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posted by martyb on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the new-shiny! dept.

Microsoft is building a Chromium-powered web browser that will replace Edge on Windows 10

Microsoft's Edge web browser has seen little success since its debut on Windows 10 back in 2015. Built from the ground up with a new rendering engine known as EdgeHTML, Microsoft Edge was designed to be fast, lightweight, and secure, but launched with a plethora of issues which resulted in users rejecting it early on. Edge has since struggled to gain any traction, thanks to its continued instability and lack of mindshare, from users and web developers.

Because of this, I'm told that Microsoft is throwing in the towel with EdgeHTML and is instead building a new web browser powered by Chromium, a rendering engine first popularized by Google's Chrome browser. Codenamed Anaheim, this new web browser for Windows 10 will replace Edge as the default browser on the platform. It's unknown at this time if Anaheim will use the Edge brand or a new brand, or if the user interface between Edge and Anaheim is different. One thing is for sure, however; EdgeHTML in Windows 10's default browser is dead.

Report: Windows Lite is Microsoft's long-awaited answer to Chrome OS

The success of Google's Chromebook hardware and Chrome OS software wasn't an inevitability, but the ease of use they afford ended up allowing Google to carve out a niche in a very crowded PC marketplace. Ever since Chrome OS entered the scene, we've been waiting for Microsoft to come out with its own pared down version of Windows, but its half-hearted attempts (Windows 10 S, Windows RT) have all fallen flat.

Those failures haven't stopped Microsoft though, as Petri on Monday reported that the company is working on "a new version of Windows that may not actually be Windows." Based on the documentation he has seen, Petri's Brad Sams believes that Windows Lite — the new OS — is Microsoft's answer to Chrome OS.

According to Sams, Windows Lite will only run Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, while removing all other functionality. He says that this is the first "truly lightweight version of Windows" – one which won't run in enterprise or small business environments, and may not even be available for purchase on its own. Just like Chrome OS, Windows Lite will have to be pre-installed by an OEM.

Microsoft ChromeOS: It's Linux-Free!


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:13PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:13PM (#769541)

    Definition of "mindshare" :- consumer awareness of a product or brand (as opposed to "market share").

    Edge has hardly suffered from "lack of mindshare", now, has it - quite the opposite. Anybody who has used Windows 10 (which is frankly quite a lot of people) has had to suffer Microsoft's persistent and obnoxious attempts to force them to use it.

  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:45PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:45PM (#770140) Journal

    They couldn't even get the mindshare of their existing user base...

    Why do people still use IE? Either because it's the default and they don't know any better, or because it's required for some particular website (usually just internal corporate resources these days.) My girlfriend got a new job a couple months back, and it was a work from home deal so they had a checklist where she had to confirm her PC was suitable. Number one of their list was Internet Explorer, and it specifically noted that Edge didn't count. Three years after the launch and people still aren't moving from the old product to the new one. Pretty sure my girlfriend still doesn't really know what Edge is, although she has it...but if she needs a Microsoft browser, she's gonna use IE; otherwise she's gonna use Chrome. (And when I'm on her computer, I use Firefox, because fuck Google.)

    I also, unfortunately, still have to use IE on a daily basis for work. We don't even have Edge. We just got Windows 7 about a year ago...everyone always says corporate IT is Microsoft's main business these days, but Edge didn't even stick around long enough for corporate IT departments to start deploying the damn thing!