Nessie – Lightweight Web Browser(radsix.com)
radsix.com
Nessie – Lightweight Web Browser
https://www.radsix.com/
92 comments
Editable start page HTML ? Yes please!
.no is not in the TLD.ini whitelist. Edit TLD.ini - Good times.
Wait, so this browser blocks everything non-American by default? O.o
That's very unfortunate for the 0.00042 Norwegians who were going to use this web browser.
Not supporting websites from a fairly big country with a strong economy is a failure on their part, either way. I bet they support TLDs like TV (Tuvalu), or IO (Indian Ocean Territory).
I think the joke was that the user base of the browser was small, not that Norway was a small country.
What's the reasoning behind blocking, apparently, all but 5 TLDs? I could see sketchy ones like XYZ being blocked, but the default whitelist is a bit... Bare.
This is obviously some person's side project to test a bunch of ideas. One of which was to add in TLD whitelisting, so they came up with a couple of TLDs to whitelist with the intention of expanding it once it went viral on hackernews and they were bought out for a billion dollars by Walmart's venture capital vehicle.
Why even block any TLD entirely and not just malware domains?
No idea, but my point (and I think the point of OP) was that people shouldn't treat some rando's side project with the same amount of scrutiny as they might a new release of Firefox.
I would guess the reason is that it’s a small project that few people use and nobody noticed the problem before this thread.
I think it's one of the features that were added to differentiate this particular MSHTML-with-address-bar from countless others.
No, they don't. This is the default setting file:
.com .net .org .co .io
Just add a TLD, restart and voila.
.com .net .org .co .io
Just add a TLD, restart and voila.
Is this to help with security? A rather restrictive and somewhat US centric whitelist. And then there's IO.
No .gov ? Maybe that's a good thing /s
No .co.uk? No .gov.uk? No .ac.uk? No .uk?
Wtf?
Wtf?
Non-Norwegians do not read the blog of the creator of CSS, right? https://www.wiumlie.no/en
Just tried it out. Was surprised that youtube and google maps both worked. Only thing I missed was tabs.
It's just IE with a different UI, so any site that already works in IE will behave exactly the same in this one.
itd be neat if microsoft opened up their web engines now that they've moved to blink.
Obviously it would be of great historic interest, but as a living software, just no. Go read this: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/04/19/modernizing-d...
IE implemented DOM without using tree. No, really. Up to 2017. After reading the article, all my questions why IE was so buggy evaporated and replaced by how could IE work at all.
MSVC up to 2015 also didn't create AST. Unbelievable, I know. The question is not why MSVC's C++ support was so buggy; the real question is how could MSVC implement C++ at all. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/rejuvenating-the-micr...
After learning about IE and MSVC, I gained respect for Microsoft developers and disdain for Microsoft. Tightrope walking is amazing display of skill. Letting your employees to commute by tightrope walking for years is amazing display of stupidity.
IE implemented DOM without using tree. No, really. Up to 2017. After reading the article, all my questions why IE was so buggy evaporated and replaced by how could IE work at all.
MSVC up to 2015 also didn't create AST. Unbelievable, I know. The question is not why MSVC's C++ support was so buggy; the real question is how could MSVC implement C++ at all. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/rejuvenating-the-micr...
After learning about IE and MSVC, I gained respect for Microsoft developers and disdain for Microsoft. Tightrope walking is amazing display of skill. Letting your employees to commute by tightrope walking for years is amazing display of stupidity.
These are great reads. Thank you for sharing those links.
They made word for the web! That text centric view sounds so much like the way word works _now_
Excellent article on Microsoft's journey of refactoring IE's DOM model. I actually felt sympathy reading how it all started with a linear text-based data structure, which must have seemed reasonable at the time. (In hindsight, a tree should have been the natural shape, and they should have been aware of parsers and ASTs. But can we blame them?) And how the layers of complexity were added, using parallel data structures that needed to be synced on every DOM operation.
By the time the article reached "Modernizing the DOM tree", I could just imagine the years of devs suffering that the whole architecture must have caused.
> According to an internal investigation, from IE7 to IE11, approximately 28% of all IE reliability bugs originated from code in core DOM components.
The second article is quite relevant too, how the C/C++ compiler used token streams instead of a real AST, until 2015! There are parallels to the above issue with the DOM model, how the original design of the data structure was inadequate, so they had to keep adding more layers of complexity. It's understandable how it happened, but makes me wonder if they should have had more experts in parsers/compilers during the design phase.
To give credit where due, both articles describe major successful refactorings of core design. I'm with you, that after learning about their struggles, I have more respect for developers at Microsoft.
By the time the article reached "Modernizing the DOM tree", I could just imagine the years of devs suffering that the whole architecture must have caused.
> According to an internal investigation, from IE7 to IE11, approximately 28% of all IE reliability bugs originated from code in core DOM components.
The second article is quite relevant too, how the C/C++ compiler used token streams instead of a real AST, until 2015! There are parallels to the above issue with the DOM model, how the original design of the data structure was inadequate, so they had to keep adding more layers of complexity. It's understandable how it happened, but makes me wonder if they should have had more experts in parsers/compilers during the design phase.
To give credit where due, both articles describe major successful refactorings of core design. I'm with you, that after learning about their struggles, I have more respect for developers at Microsoft.
That'd be a lot of work (clean up the code, look through everything to see whether things can actually be released and not covered under licenses disallowing that) for .. what benefit to Microsoft exactly? Trident and EdgeHTML are not really used anywhere anymore, or would that just be out of curiosity how things look inside?
There are optimizations and features on old edge that would benefit to be backported to chromium. E.g http live streaming
clean up the code, look through everything to see whether things can actually be released and not covered under licenses disallowing that
AFAIK, IE/Edge was developed only by Microsoft, so there wouldn't be much if any thirdparty code?
AFAIK, IE/Edge was developed only by Microsoft, so there wouldn't be much if any thirdparty code?
Especially if the end result is a closed-source product you still license code you don't want to write yourself. See stories like this one:
- https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180515-00/?p=98...
- https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180515-00/?p=98...
Link is to "chakra core", part of the JavaScript engine that powers edge, apparently.
I thought edge was reskinned Chrome, why don't they use V8?
I thought edge was reskinned Chrome, why don't they use V8?
They do, taken from the above github page:
"As you may have heard Microsoft Edge no longer uses Chakra. Microsoft will continue to provide security updates for Chakracore 1.11 until 9th March 2021 but do not intend to support it after that."
"As you may have heard Microsoft Edge no longer uses Chakra. Microsoft will continue to provide security updates for Chakracore 1.11 until 9th March 2021 but do not intend to support it after that."
FWIW the headline on the page is still present tense and I want expecting the strap longer of a project to be wrong about what the project is.
The old Edge had its own rendering and JS engine.
The new Edge uses Blink for both.
The new Edge uses Blink for both.
Seems to be blocked by Windows Defender as a Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA).
I guess it's not wrong.
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/ec9ad4a4d6d1ddcb406d96ff...
I guess it's not wrong.
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/ec9ad4a4d6d1ddcb406d96ff...
I can confirm that: PUA:Win32/Hypnamer.A!ml detected by Windows Security
Isn't IE on track to be phased out? I guess that also means the Trident engine component will also likely not be available on future versions of Windows?
I cannot imagine Windows removing the trident engine, they have a strong focus on backward compatibility and it's guaranteed a lot of businesses depend on trident being available.
But they could make it available on demand: it would trigger a download if necessary instead of polluting disk space worldwide for niche usages
Microsoft doesn't appear to have much of a problem with that.
It's necessary for internal Windows functions to work.
The recent move to make Edge something you can't uninstall is a likely first step in changing that. You can't remove the old "can't remove" browser engine without first designating a replacement.
Eh.... it used to be true that Microsoft cared deeply about backwards compatibility, but it seems to me that's becoming less and less the case. I wouldn't be very surprised if Microsoft just ripped it out one day and damn the consequences. I guess it's just another thing that has fallen out of fashion there, like testing, a working control panel, and updates that aren't a trainwreck.
Not quite yet
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3572554/is-it-eol-for-...
Pasting the whole article here since it requires registration.
------
"Microsoft last week began a process that will, eventually if not immediately, result in it canning Internet Explorer (IE), the browser it's built since 1994.
Although IE survived this initial round of deprecations – or depredations, depending on your browser viewpoint – there's no guarantee that the final edition of IE will die a natural death in its bed.
Microsoft could kill it at almost any time.
Sinking fast IE's share of global browser activity has been shrinking, and sinking, fast. According to U.S.-based analytics company Net Applications, IE's share fell by nearly 40% between June 30, 2019 and June 30, 2020. If it continues that rate of decline, IE will account for just 2.8% of all browsing worldwide a year from now.
The browser's fall has been long, slow and with one exception, regular as clockwork. Computerworld's records of Net Applications' browser share data go back as far as January 2005, when IE controlled almost 90% of all share. Since then, it's been downhill for the browser, with only a recovery that started at the top of 2012 and ended two years later, to interrupt the trend line.
Net Applications' numbers don't count every instance of IE. In fact, because of the way the metrics vendor measures share, it's almost certain that it undercounts enterprise usage, perhaps substantially so. In other words, IE may be much more widely used than the numbers indicate.
Absent numbers from Microsoft itself, however, Net Applications' are as good as any. And those show IE running toward not just obsolesce – it's already there, been there for years – but to extermination.
It's no surprise that Microsoft has started to withdraw support.
The end begins Last week's support changes were relatively minor, but still telling.
On Nov. 30, the Teams web app will stop support IE11. Then, as of Aug. 17, 2021, all remaining Microsoft (and Office) 365 apps and services will no longer support IE11.
While that was a clear shot across IE11's bow and meant to wean enterprise users – the customers who run Microsoft (and Office) 365) – off the browser, Microsoft made clear that, for now, IE11 would remain on the support list. "We want to be clear that IE11 isn't going away,"
Microsoft said in the unsigned post that announced the support changes. "Our customers' own legacy IE11 apps and investments will continue to work. Customers have made business-critical investments in IE11 legacy apps and we respect that those apps are still functioning."
This promise of IE11's longevity was reminiscent of Microsoft's long-standing position that "Internet Explorer is a component of the Windows operating system and follows the Lifecycle Policy for the product on which it is installed." By that definition, IE11 will be supported on Windows 10 for the same length of time as the operating system itself.
The Microsoft (and Office) 365 support stick has been wielded by Microsoft before. Editions of the perpetual-licensed Office – Office 2010, 2103, 2016 and 2019 – drop connectivity support with Office 365's services starting in October 2020. Microsoft's goal? Shove customers to subscriptions, since Office 365's applications will never lose that support.
The Redmond, Wash. giant is throwing its weight around in a similar fashion as it denounces IE11. This time, though, the goal is to prod enterprises still using IE to abandon the browser, if not immediately then as soon as possible.
(Something important to remember: Microsoft's said that the lapsing support for Teams (November) and the rest of Microsoft 365 (August 2021) applies to Edge's IE mode, too. See this support document.)
When a deadline isn't one Microsoft's not cutting off customers cleanly. Microsoft 365 support for IE11 won't completely vanish on Aug. 17, 2021 – the apps and services will continue to run within IE11 – but over time the browser will become less and less compatible with those apps and services. "After the above dates, customers will have a degraded experience or will be unable to connect to Microsoft 365 apps and services on IE11," Microsoft said. "For degraded experiences, new Microsoft 365 features will not be available or certain features may cease to work when accessing the app or service via IE11."
Microsoft has defined end-of-support (EOL) like this before – frequently, in fact – but as in those instances, for IE11 it declined to specify a timeline, or spell out what feature or which functionality might vanish first from, say, Outlook on the web, or second from Teams. It likely doesn't even know at this point.
The important part of support, the only support for IE11, really, is security patches for newly-reported vulnerabilities. Microsoft has said nothing about when, or even if, it will halt those.
Support goes 'poof' Microsoft may have started to tug on IE11's plug, but it's not pulled it out.
So, when will it? At virtually any time.
There's nothing stopping Microsoft from ending all IE11 support whenever it feels like it, even though customers may believe differently, even though the company's own policies say it will support the browser as long as it does the operating systems of which IE is a component.
Here's why.
A support policy is no guarantee, and neither is Microsoft's word. The past is all the proof needed. In August 2014, Microsoft ordered Windows users to upgrade to the most-recent version of IE, and to do that by January 2016. The mandate scratched a year of support from IE7 (which was part of Windows Vista), four years from IE8 and IE9, and a whopping seven years from IE10 (a Windows 7 component).
Only IE11's support remained intact.
There is a more recent example – much more recent. If Edge – the original Edge, the one using the EdgeHTML rendering engine – was a component of Windows 10, and it was, how could Microsoft set March 9, 2021, as the date that browser receives its final security update? (That's what it did in the same announcement of IE11's support curtailment of last week.)
By all rights, the original Edge should be supported until the EOL of Windows 10 1909 and Windows 10 2004, the last two versions that came with that browser. (This fall's Windows 10 20H1 upgrade will be the first to include the newer, Chromium-based Edge.) Those dates? May 10, 2022, and Dec. 14, 2021, respectively. Microsoft is stopping old Edge's support 15 months early for Windows 10 1909 and 9 months earlier than promised for Windows 10 2004.
(And simply because the old and new versions of Edge carry the same name shouldn't let Microsoft off the hook here. The two are entirely different browsers from the ground up, as Microsoft has itself stressed.)
The point is that Microsoft has withdrawn previously-pledged support before, and could easily do so again. IE11 is no more immune than earlier iterations of that browser or Edge have been.
It could even use the same rationale to excuse the changes in policy. "Outdated browsers represent a major challenge in keeping the Web ecosystem safer and more secure, as modern Web browsers have better security protection," asserted an IE marketing executive in 2014 to explain why Microsoft would soon bar older versions. Microsoft could simply repurpose "outdated" as grounds for shutting down IE11 support; the browser has now gone untouched for more than four and a half years, and is even more behind rivals like Chrome, Chromium Edge and Firefox than that indicates.
Microsoft will undoubtedly give customers fair warning before IE11 falls off support. Based on past endings, figure six months minimum between announcement and deadline, but probably 12 or more months.
Will Microsoft give up on IE? And when? The answer to the first is easy: Yes, at some point. Contrary to protestations, IE isn't forever. Even Microsoft's pledges of continuance seem less than rock solid. "Customers have made business-critical investments in IE11 legacy apps and we respect that those apps are still functioning," Microsoft said.
But when? That's the question.
A year and a half ago, Computerworld's best answer was to point to the January 2020 EOL of Windows 7, arguing that by then, Microsoft would have "given enterprises plenty of time to get out from any under legacy burdens" shouldered by Windows 10 and its inclusion of IE11.
That didn't happen.
Clearly, Microsoft has consulted with enterprise customers, reviewed its Windows telemetry, or both, and decided that IE11 is still necessary. When those conditions flip, when the number and importance of those customers are outweighed by the hassle of maintaining IE, Microsoft will cut the browser loose. You can bet on it.
IE may have today, but there's no covenant that says it will have tomorrow."
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3572554/is-it-eol-for-...
Pasting the whole article here since it requires registration.
------
"Microsoft last week began a process that will, eventually if not immediately, result in it canning Internet Explorer (IE), the browser it's built since 1994.
Although IE survived this initial round of deprecations – or depredations, depending on your browser viewpoint – there's no guarantee that the final edition of IE will die a natural death in its bed.
Microsoft could kill it at almost any time.
Sinking fast IE's share of global browser activity has been shrinking, and sinking, fast. According to U.S.-based analytics company Net Applications, IE's share fell by nearly 40% between June 30, 2019 and June 30, 2020. If it continues that rate of decline, IE will account for just 2.8% of all browsing worldwide a year from now.
The browser's fall has been long, slow and with one exception, regular as clockwork. Computerworld's records of Net Applications' browser share data go back as far as January 2005, when IE controlled almost 90% of all share. Since then, it's been downhill for the browser, with only a recovery that started at the top of 2012 and ended two years later, to interrupt the trend line.
Net Applications' numbers don't count every instance of IE. In fact, because of the way the metrics vendor measures share, it's almost certain that it undercounts enterprise usage, perhaps substantially so. In other words, IE may be much more widely used than the numbers indicate.
Absent numbers from Microsoft itself, however, Net Applications' are as good as any. And those show IE running toward not just obsolesce – it's already there, been there for years – but to extermination.
It's no surprise that Microsoft has started to withdraw support.
The end begins Last week's support changes were relatively minor, but still telling.
On Nov. 30, the Teams web app will stop support IE11. Then, as of Aug. 17, 2021, all remaining Microsoft (and Office) 365 apps and services will no longer support IE11.
While that was a clear shot across IE11's bow and meant to wean enterprise users – the customers who run Microsoft (and Office) 365) – off the browser, Microsoft made clear that, for now, IE11 would remain on the support list. "We want to be clear that IE11 isn't going away,"
Microsoft said in the unsigned post that announced the support changes. "Our customers' own legacy IE11 apps and investments will continue to work. Customers have made business-critical investments in IE11 legacy apps and we respect that those apps are still functioning."
This promise of IE11's longevity was reminiscent of Microsoft's long-standing position that "Internet Explorer is a component of the Windows operating system and follows the Lifecycle Policy for the product on which it is installed." By that definition, IE11 will be supported on Windows 10 for the same length of time as the operating system itself.
The Microsoft (and Office) 365 support stick has been wielded by Microsoft before. Editions of the perpetual-licensed Office – Office 2010, 2103, 2016 and 2019 – drop connectivity support with Office 365's services starting in October 2020. Microsoft's goal? Shove customers to subscriptions, since Office 365's applications will never lose that support.
The Redmond, Wash. giant is throwing its weight around in a similar fashion as it denounces IE11. This time, though, the goal is to prod enterprises still using IE to abandon the browser, if not immediately then as soon as possible.
(Something important to remember: Microsoft's said that the lapsing support for Teams (November) and the rest of Microsoft 365 (August 2021) applies to Edge's IE mode, too. See this support document.)
When a deadline isn't one Microsoft's not cutting off customers cleanly. Microsoft 365 support for IE11 won't completely vanish on Aug. 17, 2021 – the apps and services will continue to run within IE11 – but over time the browser will become less and less compatible with those apps and services. "After the above dates, customers will have a degraded experience or will be unable to connect to Microsoft 365 apps and services on IE11," Microsoft said. "For degraded experiences, new Microsoft 365 features will not be available or certain features may cease to work when accessing the app or service via IE11."
Microsoft has defined end-of-support (EOL) like this before – frequently, in fact – but as in those instances, for IE11 it declined to specify a timeline, or spell out what feature or which functionality might vanish first from, say, Outlook on the web, or second from Teams. It likely doesn't even know at this point.
The important part of support, the only support for IE11, really, is security patches for newly-reported vulnerabilities. Microsoft has said nothing about when, or even if, it will halt those.
Support goes 'poof' Microsoft may have started to tug on IE11's plug, but it's not pulled it out.
So, when will it? At virtually any time.
There's nothing stopping Microsoft from ending all IE11 support whenever it feels like it, even though customers may believe differently, even though the company's own policies say it will support the browser as long as it does the operating systems of which IE is a component.
Here's why.
A support policy is no guarantee, and neither is Microsoft's word. The past is all the proof needed. In August 2014, Microsoft ordered Windows users to upgrade to the most-recent version of IE, and to do that by January 2016. The mandate scratched a year of support from IE7 (which was part of Windows Vista), four years from IE8 and IE9, and a whopping seven years from IE10 (a Windows 7 component).
Only IE11's support remained intact.
There is a more recent example – much more recent. If Edge – the original Edge, the one using the EdgeHTML rendering engine – was a component of Windows 10, and it was, how could Microsoft set March 9, 2021, as the date that browser receives its final security update? (That's what it did in the same announcement of IE11's support curtailment of last week.)
By all rights, the original Edge should be supported until the EOL of Windows 10 1909 and Windows 10 2004, the last two versions that came with that browser. (This fall's Windows 10 20H1 upgrade will be the first to include the newer, Chromium-based Edge.) Those dates? May 10, 2022, and Dec. 14, 2021, respectively. Microsoft is stopping old Edge's support 15 months early for Windows 10 1909 and 9 months earlier than promised for Windows 10 2004.
(And simply because the old and new versions of Edge carry the same name shouldn't let Microsoft off the hook here. The two are entirely different browsers from the ground up, as Microsoft has itself stressed.)
The point is that Microsoft has withdrawn previously-pledged support before, and could easily do so again. IE11 is no more immune than earlier iterations of that browser or Edge have been.
It could even use the same rationale to excuse the changes in policy. "Outdated browsers represent a major challenge in keeping the Web ecosystem safer and more secure, as modern Web browsers have better security protection," asserted an IE marketing executive in 2014 to explain why Microsoft would soon bar older versions. Microsoft could simply repurpose "outdated" as grounds for shutting down IE11 support; the browser has now gone untouched for more than four and a half years, and is even more behind rivals like Chrome, Chromium Edge and Firefox than that indicates.
Microsoft will undoubtedly give customers fair warning before IE11 falls off support. Based on past endings, figure six months minimum between announcement and deadline, but probably 12 or more months.
Will Microsoft give up on IE? And when? The answer to the first is easy: Yes, at some point. Contrary to protestations, IE isn't forever. Even Microsoft's pledges of continuance seem less than rock solid. "Customers have made business-critical investments in IE11 legacy apps and we respect that those apps are still functioning," Microsoft said.
But when? That's the question.
A year and a half ago, Computerworld's best answer was to point to the January 2020 EOL of Windows 7, arguing that by then, Microsoft would have "given enterprises plenty of time to get out from any under legacy burdens" shouldered by Windows 10 and its inclusion of IE11.
That didn't happen.
Clearly, Microsoft has consulted with enterprise customers, reviewed its Windows telemetry, or both, and decided that IE11 is still necessary. When those conditions flip, when the number and importance of those customers are outweighed by the hassle of maintaining IE, Microsoft will cut the browser loose. You can bet on it.
IE may have today, but there's no covenant that says it will have tomorrow."
I suppose IE and old Edge will be pushed to death as TLS 1.3 becomes mandatory on internet.
These browsers fail connect when TLS 1.3 is mandatory, warning the user that "cannot connect with the site that might be using insecure protocols"
These browsers fail connect when TLS 1.3 is mandatory, warning the user that "cannot connect with the site that might be using insecure protocols"
You can enable experimental support for TLS 1.3 on Internet Explorer for Windows 10 (not for older Windows) in the advanced options tab. You should also disable third party add-ons and enable enhanced protected mode. If you also disable jscript.dll[1] you will get all the benefits of the IE shell that was posted here without having to download anything.
[1] https://borncity.com/win/2020/01/18/warning-0-day-vulnerabil...
[1] https://borncity.com/win/2020/01/18/warning-0-day-vulnerabil...
Even if there is, will it be getting security updates or it will be a "use-it-at-your-own-risk optional feature"?
No, IE11 (including Trident, JScript, etc) will remain supported as long as Windows 10 is supported, as it's a built-in Windows component.
You're probably asking "Isn't IE on track to be phased out" because Microsoft recently announced that the web versions of Office, OneDrive etc will stop supporting IE11 in mid-2021.
IE11 will continue to be supported to make it easier for enterprises to upgrade their intranets over time. The new Chromium-based Edge actually has a deployment mode where you can use Group Policy to load some sites using the IE engine[1]. This requires the IE DLLs to be present on the system.
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode
You're probably asking "Isn't IE on track to be phased out" because Microsoft recently announced that the web versions of Office, OneDrive etc will stop supporting IE11 in mid-2021.
IE11 will continue to be supported to make it easier for enterprises to upgrade their intranets over time. The new Chromium-based Edge actually has a deployment mode where you can use Group Policy to load some sites using the IE engine[1]. This requires the IE DLLs to be present on the system.
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode
How did you turn Internet Explorer 8 into a 130kb EXE file? Why are you anonymous? Where is the source code?
I agree with you on the latter two points, but for the first one, it sounds like the application is using IE's rendering engine built into all versions of Windows. So the executable is super small given that all the heavy lifting is in libraries already on your system.
It's just using the MSHTML.DLL rendering engine built-in to Windows, sadly.
I don't know how the author of Nessie specifically did it, but generally on the .NET platform, you have access to the Trident rendering engine by adding the WebBrowser control to one of the forms of your new application. From there, you gain all the event based functions and callable methods you'd expect a browser to use. I've written several of these type of 'toy' browsers over the years, and they work just like IE does. The only caveat is that you have to patch the registry first to allow the control to report (and render as) a useragent above IE 8. You can set it to report/render as IE 11 as the maximum.
Via NuGet, you can download the WebBrowser2 control which is based on the new Edge Chromium based renderer. I haven't seen any new browsers using this properly yet (and I've not played with it either yet) - it will be good when people do, because although the renderer will still be Chromium, the browser UI can then be anything you want. I'm looking forward to people challenging the accepted browser UIs that we currently have.
Of course, if you want to avoid the WebBrowser2 control, there's webkit.NET and Embedded Chromium which also can be built to bind with .NET apps.
Via NuGet, you can download the WebBrowser2 control which is based on the new Edge Chromium based renderer. I haven't seen any new browsers using this properly yet (and I've not played with it either yet) - it will be good when people do, because although the renderer will still be Chromium, the browser UI can then be anything you want. I'm looking forward to people challenging the accepted browser UIs that we currently have.
Of course, if you want to avoid the WebBrowser2 control, there's webkit.NET and Embedded Chromium which also can be built to bind with .NET apps.
I thought I recognised your username!
In case Jaruzel's too shy to mention it, he wrote a Gopher browser for Windows. If you're reading this thread because you're interested in small web topics (Gopher, Gemini, Tilde.Town, NetSurf, alt browsers) then you might like his browser too. It was my gateway into Gopher.
http://www.jaruzel.com/gopher/gopher-client-browser-for-wind...
In case Jaruzel's too shy to mention it, he wrote a Gopher browser for Windows. If you're reading this thread because you're interested in small web topics (Gopher, Gemini, Tilde.Town, NetSurf, alt browsers) then you might like his browser too. It was my gateway into Gopher.
http://www.jaruzel.com/gopher/gopher-client-browser-for-wind...
Aww Shucks. Thank you!
I would absolutely love to have a new web browser out there. The internet needs this. Is it Windows-only? That seems slightly odd.
It's Windows-only because it's using the IE rendering engine made by Microsoft that comes built-in to Windows itself.
The difference with a new lightweight browser like NetSurf is that they actually have their own rendering engine crammed into their 12MB EXE (and it's cross-platform).
The difference with a new lightweight browser like NetSurf is that they actually have their own rendering engine crammed into their 12MB EXE (and it's cross-platform).
So this is just internet explorer with no back button?
Also without the slowness!
[Alt]+ [<-] or [->] works for going Back / Fwd
Interestingly Alt + N for new window and then Ctrl+Tab cycles the windows.
I like this old school workflow for some browsing tasks rather than tabs (but not all the time obviously)
[Alt]+ [<-] or [->] works for going Back / Fwd
Interestingly Alt + N for new window and then Ctrl+Tab cycles the windows.
I like this old school workflow for some browsing tasks rather than tabs (but not all the time obviously)
That means the slowness comes uniquely from IE, not from the engine? I find that surprising, for some reason. I would have imagined the browser UI would be easier to optimize.
No, because Internet Explorer is (was) not slow. That's just a meme, and it's incorrect.
IE was slow. The meme is from when this was accurate information. IE 10 and 11 made it mostly competitive.
The Edge browser was pretty decent, awful tracking aside. Arguably better than Chrome in many aspects.
The Edge browser was pretty decent, awful tracking aside. Arguably better than Chrome in many aspects.
The original Maxthon or TheWorld browsers worked exactly like this.
Maxthon switched dynamically from trident to webkit.
The best browser performance wise is the one that switch it's engine on demand depending of a known list of websites being faster on engine X or Y
My needing to rely on one modern browser engine is already too much software complexity for my tastes.
In other words, I would have preferred to be able to live a typical day of my life without relying on any software as complicated (and consequently difficult for me to predict and control) as a modern browser engine.
So, arranging for that typical day to be reliant on two browser engines is something I will strenuously try to avoid.
In other words, I would have preferred to be able to live a typical day of my life without relying on any software as complicated (and consequently difficult for me to predict and control) as a modern browser engine.
So, arranging for that typical day to be reliant on two browser engines is something I will strenuously try to avoid.
How do you view operating systems and kernels? They're pretty complex as well.
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Can we add "for Windows" to the title?
Indeed. I didn't stop reading when I hit "Trident layout engine". I stopped reading at "Requirements: Windows 7 or later."
Though I should have assumed as much given "trident layout engine", but here I was hoping this had been open sourced or something along those lines.
I absolutely do not want to speak ill of anyone's project. But let's judge it for what it is... it's a windows only, MSHTML based, proprietary software.
At that point, it honestly doesn't matter what it can do, or how it does it. It's already off to the worst possible start for any hope of adoption. And it will likely never see the light of day on either Linux or MacOS. Porting it would tantamount to writing it again from scratch.
That said, if it works for windows users. It's not like it is a bad contribution. So kudos for that.
On a less polite opinion: I honestly think a core component such as a web rendering engine that is locked to a OS (pretty much exclusively Trident/EdgeHTML) does the world way more harm than good. Any project with some kind of future prospects of not being windows-only, does themselves disservice for picking Edge. Valve did this with steam. I don't know how painless the transition was when moving to WebKit and then to Chromium, but I'm sure it wasn't free.
Though I should have assumed as much given "trident layout engine", but here I was hoping this had been open sourced or something along those lines.
I absolutely do not want to speak ill of anyone's project. But let's judge it for what it is... it's a windows only, MSHTML based, proprietary software.
At that point, it honestly doesn't matter what it can do, or how it does it. It's already off to the worst possible start for any hope of adoption. And it will likely never see the light of day on either Linux or MacOS. Porting it would tantamount to writing it again from scratch.
That said, if it works for windows users. It's not like it is a bad contribution. So kudos for that.
On a less polite opinion: I honestly think a core component such as a web rendering engine that is locked to a OS (pretty much exclusively Trident/EdgeHTML) does the world way more harm than good. Any project with some kind of future prospects of not being windows-only, does themselves disservice for picking Edge. Valve did this with steam. I don't know how painless the transition was when moving to WebKit and then to Chromium, but I'm sure it wasn't free.
Same. If I care about a browser being
> ● Privacy-oriented: zero behavior tracking, zero telemetry > ● Lightning-fast startup time > ● Tiny binary size > ● Low RAM usage
why would I use an OS that’s the opposite of all of these? In particular, why would I trust a proprietary application to be “privacy-oriented”?
> ● Privacy-oriented: zero behavior tracking, zero telemetry > ● Lightning-fast startup time > ● Tiny binary size > ● Low RAM usage
why would I use an OS that’s the opposite of all of these? In particular, why would I trust a proprietary application to be “privacy-oriented”?
The prosumer market is huge and mostly Windows. Most dev work is still mostly Windows (I think). HN is an anomaly.
45.8% of respondents used primarily Windows on the 2020 Stack Overflow survey https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-de.... I’d guess that’s less than 45% of dev work, including a lot of less experienced or productive devs (~20% of the respondents weren’t professional devs https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#work-employme...). Linux is the most loved platform and wanted “OS”, and Windows is the most dreaded OS except Android by 0.4%. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-mo...
HN is pretty average. Windows is less than half for devs (but is still the largest OS share).
However, as is expected, those chosing to go out of their way to change their machines would naturally be more vocal than those that are indifferent to what it runs.
However, as is expected, those chosing to go out of their way to change their machines would naturally be more vocal than those that are indifferent to what it runs.
Well, someone in this comment tree linked stats, but I think those stats and the stats most people that visit this site come up with via observation understate how many boring jobs there are in e.g. fortune 5000 companies doing Windows-centric work.
There will always be bias in stats, but the numbers are from SO surveys - I don't think SO is going to have "boring" Windows-centric development underrepresented. I'd assume the contrary.
> HN is pretty average.
Maybe on SF.
Maybe on SF.
Yes please, have not used windows for 15+ years here, I heard it is embracing linux nowadays, a typical microsoft move, the traditional trojan horse approach.
277KB is still a bit large for something that just embeds the IE webview... it reminds me of this one (original site is now gone, had to look in the archive) which is only 2.7KB(!):
http://web.archive.org/web/20081226192818/http://www.kakeewa...
http://web.archive.org/web/20081226192818/http://www.kakeewa...
This is impressive. It launches and runs in Windows 10 - can not not figure out how to use it thought :O
>Its codebase is very small (about 2500 LoC currently) and could be open sourced in the next few months if the project gains enough traction and support.
Why not open source it from the start?
Why not open source it from the start?
Yeah, that seems like a chicken-and-egg problem to me as well.
This isn't a particularly noteworthy project -- I know a few people who made the same thing to try out the IE webview.
I'd be more impressed if the webview was introduced by not using a OS component.
I'd be more impressed if the webview was introduced by not using a OS component.
Yeah, at this point I view “install closed source software from a not-well-known source” as a very high risk choice. I was thinking of adding this to my set of tertiary browsers, until I couldn’t find the license/source. I wish them well but closed source is a no-go for me.
Open source it, or else it is just a marketing stunt.
They're like one of those disgraceful doctors on Facebook that will only rid a child of cancer if they reach 100k likes.
There's a new term for this type of software distribution. Sponsorware. Wherein, the maintainer only open sources the project if they get enough people to pay them a monthly sponsor fee.
UX reminds me of WannaBe for the Mac, which was far ahead of its time on that front.
Windows only!
> lightweight skin for the deprecated Internet Explorer
Fix't it for ya.
Fix't it for ya.
I think I would actually take dillo with an updated chrome over this: if I am to use two web browsers, I don't necessarily need javascript on both.
dillo lacks a good UI for bookmarks, a browsing history (by choice, but I like those), touch support (for postmarketos/mobile), wayland support, as well as some https quirks. Otherwise, I like it a lot.
dillo lacks a good UI for bookmarks, a browsing history (by choice, but I like those), touch support (for postmarketos/mobile), wayland support, as well as some https quirks. Otherwise, I like it a lot.