[dumbmatter]

One of the most common requests we hear from people who use Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 PCs is "we want our browser experience to move to our phones".

That's funny, my most common request is "IT'S BEEN LIKE 5 YEARS, CAN YOU GUYS FINALLY SUPPORT ALL OF THE INDEXEDDB API? EVEN SAFARI DOES IT NOW!"

So sad when poor multinational corporations simply don't have the resources to compete with obscenely wealthy organizations like Mozilla. Maybe they should try open sourcing their browser so the community can pitch in?

[ekianjo]

> most common requests we hear from people who use Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 PCs

Are there really people using Microsoft Edge out there? I mean, because they want to, not because they have to?

[dagw]

I've been using it almost exclusively on my laptop for the past few month as an experiment. And honestly it's a perfectly fine browser that basically just works as well as any other browser. That being said I cannot come up with any good argument why you should switch to using it instead of whatever you are currently using.

[sp332]

Yeah, I've been really impressed with Edge. If I had started using Edge instead of having all my stuff in Firefox, I probably never would have bothered switching.

[omk]

The developer tools on Edge are not on par with Chrome or Firefox. That is one reason I stay away. I don't mind using the browser once in a while when I need more sessions than my Chrome profiles.

[eightysixfour]

I switched for battery life. Chrome just crushed my laptop.

[dagw]

Yea, I've heard that, but I honestly have noticed a practical difference between Chrome and Edge.

[intended]

Typing on a surface pro/windows tablet is crap on chrome?

[Gracana]

My Windows dev friends seem to like it. If you're into the Microsoft ecosystem, it seems reasonable.

I tried it out as an alternative to IE 11 at work (where I run Windows to do CAD and industrial automation stuff), but I returned to IE out of habit. Either browser seems to work fine, though there are occasional issues with newly-designed sites and apps, I think because they tend to be designed and tested on Chrome/Mac.

[ocdtrekkie]

Edge's user agent I believe is specifically chosen to look like Chrome to most websites. I believe they have said they had a lot of issues modernizing IE because people's "detect IE" hacks would assume IE still needed those hacks, and it would in fact end up breaking the website when IE improved.

[tapoxi]

Edge's user agent is almost a parody of how bad UA strings have become. Its basically claiming to be every major browser at once.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/42.0.2311.135 Safari/537.36 Edge/12.

[exikyut]

Except Internet Explorer.

http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/useragentstring.php?nam...

IE version 6: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0b; Windows NT 5.1)

IE version 10: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/6.0)

IE versi--wait, what (?!): Mozilla/1.22 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows 3.1)

That last one made me wonder if someone was trolling an auto-collection system or if a zero somehow got added by a Network™. Offtopic but had to add it.

[NiveaGeForce]

The problem is that Google refuses to adopt modern Windows standards and integration with their Windows products such as Chrome, resulting in a sub-par Windows experience on modern touch & pen enabled Windows devices and many frustrated users, not to mention worse battery life than needed.

https://np.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/6hozrf/new_surface_...

https://np.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/6o8t9m/what_interne...

Google is notorious for their half-baked Windows support

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14835776

Chrome has nothing that's on par with the Edge's built-in "Set Tabs Aside" session manager (even retaining tab history)

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/01/31/micro...

among a few other things https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/microsoft-edge

and more coming in the Fall Creators Update

And since Edge is a modern UI UWP app, it has better fullscreen multi-tasking

https://np.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/65t3tg/so_edge_ha...

[eradicatethots]

On my pc its performance is great. I’d use it if it had more extensions.

[BoorishBears]

I did for a while, Chrome is a resource hog compared to Edge. iirc I stopped using it because of issues with passwords not auto filling consistently (it sounds like a small deal but it gets old having to open a password manager 10 times a day with a 20 something character password)

[pmontra]

How about leaving it open, (auto) locking the screen every time you leave the pc? It should be as safe, if you trust the screen locker.

[BoorishBears]

The main problem was the auto locking, I set my PC to go to sleep after 10 minutes (it's a really power hungry setup)

[pmontra]

I'm not familiar with Windows nowadays. If it wakes up locked and asking for a password you are fine. That's the setup of my Ubuntu laptop.

Lock the PC, leave it on a desk, it goes to sleep. You come back, wake it up, type in the password to unlock. The weakest link is remembering to lock the pc. Auto lock after some minutes is ok only at home.

[BoorishBears]

The password manager locks when the computer goes to sleep, I'm not sure that it's optional behavior (and if it was I'm not sure I'd want to disable it)

[neonhomer]

> Are there really people using Microsoft Edge out there? I mean, because they want to, not because they have to?

I have the exact sentiment with Safari. I'm on an Macbook Pro and iPhone and still use Chrome everywhere.

[NiveaGeForce]

Safari on iPhone has better side-by-side tab viewer, reader mode, content blocker, and better thought out UI shortcuts than Chrome.

Also how is the battery life on OSX?

[pjmlp]

Yes, specially because it makes better use of my GPU.

So I usually use FF as main browser, Chrome for the developer tools when debugging some nasty issue and Edge when doing graphics intense work like watching videos.

[sebazzz]

I do. It is a great browser for the tablet. But in addition I just like it for regular usage as well. Only the developer tools are a bit unstable.

[megaman22]

I use it from time to time because I have somehow acquired three or four different Microsoft IDs, all of which have access to different resources (somehow you're supposed to be able to link these, but I've never been able to get that to actually work), and I can't sign into all of them at the same time with Chrome.

[rtpg]

Lots of our customers who were previously IE users have become Edge users. Its the new default on PCs

[ekianjo]

That's why I mentioned "because they want to", not just because it's installed by default.

[rtpg]

I feel like it's a bit of an odd metric? It's like saying whether people want to use File Explorer. There's alternatives, but it doesn't enter the calculus of a lot of people.

It's not "do you want Edge on your phone", it's "do you want your desktop browser on your mobile" for a decent set of people, I think.

[zolthrowaway]

This article is from last year, but at the time Chrome had approximately 60% and Firefox at approximately 15% of the market[0]. It's not like people don't know that other browsers exist. Even non-technically savvy people know about Chrome. I'm sure a lot of that share comes from Android, but a large number of people go out of their way to install it on their desktops.

Sure,there are some people who will never consider installing another browser, but do you honestly believe that those people will go out of their way to install Edge on their phone over Android or Safari which are installed by default? I will concede that the app store does make it easier for someone to install a third party browsers, but how many of those people are going to know that Edge for mobile exist or go out of their way to install it?

If they are happy enough with Edge because it is the default on Windows, they'll most likely be happy enough with Chrome or Safari on their mobile. Yes, people who elect to use Edge because they like it and not because it is the default may choose to use it on mobile, but I can't imagine that number is very high.

I do not have data to prove this, but do you honestly believe that the number of people who can name a File Explorer alternative is anywhere close to the number of people that can name multiple web browsers? I find that incredibly hard to believe and a poor comparison.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/firef...

[MBCook]

It’s been two years. And I bet normal everyday users aren’t asking for that.

[dumbmatter]

It's been 2 (nearly 3) years since the final version of the official spec, but 5 years since any significant changes to the spec draft. IE10 was released in 2012 with a partial IndexedDB implementation, and Edge is still missing features that Chrome and Firefox had 5 years ago.

And I was being facetious, I know I'm not a normal user. Some normal users would like to play a video game I wrote that won't run in Edge due to missing IndexedDB features, though.

[lostcolony]

Yeah, but I'm willing to bet normal everyday users don't use terms like "browser experience" either.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that anyone who understands the concept of different browsers (rather than referring to whatever standard browser they have as "the internet"), uses Edge primarily to download Chrome or Firefox.

[MBCook]

I’ve used edge. It’s fine.

If MS had lots of people complaining about sites that didn’t work or said ‘Edge not supported’ to people who went there and that was because the site needed IndexDB I’m sure they would have added it. It clearly isn’t a huge issue for them.

I can see people saying ‘If I use Edge my phone doesn’t sync bookmarks and stuff like Chrome so I use Chrome.’

I don’t think saying things like ‘people only use it to download Chrome’ is helpful. It’s not IE 7. It’s a perfectly fine browser.

[lostcolony]

Yes, it was partially tongue in cheek.

That said, most of those who understand there are multiple browsers likely do so due to a time when, yes, IE was -terrible-...and so all their saved stuff, preferred plugins, etc, are in Firefox or Chrome. So their first act on getting a new computer is to reinstall and sync that stuff. Not "give that new Microsoft browser a spin".

[DonHopkins]

There was actually a time in history when Internet Explorer was arguably the best browser on the Mac!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac

[ConceptJunkie]

There was a time when IE was arguably the best browser for Windows. Unfortunately, this time was about 20 years ago.

[abiox]

it still lags behind in supporting various things. i had hoped edge would show a commitment to features and standards, but alas.

[MBCook]

Such as?

I mean are they real problems or are they the bleeding edge stuff people are always mad Safari doesn’t have yet?

[frou_dh]

After a Win10 user does that, they will have not one but two unused browsers lingering on their PC (both IE11 and Edge). I name this ship Bloaty McBloatface.

[Tarean]

I don't use it as my main browser but it starts basically instantly, is reasonably snappy and uses far less resources than either firefox or chrome. If you don't have your browser open all the time it seems like a reasonable alternative.

[martinald]

Mozilla is obscenely wealthy as charities go. It must be one of the world's most asset-rich charity in the world. Billions of dollars...

[dumbmatter]

You are right about that. They even financially support other projects that are not as rich: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/moss/

Anyone know someone working on Edge? Maybe MS can apply to that program and get some extra funding?