolling and zooming, and memory footprint has long been dramatically better in IE than any other Windows browser (though Chrome seems to be trying to close that gap a bit lately).
If converting a complex extension like RES was really "easy to convert" with "only a few changes", that's going to be a very interesting development.
I'm tired of this trend. In my opinion saying you're using some piece of open-source library for XPath does not exonerate you from releasing a browser that isn't open-source in a market that has Firefox and Chromium. I'll bet they aren't going to release Edge for Linux either.
Microsoft has been copying Apple lately but Apple is the wrong model for Microsoft to copy.
They don't need to be exonerated. There's no reason to turn enthusiasm for open-source into a feeling of entitlement that all software must be that way. Some of the best software I use is closed-source. I have enough complaints about Firefox and Chrome that if a better closed-source browser comes along I'm going to use it.
I think they might, seeing the recent trends.
And forget about Linux - if extensions are going to get distributed through the Windows Store, as this article claims, you can say goodbye to OS X support as well.
That is not good.
> Its slow. I ran some benchmark tools and it is so far behind Chrome and Firefox. (I know its still in preview)
> I dont like the idea of installing extension through Microsoft Store.
> Developer Tools is still behind Chrome or Firebug. Missing JS & CSS editing, viewing cookie etc.
If we want to have a free market of browsers, we also need multiple vendors that compete, otherwise the market will stall (see IE6)
You cannot integrate Cortana in Chrome like the way they did with Edge. Cortana is being used to collect information and provide better ads over time based on what customers are searching. It is the same market as Google is in and they're not going to do anything to lower their ads revenue and Microsoft is not going to pay them to bundle Chrome onto Windows, that's just not going to happen.
It is generally not a good idea to depend on a third party to provide the best browser (or any other types of tool) on your platform where they can control all of it and can deny whatever you want from them. Especially, when such parties are only doing it to drive business to their own solutions. Office vs Google Docs, Bing vs. Google, Cortana vs. Google Now, and so on.
Also, none of these things are being given away for free, they all have some costs for various groups. Companies who want to use VS professionally will pay tens of thousands of dollars per year for the support and maintenance from Microsoft, sometimes even more. Remember, a big part of MS revenues is from the enterprise market, not the regular consumer market.
Microsoft is not doing anything for free, that makes zero sense and would result into their entire management staff fired immediately. There are revenue models for each free solution from Microsoft, they're not in the market to produce free software, they're in it to make money for their shareholders.
Thanks to Xamarin, you can build an application for any platform using C#, and even more, .NET is running pretty much everywhere now. So, I'm confused as to what technology you are referring to?
Early 2000 seemed as if we're headed into a world of openness, of standards, but now the pendulum is striking back. I keep telling people that Apple is the worst thing that could have happened to this industry, but nobody listens. This is because Apple succeeded where Microsoft failed - they popularized DRM and Trusted Computing and every fear we've had when the notion of Trusted Computing happened is now coming to life ...
I don't use iOS for the same reason that I won't use any of Microsoft's newly walled-in tech and I don't use certain Google products for the same reason.
> what technology you are referring to?
I'm referring to Metro/Modern/Windows Store/Universal apps and Edge.
- On Windows if I want to distribute a Metro/Modern app, I have to go through Microsoft's store. At least Android allows non-Google app stores and side-loading with the flick of a switch.
- Metro/Modern apps are not allowed talk to desktop apps. Even Chrome extensions and apps aren't as locked down as Metro.
- It looks like they're considering applying the same restrictions to Edge. Edge apps might only be able to talk to Windows Store apps.
None of this is OK with me. I never wanted Microsoft to do anything like Apple because I honestly don't like the way they do anything.
> .NET is running pretty much everywhere now...
Xamarin isn't Microsoft and this is not relevant to my point but here is what I think about Xamarin.
Not yet. Not really. Relatively nobody is using Xamarin tools because they are too expensive compared to the free or low cost tools that are available for building straight iOS and Android apps (or even cross platform ones with Javascript).
If you spend any time at all talking with .NET developers (of which there are millions), many are very excited about Xamarin and being able to use their existing knowledge to build native cross-platform apps.
Along those lines, you might expect them to make a Linux version of the Edge browser, except that it won't be the exact browser the majority of users will be running - I suspect they'd point you to the VM images they already have at modern.ie instead.
Is it that much of a stretch to say that Microsoft is obsoleting .NET? Given the moves in "modern Windows" and WinRT, with their focus on HTML5 and the revived interest in C++, plus killing Silverlight / WPF which was the hot new thing only 6 years ago, well, it doesn't look good.
Not only that, they just released a cross platform Code Editor which works on Windows, Linux and Mac, called 'Visual Studio Code'. That and more was announced in the Build Conference held recently.
[1] https://atom.io/