Microsoft (Briefly) Reveals New Extensions For Edge, Including Reddit and Pinterest

An anonymous reader writes: A now-inactive page at a Microsoft Azure development sites shows a page that reveals the first two extensions for the Microsoft Edge browser to be Pinterest and a port of the Reddit Enhancement Suite for Google Chrome. The page was identified by Twitter user H0x0d, and is now only accessible via Google Cache.

What makes this legitimate?

[brantgurga]

There is nothing in the page's content or about its place of publication that suggests it to be potentially legitimate. I could have easily come up with a page published on Azure that had been unpublished to have this situation. This could be a hoax. I wouldn't trust anything about it until properly acknowledge or published by Microsoft.

Re:

[lucm]

I could have easily come up with a page published on Azure

I guess that's why I got my identity stolen after providing my login info on a form on microsoftazureaccountsloginlol.azurewebsites.net. In hindsight, it was weird that they also asked my Facebook password and my credit card number.

Re:

[Dutch Gun]

True, but if it's a hoax, it would have to be one of the lamest topics I could think of. Is anyone so enthusiastic about the new Edge browser that they'd go to so much trouble? I'd guess someone just stumbled on an internal testing site they weren't supposed to see, that's all. And it's not like those plugins sound all that implausible for a couple of early tests.

Re: What makes this legitimate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it's Microsoft trying to get publicity through viral marketing. The old "pretend people are talking about your product when really it's just you" trick.

Appification

[Vlijmen Fileer]

Another stab at appification of the open internet.
The only reason companies keep doing, trying this, is because internet via a browser, using open standards, does not give them the leeway they desire.
The leeway to force ads upon us without recourse, to implement artifical profit models that would be defeatable if people keep using open internet via open standards and open software.
God I hope it fails, fails horribly.

Re:

[kwoff]

Yeah, until mobile devices there was a trend toward single web application running in any browser. Now every company has not only web devs, but also IOS and Android devs. There needs to be an equivalent of an "app browser" to run "apps" everywhere.

Re:

[Slashdot Junky]

There needs to be an equivalent of an "app browser" to run "apps" everywhere.

I'd rather we not appify everything and, instead, get back to having just websites. I'd also like see everyone accept that every application used by Joe User doesn't need to be reimplemented as a damn website or made dependent on the cloud.

Anybody actually using Edge?

[RogueyWon]

A genuine question (though possibly not one best directed at Slashdot) - is anybody actually using Edge?

I've moved to Win10 Pro on my home machine and am mostly pretty happy with it (having disabled or blocked the phone-home nastiness). But Edge in its current state seems fairly shocking. It lacks basic functionality that we've taken for granted in other desktop browsers for years. You can't even change the folder it saves downloads to without manual registry editing. All told, it feels like an attempt to do a lightweight phone/tablet browser on the desktop (and I thought MS had learned that desktop/laptop users don't like that crap after the Windows 8 start menu fiasco).

Given that there's nothing to stop you using other browsers (including Internet Explorer) on Win10, I just can't imagine why anybody would be using Edge right now.

And don't get me started about the Windows 10 mail client, which is, if anything, even more primitive than the one on my phone. Why on earth they replaced the perfectly serviceable Windows Live Mail with that catastrophe I have no idea.

Re:Anybody actually using Edge?

[Tx]

I was wondering the same thing. Tried it when first upgrading a couple of machines to Windows 10, ignored it ever since. From a quick search, Edge seems to be roughly in the 1.7-2.8% market share range (e.g. netmarketshare [netmarketshare.com]) this month, which actually seems seems high to me; since Windows 10 has 9% of the desktop OS market share for the same timeframe, that means fully a quarter of Windows 10 users are finding Edge good enough to stick with it. Then again, I guess for basic web browsing by non-technical users, it probably does the job; that segment of users probably wouldn't know about or use the features that Edge is missing even if it had them, so that's probably reasonable.

Re: Anybody actually using Edge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

For the majority of people who just use a browser for email/facebook/YouTube/reading the news, edge is more than good enough. And it just works, so the users don't even look for anything else.

Edge is the perfect bundled browser. Good enough to do everything Joe Average wants to do, yet simple enough to not overwhelm him. And if advanced users want IE/Firefox/Chrome, they will know how to get them.

Re:Anybody actually using Edge?

[damnbunni]

I have a Windows 10 tablet, and Edge is the primary browser I use on it.

It's the only browser that even comes close to having a touch-capable UI. Both Firefox and Chrome removed their touch UIs.

Touch UIs suck on a desktop but they're rather important when you're using a, you know, touch device.

If I'm using my tablet with a keyboard and mouse I usually use something else because Edge lacks adblock, but that's not a terribly common situation.

Of the non-Edge browsers I've tried, Opera comes closest to being usable on a 9" touchscreen, but it's still pretty rough.

Re:

[Ayanami_R]

I have had the same experience. FF and Chrome are simply terrible in a touch environment. Pinch to zoom is jerky, and chrome still has high dpi issues. Opera is much better zooming, but does not support the system back button properly. All three have seemed to either ignore that there are these things called "hybrid notebooks" or just didn't care. Edge however, buttery smooth, no high dpi issues, works properly with touch. I use it full time for places I trust, and have opera as a backup.

Re:

[Ravaldy]

They did a few things right with Edge. They stripped out all the garbage that was causing the browser to be slow and they removed activeX support as well as other security plague technologies.

Initially I didn't like how the tab system worked but the latest patch seems to have fixed it since I haven't found myself fighting with it.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome is increasingly annoying, I've started using edge for pretty much every site that doesn't need adblock or I can't remember my password (lastpass extension). I'll probably move lastpass to the desktop to avoid that hiccup but for not it doesn't make a difference (what's another window right?).

Edge has been good though I hate that you can't drag text to the tabs at the top to open a search window. That's a much needed feature, it's much faster than highlighting, right click, and clicking search. Loads

Re:Anybody actually using Edge?

[dave420]

I use it quite a bit on my media PC, as the PC is rather underpowered, and the entire Edge rendering is hardware accelerated, including flash video. Chrome is nearly as quick on that PC, but it just doesn't have the hardware acceleration that Edge offers. The lack of extensions is very noticeable, as is the lack of quite a few other standard browser features, but that will improve over time.

So yes, people are using Edge, because it already can do some things other browsers can't.

Re:

[cfalcon]

> it already can do some things other browsers can't

Well, it's on Windows 10, which already does a bunch of ludicrous things no other OS does. So I wouldn't get sold over some dubious hardware acceleration. We know what Microsoft does when they have even a moderate amount of browsershare, after all.

Re:

[MobyDisk]

Edge is crippled in the same way that the other Windows 10 applications are. Unless you are on a tablet or a phone, just use Chrome or Firefox.

• Windows 8 applications were totally crippled, down to phone/tablet functionality. But at least you had the "old" desktop apps to fall back to.
• Windows 10 applications are better, but still not as good as regular desktop apps. Only now you don't have the "old" desktop apps to fall back to.

It is kinda like going back to the old days of Windows, when Microsoft didn't

Re:

[MobyDisk]

I meant the "old" built-in apps. Ex: Under Windows 8, you can still run the "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer" if you want the full functionality. You can still run the "old" IE11 app. They removed those in Windows 10. Sorry for not being clear.

Re:

[unixisc]

For most of my work, since I'm doing it on PC-BSD, I do it on either Firefox or Chromium (neither Palemoon nor Chrome available here). But on the occasions that I use my Windows 10 computers, I have left Edge as the default.

I however do really minor stuff on it - like if I'm doing a default web search, or going to a site to just download something. So far, I've not tried doing major stuff on it. I do wish that on my Winbook, where I have only 32GB of storage, I had the option of removing Internet

Re:

[unencode200x]

True, but I've done something that works for me. For work we use Outlook/Exchange. I set up the Windows 10 email client and the calendar app *and* Outlook. It give you the best of both worlds. For example, you get calendar reminders/alerts at the login screen and Start menu. Sort of like it is on my Mac, except that you aren't forced to click Close to get rid of the reminders which can be quite annoying when you keep a very busy schedule. Emails appear on the Start menu too if you like. It's really useful,

Sounds like the Microsoft plan

[Dunbal]

Step 1 - embrace...

Re:Sounds like the Microsoft plan

[Gadget_Guy]

Step 1 - embrace...

Seriously? How exactly does this sound like "embrace, extend, extinguish"? What are they embracing? What have they extended (other than their own browser)? What could they possibly extinguish?

According to the cached document, the extensions were attributed to pinterest.com and redditenhancementsuite.com - who were also the authors of the same extensions for all the other browsers. Do you just see the name Microsoft and blinding spout out FUD even though there is not a single similarity to the old EEE scenario?

Re:

[dave420]

It doesn't matter. It's Microsoft, so some people will complain due to tradition.

Something we don't care about

[ITRambo]

First, no one uses Edge as their sole brower. It doesn't work with all websites yet. Second, who cares about Pinterest and Reddit extensions? That's just weird.

yuck

[CimmerianX]

For me, it's the whole 'flat' look that everyone and their mothers are implementing. I can't stand it. I'll pass on an application just because it has this design.

Use Google Chrome-like extension interface?

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

I seem to recall reading that Edge (like Firefox) will be using the same extension interface as Google Chrome. Obviously, that would make porting existing extensions to Edge rather easy.

Does anyone know if this is still actually the case, or have they, you know, "changed a few things"?