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Discussion on: Microsoft is building a Chromium based browser! 😲

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rhymes profile image
rhymes • Edited

I don't know how to feel about this.

It's also going to be yet another browser to support, it's not like it's going to be identical to Chrome or that Edge and IE are going to disappear overnight :D

I wonder why they didn't choose Firefox's Gecko though

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nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor • Edited
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rhymes profile image
rhymes • Edited

That's a reason to go against the current! Otherwise all browsers will be the same browser in the end.

There's value into building platforms on top of the same rendering engine but there's also value into not having one single rendering engine :D

I understand the choice Brave made because they have few resources, but Microsoft is huge :D I just hope someone will write an article about the choice so I can better understand it. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that I don't have a fully formed opinion.

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chrisx81 profile image
Christian Hartwig

Electron. They have So many Apps using Electron. When MS integrates Electron in Windows (as they do with EdgeHTML for Store Apps) they would need to contribute to two engines.

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rhymes profile image
rhymes

Electron

Right, I forgot about that. They already have a lot of in house knowledge around Chromium because of Electron.

I wonder if this new browser will be cross platform :D

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tunaxor profile image
Angel Daniel Munoz Gonzalez

That's what I hope for, also take in mind that winui has been made open-source yesterday so we might be able to see more "fluent" cross-platform interfaces some time in the future, including (hopefully) this browser

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Keith Z-G

Gecko remains pretty damn impossible to embed into anything else. I suppose it's not like Microsoft wouldn't theoretically have the resources to make it happen anyways, but why put the extra effort in when it'll be less compatible and the compatibility is a primary reason they're doing it anyways?

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rhymes profile image
rhymes • Edited

Gecko remains pretty damn impossible to embed into anything else.

"It was updated a very long time ago" it's definitely not a good start :-D

I suppose it's not like Microsoft wouldn't theoretically have the resources to make it happen anyways

Yeah I guess

but why put the extra effort in when it'll be less compatible and the compatibility is a primary reason they're doing it anyways?

True, it's just that we risk having basically only single browser engine with just different shells.

I read people on Twitter speculating that MS will probably end up forking Chromium a few years down the road and manage their own version. Likely for the same reason why Blink was forked from WebKit.