This. I've been trying to use it, and it's generally good, but I've gotten used to advertisements being blocked and noisy videos not playing autoamtically
nah son, ads have flash vulnerabilities, and cookies that follow you around, i don't mind ads on android, most are away from the content but iverge has 20 trackers and f*ck that. anandtech is whitelisted to the big banner at the top (i hate ads in between content).
I block each and every ad I could possibly lay my eyes on. No exceptions. Not even Google ads. I also fruck tracking and flash altogether. I love being a criminal, just like I love a clean Internet. No, I couldn't give a damn about ad revenue. I'm not paying that with my eyes and time. I'd rather pay the Adblock developer in order to hire more people and develop the technology at a faster rate. I'm also for filtering each and every ad I could possibly see ON TV.
I could not have said it better! Didn't think there was anyone else who felt as strongly as I do with the bombardment of invasive, often offensive ads. I'd rather pay a few dollars extra (just a few x millions ='s $$) on my TV and Internet bill and not have to see ads. Why not have a domain totally committed to showing ads for those who are afraid they may miss something. Same with television. Product ads influence me. They influence me to avoid your product as much as possible. Your post has made me all warm inside but I will pipe down now.
I block Anandtech's adverts because it often doesn't include the rest of the world in things like the competitions.
Not only that... But historically Anandtech has had multiple cases where it's adverts have carried viruses, I don't want to deal with that crap anymore.
So really it's their own fault.
Lets not forget either that adverts drive up CPU/GPU/Memory usage which also costs the user electricity, potentially reducing battery life of mobile devices as well and slows down the browsing experience in general.
I would actually be happy in paying a small quarterly fee of a few bucks instead if I was given the option rather than deal with adverts.
>>Lets not forget either that adverts drive up CPU/GPU/Memory usage which also costs the user electricity, potentially reducing battery life of mobile devices as well and slows down the browsing experience in general.<<
Just say "I don't like ads". No need to embellish useless BS, because none of that crap you just said is true.
It does not take more processing power or memory to display ads, its just part of the same experience. GPU isn't part of 2D AT ALL, so that's irrelevant. And if there are ads that DO generate more GPU\CPU\Memory it would be immeasurably small.
The Ads are not so bad although they do slow down loading web sites. What I really hate are videos that start playing automatically, at full blast sound. My Windows 10 machine uses the monitor speakers, and there is no quick volume control, and of course you also have to hunt down the tab and location of the blaring video. I still tend to use Edge the most on Windows 10, but blaring auto-play videos are unacceptable.
Extensions are coming, and they are using the Chrome model, so it will be trivial to port Chrome extensions to Edge, like it is to port them to Safari. I would rather Microsoft perfect the browser first, and then add extensions, just like Apple did with Safari.
They've said, over and over, that extensions are coming in a later update a couple of months after RTM. They've also said that devs don't need to entirely rewrite their extensions migrating from FF and Chrome; not entirely sure if they'll run natively or existing code can be reused, but I believe it's close to what they're doing with Android and iOS.
Not even extension support is a problem. I don't see how Microsoft is launching this when it's missing a huge chunk of the basic functionality that people will expect.
For example, with no "save target as" support, it is literally impossible to save an MP3 file from a website (as it will only stream).
The rendering engine seems great, but the browser itself isn't ready yet. And they already had this engine working in IE11... If Microsoft was so insistent on this July 29 date, they should've launched with IE and delivered Edge when it was ready. As it is now, they're blowing the one chance that people are going to give them before returning to their preferred Firefox or Chrome. It's just not even anywhere near close to ready.
Just one example of many. You also can't: drag and drop files, 'paste and go', open text URLs via the right click menu like some browsers allow, choose a file save location, swipe forward or back on a tablet, right click on the back button to see recent history, delete a mistyped URL from your history from the address bar, and so on and so forth.
The Edge UI just isn't ready. Like I said, they should've kept going with the Edge engine within the IE interface for now, and only release Edge when it's not missing the basics. As it is now, people won't ever give it a second look. The whole point of the rebranding is to distance Microsoft's browser from being thought of in public opinion as terrible. Releasing an unfinished browser under the new name ruins any opportunity they have to start fresh.
You're being ridiculous. The features you're claiming are not present on one browser, but you're expecting all of them to be present on Edge. Edge has features other browsers do not: inking, digital assistant integration, results from the input bar, dark mode, to name just a few. Swiping forward and backwards is a fucking nuisance on a tablet, because I can't scroll a web page without it trying to fuck with my navigation, and there's no way to turn it off. And drag and drop of files works on Edge, dunno what you're on about.
Drag and drop still doesn't work for me, but I'm willing to accept that maybe that is a bug.
And I have no idea what you're talking about, those are almost all things that are possible in IE11 with the exception of highlighting and opening a text link. I can do all of them from Firefox. Edge's extra features aren't things that anyone is going to care about when the basics are missing. Maybe it isn't fair, but that's reality. Microsoft only has one shot here of convincing users to use Edge over Chrome and Firefox, and they're going to blow it on something that isn't anywhere near ready. As I said, they'd have been better off shipping with an IE12 using the Edge engine and only launching Edge when it had a chance of actually convincing people to switch.
@freeskier93 - I use "save target as" many times every day. Can't believe it would be left out. Wait - this is the company that refused to default word-wrap "on" in Notepad for what... two decades?
Have to admit that shortcut is completely new to me, so thanks for the tip. I still would prefer if it was integrated into the right-click/press and hold menu from the address bar too though.
That's an OS feature not just browser.. Edge is an APP with OLE built in, still the BASIC CORE functionality is not there, stop defending something we ALL pretty much use everyday.
OH yeah lets all right click hosts file, edit, past url, lookup IP address and paste that into hosts file, and save as EVERY time just to block an add..
Yeah good solution there dweeb, you do it, the rest of us will use what we HAVE been doing, extensions and add-ons. Thanks so much for that helpful suggestion (rolling eyes)
This looks like an arms race with programmer talent being the input.
It raises the question of how “profitable” it is for all these browser developers, to throw an extra person at improvements. If your browser is a LOT slower than the best, you'll definitely lose users (and presumably the ad revenues from search providers). But if everybody is at rough parity of features, or if the user base is so small/specialized that a better speed wouldn't attract many more users, the choice gets harder.
LOL you call that examining the performance? Even when you test one app, you can't actually test the app? And that;'s without factoring in power, stability, RAM usage and a lot more. IE's biggest problem was stability. Have they payed for you to not actually test it ?
1) IE has been the smoothest hardware accelerated browser, and has consumed less CPU/GPU % than all others in my usage.
2) Stability? Are you sure you're talking about IE? It has been the most stable browser for me. Firefox crashes like crazy (standard and dev versions), and Chrome crashes less but most definitely more than IE.
3) RAM usage, lol. IE is well known to be the better out of the three in memory usage, Chrome being worst by a wide margin.
4) Edge is not IE, nor does it use the same browser engine as IE.
I don't have any stability issues with Firefox (nor with IE). Are you running extensions? I've heard of people running 90 extensions, having horrible stability, and then blaming it on the browser.
I would switch to μblock as adblock plus / edge are a real memory hog especially on firefox, they are the prime reason for browser crashes in my experience.
Only uBlock. Not sure if it's because that one extension, but some sites crash during scrolling and others crash just when opening them... It's less frequent now, but definitely once or twice every day.
lol... It's like I wrote this message. Indeed, ΙΕ has the best GPU acceleration implementation. Much less CPU/GPU resources for everything (the most important), rendering, video etc. The most efficient browser out there. And yes, right now something is different between IE11 and Edge on Win 10. I'm sticking with IE11, though, because Ad block Plus is working greatly right now. When Edge will get it, I'do the jump in a sec.
I don't use IE as my primary browser, but I really don't see stability issues with any browser. RAM usage, well, web pages now take up a ton of RAM (and CPU) and the real solution is to get a big enough PC.
Have you ever used a browser outside of the one you use now?
Stability has not historically been a problem with IE and Edge remains rock-solid. Certainly more stable than Firefox (which I'm writing this post in). It's also much, MUCH better in terms of power efficiency, so you can get pretty massive battery life improvements from running Edge (or IE) instead of say, Chrome (the browser I use the most). Edge also uses a *lot* less RAM than Chrome does, but so does basically everything - however who cares about RAM usage? If you aren't running out of RAM, then it's utterly irrelevant.
Overall, I still rate Chrome at #1 (and Firefox 2nd), but Edge is comparable with performance and is more power-efficient (important for mobile devices). It's a very good foundation...but I don't think the browser is ready yet. Lots of small things I've grown used to simply don't exist in Edge yet. Drag a tab to another monitor? Nope. Adblocker? Nope. About 200 other things missing that are too small to list but too irritating to live with? Yes.
I'm confident Edge will grow into an excellent browser...but it's not there yet.
Well ... as you note, the article's title uses the term "Examining". It doesn't claim to be a deep dive, or a comprehensive review. And Edge is still "officially" in Beta.
Sure, they might have billed this as a "Brief Overview" or a "High Level Look" at Edge, but they ran with "Examining". Ultimately, of course, it is what it is.
So clearly, intimations of graft & paid promotion are fully warranted! (It's exactly where I'd go, immediately AFTER declaring my unwavering commitment to ethics in gaming journalism.)
My comment (above ... maybe?) was a reply to jj who, on Tuesday, July 21, 2015, wrote: "LOL you call that examining the performance? Even when you test one app, you can't actually test the app? And that;'s without factoring in power, stability, RAM usage and a lot more. IE's biggest problem was stability. Have they payed for you to not actually test it ?
I don't get the comment sequencing (so yeah, someone HAS to on the take & the scandal is much larger than I'd ever imagined)!
And hopefully Edge is just a program rather than being baked into the OS like IE? I know they did it to avoid being slapped for browser bundling but it was still a stupid thing to do.
Unlikely. Developers of Windows software are still going to want to be able to embed a browser into their applications (which is why IE was embedded into Windows in the first place)
But it doesn't have to be the SAME browser. They can do what Apple and Google did and separate the user browse from the embedded browser. That way the attack surface is drastically reduced, too, because at least one browser is getting updates faster and over a longer period of time (unlike previous IE versions which got stuck on certain versions of Windows, even though millions still used them).
I've embedded IE into apps. However there's a big difference between installed with Windows and embedded into Windows. To embed it into an app it only needs to be installed, not embedded into Windows.
My view is that IE was embedded in order to make it impractical to remove it. That was exactly the argument MS then used to the EU for why they couldn't remove IE. Of course they still ended up having to pretty much hide it.
At the time it seemed dumb to me, but it doesn't anymore. Makes sense to just use the same code to render both the desktop and browser. I'm actually no longer certain that it was just about bundling in the browser...like everyone does this now, it reduces redundancy, and Microsoft was just first.
How about a test, where browsers are tested on Windows and using low power platforms like baytrail or amd puma. Those have quite weak cores, so every bit of optimization counts.
I can tell you that I can't visit Tumblr on Chrome on Baytrail because it performs horribly and eats up all my RAM, but it works great with IE. And if I accidentally click on something, the back button brings me back to where I was instead of completely reloading the page. I'm impressed.
It still acts weirdly, though. I have troubles saving whole sessions, which Chrome does perfectly. It also crashes sometimes when I try to refresh or when I come out of sleep mode.
IE runs well on my Surface 1 with 1.2GHz A9 cores.
I don't know if on iOS Chrome is really a different browser now, or if it's still stuck using Apple's embedded browser. It's WAY slower than Safari on iOS though...though that may or may not be even slightly relevant, depending on whether Apple is actually allowing real 3rd party browsers now.
HTML5 test is a google ad for chrome. They give bonus point to google's onwn crap nobody wants like webp images and other non W3C approved items just because.
Can you test on a more recent Intel CPU? Edge supports SIMD and I'm curious how different the numbers would be compared to the old CPU you used in this test.
Are you implying lack of SIMD support for the Intel Core i7-860? That's interesting :)
Use cases where SIMD would hep and be noticeable are a completely different topic, as is the willingness of the web developers to put the available resources to good use. When was the last time someone saw uint32 being used in a web app? I haven't recently.
And to all the guys asking for battery life and RAM usage tests - this is a pipeline story, don't expect a 10 page review. Especially when the title doesn't mention such "examinations". As Brett has stated in the story, more will come with the Windows 10 review.
Err...x86 CPUs have had SIMD since literally 1997. That CPU supports SSE 4.2. There are a few newer instructions, but most likely anything it's using is supported.
Yeah, technically the old MMX extensions are SIMD so whenever the Pentium with MMX came out is when we first got SIMD. However, SSE first came out on the P3.
I can't recall ever having performance issues with IE. It may have scored lower on some benchmark or something, but runs well in real life. Only time I ever have performance issues in a browser are if there's a runaway script, or it's just running on too whimpy a CPU.
At any rate IE's pretty much become my secondary browser after Firefox, and Edge will probably remain so, although I do have Chrome installed on a few systems for when I need 3 browsers.
Yikes, jhoff brings up some issues that sound bad, like no save as support?!?
Oh, I forgot-another reason I use IE is unlike Firefox and Chrome, IE actually bothers to tell you if a download fails...Firefox and Chrome just act like it's finished. Huge issue when downloading games from GOG (and not using their client), but really it can be an issue when downloading anything.
Did you turn on the optimizations in about: flags? With those turned on edge is faster on my desktop than chrome 43 in almost every test, though I haven't run webxprt.
Can you add the optimized versions also. I imagine most people would turn on almost all the optimizations in situations that require performance. Eventually I hope MS sets them on by default. They really make a big difference on weaker hardware and particular for touch (though thaws unrelated to performance).
BTW Brett, you have very interesting results. I ran Oort on my laptop (FF and Edge) and I got very different results. It's Core i7 4702MQ, Intel HD 4600 (with a Radeon dedicated GPU, but the iGPU is used for browsers, and 16 GB of RAM.
I got 2600 (15fps avg.) on FF and 6670 with Edge (35-50 fps). It's worth noticing that FF only managed a max of 70% GPU utilization while Edge was constantly above 90% (GPU-Z 0.8.4).
As a webdevoloper I am already seeing that for a part edge is behind Firefox / chrome in support of new html features though still ahead of Safari. However my experience tells me that Edge will be far further behind when the percentage of users finally drops low enough to ignore it in terms of support. Nowadays we are finally getting to the point where we can slowly start to ignore IE 9 / 10.
It's just a shame Edge is so laggy (various websites (e.g BBC news) constantly locking up while loading, or it's inability to carry out user commands such as new tab or close tab without having to repeatedly attempt or just give up using the keyboard shortcuts and use the mouse.
Sure the browser is coming along great, but in its current state, it is nowhere close to being ready for launch.
Speed is not that important. Chrome still lacks "most recently used" tab switching feature (an obvious one that Opera browser had back in mid 90th). So no thanks, no matter how fast that thing is.
Here's my issue. I tried Edge last night and there seems to be no text smoothing. Side by Side with Chrome text on websites was extremeley jagged to the point where it was unpleasant to use.
after importing chrome bookmarks, they are showing up OK in favorites bar. but when I am adding a new bookmark, the tree structure of the favorites appears flattened.
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86 Comments
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Primey - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
That's all well and good but they really need to add extension support.kmmatney - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
This. I've been trying to use it, and it's generally good, but I've gotten used to advertisements being blocked and noisy videos not playing autoamticallyPissedoffyouth - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
You're a terrorist who robs income from legitimate websites you horrid pirateDuckeenie - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
It's okay, this is the internet.tipoo - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Whitelist what you like, leave the unwashed internet blocked.djvita - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
nah son, ads have flash vulnerabilities, and cookies that follow you around, i don't mind ads on android, most are away from the content but iverge has 20 trackers and f*ck that. anandtech is whitelisted to the big banner at the top (i hate ads in between content).3ogdy - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
I block each and every ad I could possibly lay my eyes on. No exceptions. Not even Google ads. I also fruck tracking and flash altogether. I love being a criminal, just like I love a clean Internet. No, I couldn't give a damn about ad revenue. I'm not paying that with my eyes and time. I'd rather pay the Adblock developer in order to hire more people and develop the technology at a faster rate.I'm also for filtering each and every ad I could possibly see ON TV.
Jim4409 - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link
I could not have said it better! Didn't think there was anyone else who felt as strongly as I do with the bombardment of invasive, often offensive ads. I'd rather pay a few dollars extra (just a few x millions ='s $$) on my TV and Internet bill and not have to see ads. Why not have a domain totally committed to showing ads for those who are afraid they may miss something. Same with television. Product ads influence me. They influence me to avoid your product as much as possible.Your post has made me all warm inside but I will pipe down now.
StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
I block Anandtech's adverts because it often doesn't include the rest of the world in things like the competitions.Not only that... But historically Anandtech has had multiple cases where it's adverts have carried viruses, I don't want to deal with that crap anymore.
So really it's their own fault.
Lets not forget either that adverts drive up CPU/GPU/Memory usage which also costs the user electricity, potentially reducing battery life of mobile devices as well and slows down the browsing experience in general.
I would actually be happy in paying a small quarterly fee of a few bucks instead if I was given the option rather than deal with adverts.
LaRock0wns - Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - link
There's a working ad block solution here - https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3fq0yx...LaRock0wns - Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - link
Sorry, Here is the corrected linkTelstarTOS - Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - link
Only one AD is blocked on Anandtech. Which is way better than most portals. Kudos to AT.ATLVM - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
>>Lets not forget either that adverts drive up CPU/GPU/Memory usage which also costs the user electricity, potentially reducing battery life of mobile devices as well and slows down the browsing experience in general.<<Just say "I don't like ads". No need to embellish useless BS, because none of that crap you just said is true.
It does not take more processing power or memory to display ads, its just part of the same experience. GPU isn't part of 2D AT ALL, so that's irrelevant. And if there are ads that DO generate more GPU\CPU\Memory it would be immeasurably small.
TelstarTOS - Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - link
This. And get adguard, is better than ADBlockplus.Notmyusualid - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
Didn't some write over on Toms say something similar?Crazy...
kmmatney - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
The Ads are not so bad although they do slow down loading web sites. What I really hate are videos that start playing automatically, at full blast sound. My Windows 10 machine uses the monitor speakers, and there is no quick volume control, and of course you also have to hunt down the tab and location of the blaring video. I still tend to use Edge the most on Windows 10, but blaring auto-play videos are unacceptable.DracheMitch - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Extensions are coming, and they are using the Chrome model, so it will be trivial to port Chrome extensions to Edge, like it is to port them to Safari. I would rather Microsoft perfect the browser first, and then add extensions, just like Apple did with Safari.Notmyusualid - Monday, July 27, 2015 - link
^^ This.Ghostery, https everywhere, ad block plus, and PeerBlock loaded to block Ad Server IPs, that might be missed.
Browsing has never been so peaceful, (and safe).
lilmoe - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
They've said, over and over, that extensions are coming in a later update a couple of months after RTM. They've also said that devs don't need to entirely rewrite their extensions migrating from FF and Chrome; not entirely sure if they'll run natively or existing code can be reused, but I believe it's close to what they're doing with Android and iOS.jhoff80 - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Not even extension support is a problem. I don't see how Microsoft is launching this when it's missing a huge chunk of the basic functionality that people will expect.For example, with no "save target as" support, it is literally impossible to save an MP3 file from a website (as it will only stream).
The rendering engine seems great, but the browser itself isn't ready yet. And they already had this engine working in IE11... If Microsoft was so insistent on this July 29 date, they should've launched with IE and delivered Edge when it was ready. As it is now, they're blowing the one chance that people are going to give them before returning to their preferred Firefox or Chrome. It's just not even anywhere near close to ready.
freeskier93 - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
I'm not sure your example there is "basic core functionality". I've never once in my life used "save target as", never even knew that existed.jhoff80 - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Just one example of many. You also can't: drag and drop files, 'paste and go', open text URLs via the right click menu like some browsers allow, choose a file save location, swipe forward or back on a tablet, right click on the back button to see recent history, delete a mistyped URL from your history from the address bar, and so on and so forth.The Edge UI just isn't ready. Like I said, they should've kept going with the Edge engine within the IE interface for now, and only release Edge when it's not missing the basics. As it is now, people won't ever give it a second look. The whole point of the rebranding is to distance Microsoft's browser from being thought of in public opinion as terrible. Releasing an unfinished browser under the new name ruins any opportunity they have to start fresh.
WorldWithoutMadness - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Huh, you can't swipe forward/back history? IE can do that in metro mode.Typical MS, always missing the core functions.
jhoff80 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Yeah, page rendering aside, Metro IE is a million times better as a tablet browser (and personally, I even prefer it with a keyboard/mouse too).DracheMitch - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
You're being ridiculous. The features you're claiming are not present on one browser, but you're expecting all of them to be present on Edge. Edge has features other browsers do not: inking, digital assistant integration, results from the input bar, dark mode, to name just a few. Swiping forward and backwards is a fucking nuisance on a tablet, because I can't scroll a web page without it trying to fuck with my navigation, and there's no way to turn it off. And drag and drop of files works on Edge, dunno what you're on about.jhoff80 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Drag and drop still doesn't work for me, but I'm willing to accept that maybe that is a bug.And I have no idea what you're talking about, those are almost all things that are possible in IE11 with the exception of highlighting and opening a text link. I can do all of them from Firefox. Edge's extra features aren't things that anyone is going to care about when the basics are missing. Maybe it isn't fair, but that's reality. Microsoft only has one shot here of convincing users to use Edge over Chrome and Firefox, and they're going to blow it on something that isn't anywhere near ready. As I said, they'd have been better off shipping with an IE12 using the Edge engine and only launching Edge when it had a chance of actually convincing people to switch.
fokka - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
i would say saving stuff is a pretty basic feature for a browser.ATLVM - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
EVERY Browser...Arbie - Saturday, July 25, 2015 - link
@freeskier93 - I use "save target as" many times every day. Can't believe it would be left out. Wait - this is the company that refused to default word-wrap "on" in Notepad for what... two decades?ATLVM - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
>>I'm not sure your example there is "basic core functionality". I've never once in my life used "save target as", never even knew that existed. <<So you have NEVER downloaded anything or used a download manager troll? Tsk Tsk..
The point is we can't save as, download, or so much as copy a graphic or do anything other than browse..
Tell me you haven't done any of that either I suppose. . . .
niraj246 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
You can do paste & go. Ctrl+Shift+L - same as IE.jhoff80 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Have to admit that shortcut is completely new to me, so thanks for the tip. I still would prefer if it was integrated into the right-click/press and hold menu from the address bar too though.ATLVM - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
That's an OS feature not just browser.. Edge is an APP with OLE built in, still the BASIC CORE functionality is not there, stop defending something we ALL pretty much use everyday.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
Add a list to your hosts fileATLVM - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
OH yeah lets all right click hosts file, edit, past url, lookup IP address and paste that into hosts file, and save as EVERY time just to block an add..Yeah good solution there dweeb, you do it, the rest of us will use what we HAVE been doing, extensions and add-ons. Thanks so much for that helpful suggestion (rolling eyes)
WaltFrench - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
This looks like an arms race with programmer talent being the input.It raises the question of how “profitable” it is for all these browser developers, to throw an extra person at improvements. If your browser is a LOT slower than the best, you'll definitely lose users (and presumably the ad revenues from search providers). But if everybody is at rough parity of features, or if the user base is so small/specialized that a better speed wouldn't attract many more users, the choice gets harder.
fokka - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
i don't care how profitable it is for the companies, but i like that it means that browsers in general get faster and more powerful.jjj - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
LOL you call that examining the performance?Even when you test one app, you can't actually test the app?
And that;'s without factoring in power, stability, RAM usage and a lot more. IE's biggest problem was stability.
Have they payed for you to not actually test it ?
menting - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
i had more crashes with FF than with IE. And FF has always had an issue with RAM, at least for me. Only Chrome and IE for me nw.jimbo2779 - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
That it's exactly my experience with the different browsers as well.lilmoe - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
1) IE has been the smoothest hardware accelerated browser, and has consumed less CPU/GPU % than all others in my usage.2) Stability? Are you sure you're talking about IE? It has been the most stable browser for me. Firefox crashes like crazy (standard and dev versions), and Chrome crashes less but most definitely more than IE.
3) RAM usage, lol. IE is well known to be the better out of the three in memory usage, Chrome being worst by a wide margin.
4) Edge is not IE, nor does it use the same browser engine as IE.
Easy there dude, you're coming out as a troll...
Wolfpup - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
I don't have any stability issues with Firefox (nor with IE). Are you running extensions? I've heard of people running 90 extensions, having horrible stability, and then blaming it on the browser.Michael Bay - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Well, I only use adblock and Firefox likes to crash from time to time.qlum - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
I would switch to μblock as adblock plus / edge are a real memory hog especially on firefox, they are the prime reason for browser crashes in my experience.lilmoe - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Only uBlock. Not sure if it's because that one extension, but some sites crash during scrolling and others crash just when opening them... It's less frequent now, but definitely once or twice every day.Deo Domuique - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
lol... It's like I wrote this message. Indeed, ΙΕ has the best GPU acceleration implementation. Much less CPU/GPU resources for everything (the most important), rendering, video etc. The most efficient browser out there. And yes, right now something is different between IE11 and Edge on Win 10. I'm sticking with IE11, though, because Ad block Plus is working greatly right now. When Edge will get it, I'do the jump in a sec.Wolfpup - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
I don't use IE as my primary browser, but I really don't see stability issues with any browser. RAM usage, well, web pages now take up a ton of RAM (and CPU) and the real solution is to get a big enough PC.althaz - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Have you ever used a browser outside of the one you use now?Stability has not historically been a problem with IE and Edge remains rock-solid. Certainly more stable than Firefox (which I'm writing this post in). It's also much, MUCH better in terms of power efficiency, so you can get pretty massive battery life improvements from running Edge (or IE) instead of say, Chrome (the browser I use the most). Edge also uses a *lot* less RAM than Chrome does, but so does basically everything - however who cares about RAM usage? If you aren't running out of RAM, then it's utterly irrelevant.
Overall, I still rate Chrome at #1 (and Firefox 2nd), but Edge is comparable with performance and is more power-efficient (important for mobile devices). It's a very good foundation...but I don't think the browser is ready yet. Lots of small things I've grown used to simply don't exist in Edge yet. Drag a tab to another monitor? Nope. Adblocker? Nope. About 200 other things missing that are too small to list but too irritating to live with? Yes.
I'm confident Edge will grow into an excellent browser...but it's not there yet.
Bobs_Your_Uncle - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link
Well ... as you note, the article's title uses the term "Examining". It doesn't claim to be a deep dive, or a comprehensive review. And Edge is still "officially" in Beta.Sure, they might have billed this as a "Brief Overview" or a "High Level Look" at Edge, but they ran with "Examining". Ultimately, of course, it is what it is.
So clearly, intimations of graft & paid promotion are fully warranted! (It's exactly where I'd go, immediately AFTER declaring my unwavering commitment to ethics in gaming journalism.)
Bobs_Your_Uncle - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link
My comment (above ... maybe?) was a reply to jj who, on Tuesday, July 21, 2015, wrote: "LOL you call that examining the performance?Even when you test one app, you can't actually test the app?
And that;'s without factoring in power, stability, RAM usage and a lot more. IE's biggest problem was stability.
Have they payed for you to not actually test it ?
I don't get the comment sequencing (so yeah, someone HAS to on the take & the scandal is much larger than I'd ever imagined)!
BugblatterIII - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
And hopefully Edge is just a program rather than being baked into the OS like IE? I know they did it to avoid being slapped for browser bundling but it was still a stupid thing to do.BillyONeal - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Unlikely. Developers of Windows software are still going to want to be able to embed a browser into their applications (which is why IE was embedded into Windows in the first place)Krysto - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
But it doesn't have to be the SAME browser. They can do what Apple and Google did and separate the user browse from the embedded browser. That way the attack surface is drastically reduced, too, because at least one browser is getting updates faster and over a longer period of time (unlike previous IE versions which got stuck on certain versions of Windows, even though millions still used them).Wolfpup - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Not sure what you mean by different browser. Google barely has an OS, but presumably Apple uses the same code, run separately.BugblatterIII - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
I've embedded IE into apps. However there's a big difference between installed with Windows and embedded into Windows. To embed it into an app it only needs to be installed, not embedded into Windows.My view is that IE was embedded in order to make it impractical to remove it. That was exactly the argument MS then used to the EU for why they couldn't remove IE. Of course they still ended up having to pretty much hide it.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Oh yeah, I forgot about that...PILES of programs use that, so they can hardly take it away.Wolfpup - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
At the time it seemed dumb to me, but it doesn't anymore. Makes sense to just use the same code to render both the desktop and browser. I'm actually no longer certain that it was just about bundling in the browser...like everyone does this now, it reduces redundancy, and Microsoft was just first.Heck, OSes have map APIs now lol
hojnikb - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
How about a test, where browsers are tested on Windows and using low power platforms like baytrail or amd puma.Those have quite weak cores, so every bit of optimization counts.
lilmoe - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
+1I'd also like to see a memory usage test (whole system memory comparison for each browser), and a battery life test comparison.
mkozakewich - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
I can tell you that I can't visit Tumblr on Chrome on Baytrail because it performs horribly and eats up all my RAM, but it works great with IE. And if I accidentally click on something, the back button brings me back to where I was instead of completely reloading the page. I'm impressed.It still acts weirdly, though. I have troubles saving whole sessions, which Chrome does perfectly. It also crashes sometimes when I try to refresh or when I come out of sleep mode.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
IE runs well on my Surface 1 with 1.2GHz A9 cores.I don't know if on iOS Chrome is really a different browser now, or if it's still stuck using Apple's embedded browser. It's WAY slower than Safari on iOS though...though that may or may not be even slightly relevant, depending on whether Apple is actually allowing real 3rd party browsers now.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
EDIT: Meant to say that yeah, it's impressive if this stuff can run on low end CPUs decently, and in my experience IE does pretty well.mdriftmeyer - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Post your system configuration.neonspark - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
HTML5 test is a google ad for chrome. They give bonus point to google's onwn crap nobody wants like webp images and other non W3C approved items just because.sirfergy - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Can you test on a more recent Intel CPU? Edge supports SIMD and I'm curious how different the numbers would be compared to the old CPU you used in this test.npp - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Are you implying lack of SIMD support for the Intel Core i7-860? That's interesting :)Use cases where SIMD would hep and be noticeable are a completely different topic, as is the willingness of the web developers to put the available resources to good use. When was the last time someone saw uint32 being used in a web app? I haven't recently.
And to all the guys asking for battery life and RAM usage tests - this is a pipeline story, don't expect a 10 page review. Especially when the title doesn't mention such "examinations". As Brett has stated in the story, more will come with the Windows 10 review.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Err...x86 CPUs have had SIMD since literally 1997. That CPU supports SSE 4.2. There are a few newer instructions, but most likely anything it's using is supported.extide - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Yeah, technically the old MMX extensions are SIMD so whenever the Pentium with MMX came out is when we first got SIMD. However, SSE first came out on the P3.Wolfpup - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
I can't recall ever having performance issues with IE. It may have scored lower on some benchmark or something, but runs well in real life. Only time I ever have performance issues in a browser are if there's a runaway script, or it's just running on too whimpy a CPU.At any rate IE's pretty much become my secondary browser after Firefox, and Edge will probably remain so, although I do have Chrome installed on a few systems for when I need 3 browsers.
Yikes, jhoff brings up some issues that sound bad, like no save as support?!?
Oh, I forgot-another reason I use IE is unlike Firefox and Chrome, IE actually bothers to tell you if a download fails...Firefox and Chrome just act like it's finished. Huge issue when downloading games from GOG (and not using their client), but really it can be an issue when downloading anything.
redviper - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Did you turn on the optimizations in about: flags? With those turned on edge is faster on my desktop than chrome 43 in almost every test, though I haven't run webxprt.Brett Howse - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
No this is just stock out of the box for all of the browsers.redviper - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link
Can you add the optimized versions also. I imagine most people would turn on almost all the optimizations in situations that require performance. Eventually I hope MS sets them on by default. They really make a big difference on weaker hardware and particular for touch (though thaws unrelated to performance).mayankleoboy1 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Regarding the best score in Google Octane 2.0 , please read :https://github.com/chromium/octane-benchmark/issue...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11622...
tl;dr :
Both Edge and Chrome have optimized their JavaScript engie to get higher score in this benchmark, while negatively affecting real world code.
redviper - Friday, July 24, 2015 - link
As far as I can see that comment only applies to one test and doesn't apply to Edge at all.ie5x - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Did the Chrome and Firefox instances you tested had extensions installed? That may impact the scores.Brett Howse - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
No extensions on either.lilmoe - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
BTW Brett, you have very interesting results. I ran Oort on my laptop (FF and Edge) and I got very different results. It's Core i7 4702MQ, Intel HD 4600 (with a Radeon dedicated GPU, but the iGPU is used for browsers, and 16 GB of RAM.I got 2600 (15fps avg.) on FF and 6670 with Edge (35-50 fps). It's worth noticing that FF only managed a max of 70% GPU utilization while Edge was constantly above 90% (GPU-Z 0.8.4).
What GPU were using again?
Brett Howse - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
GPU is a GTX 760, so clearly some work to do there to have Edge work better with NVIDIA, but it's the same GPU as I tested in January.lilmoe - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Well, the difference is too big... Do you have a system with an iGPU or an AMD? If so, why not make the same test on that other system and compare?qlum - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
As a webdevoloper I am already seeing that for a part edge is behind Firefox / chrome in support of new html features though still ahead of Safari. However my experience tells me that Edge will be far further behind when the percentage of users finally drops low enough to ignore it in terms of support. Nowadays we are finally getting to the point where we can slowly start to ignore IE 9 / 10.hughlle - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
It's just a shame Edge is so laggy (various websites (e.g BBC news) constantly locking up while loading, or it's inability to carry out user commands such as new tab or close tab without having to repeatedly attempt or just give up using the keyboard shortcuts and use the mouse.Sure the browser is coming along great, but in its current state, it is nowhere close to being ready for launch.
toyotabedzrock - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
So their browser is executing something in parallel for sunspider or has pre calcumedi03 - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link
Speed is not that important.Chrome still lacks "most recently used" tab switching feature (an obvious one that Opera browser had back in mid 90th). So no thanks, no matter how fast that thing is.
BaronMatrix - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
The problem with Edge is the browser doesn't have one.. It freaks me out...sluflyer06 - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
Here's my issue. I tried Edge last night and there seems to be no text smoothing. Side by Side with Chrome text on websites was extremeley jagged to the point where it was unpleasant to use.costeakai - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
after importing chrome bookmarks, they are showing up OK in favorites bar. but when I am adding a new bookmark, the tree structure of the favorites appears flattened.