
Microsoft Edge and Web Components - jarek-foksa
https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/07/15/microsoft-edge-and-web-components/
======
skrebbel
I'm pretty impressed with Edge. Browsing HN with it now, and it's definitely
the best browser Microsoft ever made, _by far_. I really really hope they'll
backport it to Win8 and Win7 like they didn't do with IE10/11, otherwise we're
all going to be in the same shit again.

The list of supported tech is getting pretty real as well [1]. Not everything
yet (wot, still no desktop notifications? do you even _want_ people to use
your browser for real work?), but a lot - e.g. very much of ES6 is in there
and usable right now from the devtools console.

[1]
[http://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/?filter=c3e0000bf](http://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/?filter=c3e0000bf)

~~~
justwannasing
How impressed are you now?
[https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html](https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html)

~~~
bzbarsky
html5test has some problems:

1) The set of functionality it tests is pretty arbitrary. Some of the things
it tests are basically single-browser-vendor with other browsers having
clearly said they have no plans to implement them.

2) The point values it assigns to the things it tests are totally arbitrary.
So you can implement various useful things but have fewer points than one less
useful thing.

3) Its tests are easily gameable (and commonly gamed by various mobile
browsers, though less often by IE/Chrome/Firefox/Safari).

4) Some of its tests are just buggy. E.g. it claims that a Firefox nightly
doesn't support "script execution events", whereas in fact Firefox supports
them just fine. It's just that the way the test runs its test script is
relying on a browser bug that got fixed, so the script doesn't run at all.

So I would take any claims based on its summary score as pretty much
meaningless. Results for specific things one cares about can still be
meaningful, as long as you keep #3 and #4 in mind.

~~~
justwannasing
In the 11 years I've been a web developer, there is not a test where someone
disses it for all the reasons you give, no matter who created it, including
caniuse.com.

However, I would never take anything you say, Boris, with a grain of salt.
Especially since, about 8 years ago, you tried to recruit me to work on
Firefox ;)

~~~
bzbarsky
Oh, sure. These are not problems unique to html5test.com. Pretty much anything
that claims to boil down the quality of a browser or rendering engine to a
single number will suffer from problems #1 and #2. As for #3 and #4, writing a
test not susceptible to gaming is _hard_, and bugs happen.

It's just that people like to forget all this and treat the numbers they get
as revelation from on high. Sort of cargo-cult quality measurement.

------
ilaksh
Microsoft could have added this years ago if they wanted to prioritize it.

I remember several years ago as a Microsoft dev when my boss thought
Silverlight mattered and he had me trying to make the styles work exactly the
same as WPF.

We were working on military software and they wanted browser-based apps, so we
were building WPF hosted in a browser mixed with some ActiveX map component.
About 5% of the software was _actually_ web based. The rest was just "let's
jam MS-exclusive shit in IE".

Why isn't it done yet? Same story as the last decade of HTML 5 stalling and
lies: a powerful compatible web conflicts with their business model.

If it made business sense then some of those resources used to build the
numerous MS component technologies that have been developed and extremely
successful over the last 20 years, from VB, OLE/ActiveX, to various
.NET/WPF/XAML, Silverlight, etc. would have been applied to something like web
components.

The engineers may not be stalling, but the business priorities direct the
engineering.

Its like people asking Palmer Lucky about VR standards. Of course he is going
to give you a load of bullshit about how it is really hard or whatever. They
have absolute market dominance in VR headgear, like MS has in component
technology. SteamVR is to Oculus as MS component systems are to Web
Components.

If MS or Oculus actually tried to embrace standards, it could literally result
in billions of dollars going to competitors instead of them.

Note that this comment will turn invisible as Microsoft shills and religious
fanatics downvote it.

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ryanisinallofus
Unless there is new info I do not know about, this leaves safari as the last
holdout? New IE indeed!

~~~
pistle
Will Safari take over the infamy of IE6 in 3 years?

~~~
untog
I dislike the comparison to IE6 because it's easily shot down with the many
ways in which the situation is different. _But_ Safari absolutely is falling
behind other browsers in API support and could well end up holding the web
back. Particularly on mobile, given that iPhone users are not able to install
a different browser runtime.

~~~
WalterGR

        I dislike the comparison to IE6 because it's easily shot down with
        the many ways in which the situation is different.
    

Inseparable from an OS version and falling behind the state of the art.

What else is there?

~~~
threeseed
Being pretty disingenuous to compare IE6 with WebKit in terms of implemented
features. Many websites had to be specifically coded for IE as it wouldn't
render correctly many basic parts of HTML/CSS. WebKit is deficient mainly in
the newer, less popular features.

Also Microsoft would unilaterally add proprietary features and tie their
software to it e.g. Outlook/Sharepoint which then encouraged corporations to
do the same as well. Apple actively participates in standards organisations
eg. one for Web Components:

[http://www.w3.org/2015/04/24-webapps-
minutes.html](http://www.w3.org/2015/04/24-webapps-minutes.html)

~~~
WalterGR
Legitimate questions:

    
    
        Many websites had to be specifically coded for IE as it wouldn't render correctly many basic parts of HTML/CSS.
    

Was IE6 demonstrably less compliant than other contemporary browsers? I recall
- similarly - sites that were "Best viewed in Netscape Navigator at foo x bar
resolution."

    
    
        Also Microsoft would unilaterally add proprietary features
    

IIRC, IE6 added XmlHttpRequest, which - though there were other workarounds to
accomplish the same thing - enabled AJAX.

Do not other browsers even today add their own features (e.g. browser-prefixed
CSS properties) prior to standardization?

    
    
        ...and tie their software to it e.g. Outlook/Sharepoint
    

Okay, that's definitely bad.

------
JDDunn9
Looks like a big win for Polymer. Polyfills make more sense if you can see a
path to a day they won't be needed.

~~~
anodari
And for Facebook React. This reminds me of VB and Delphi components.

~~~
tkubacki
Can't see how is React winning here - FLUX won already but in new HTML's web
component era React will be even less relevant. There will be no need for big
frameworks since apps could be build from high level components.

~~~
dominotw
React's breakthrough was "pure render function", given a set state and props.

Polymer still needs a higher level framework like react. Many projects use
polymer and react together.

------
ilaksh
I wonder if it would be possible to develop standard tests first on an open
source non profit basis, and then somehow boycott non-compliant vendors.

But this might be the same age-old fundamental conflict between information
technology knowledge management and business.

How can we effectively work together and yet still compete and evolve freely?
Which words go in the dictionary? Whose language? Whose dictionary? Which
words are so new no one acknowledges them?

With natural language this is a very hard problem, but I think with
information systems eventually we will solve it. We could create and widely
adopt something like a fully machine-processable specification source code for
all protocols and languages etc. This would require building everything off of
a common metalanguage with flexible representations that constantly evolves.

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GutenYe
Safari is the new IE 6.

~~~
FriedHoller
Apple is the new Microsoft.

~~~
maze-le
It is kind of true. In terms of vendor lock-in Apple is worse, than Microsoft
ever was...

~~~
justwannasing
Define worse. There's an advantage to "vendor lock-in" in that having control
over the whole product gives you advantages others won't have. It allows you
to make guarantees others won't, too. Apple can warrant the hardware and
software but Microsoft never will, for example.

~~~
maze-le
I consider beeing coerced to use a limited set of services (for some
functionalities) a huge disadvantage. It is a question of control and autonomy
over your systems. Do you have control over your machine, or is it the other
way around?

> having control over the whole product gives you advantages others won't have

And that is exactly what you abandon, as a user of locked-in software.

I concur infsofar, as there is a set of real world applications, where the
advantage you describe really counts. Industrial control systems or hardware
for medical applications for example.

~~~
justwannasing
You are ignoring the vast majority of users, most of whom aren't on HN or
reddit, who don't want such control over their systems and just want them to
do what they want and reliably so. Apple fulfills that need and does an
excellent job of it.

Note: I own no Apple products except for an original iPad given to me on my
birthday. I built my own systems from scratch, as a former electronic
engineer, and create web sites on FreeBSD.

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CmonDev
No longer thought leaders, but doing homework well.

------
ihuman
Does anyone have a simple definition/explanation of Web Components? The only
descriptions I find online call them "reusable widgets or components in web
documents," which is kind of meaningless since all code could be considered
reusable.

~~~
corysama
Disclaimer: I am not a web dev.

The simplest explanation I've come across is that web components lets you
create pockets of html, css, and JavaScript that are self-contained and,
importantly, not affected by the actions of external css and JavaScript.

The browser vendors originally created it for themselves so that they could do
things like build a standardized html5 video player interface using html but
without worrying about you iterating over the internal elements in js or
screwing up the buttons with css.

~~~
acqq
So it's a new way for the "Flash after the death of Flash"?

~~~
justwannasing
No. It's a reincarnation of what we should be using all along: XML

