JSJ 404: Edge on Chromium with Chris Heilmann

Guests Chris heilmann and Zohair Ali are developers for Microsoft working on the Edge project. Today they are talking about Edge on Chromium and the future of developer tools. Edge will now be built in Chromium rather than being its own engine, aligning it more with what is being used on the open web right now. The Edge team wanted to seize the opportunity to bring something into the Chromium project based on the needs of real users and contribute to the open source web. Edge on Chromium won’t be limited to Windows 10 either, but will be available on Mac, Windows 7, and Windows 8. This project is still in beta with no set release date, so the Edge team is looking for people to test it out on Mac and tell them how it works.

Show Notes

Guests Chris heilmann and Zohair Ali are developers for Microsoft working on the Edge project. Today they are talking about Edge on Chromium and the future of developer tools. Edge will now be built in Chromium rather than being its own engine, aligning it more with what is being used on the open web right now. The Edge team wanted to seize the opportunity to bring something into the Chromium project based on the needs of real users and contribute to the open source web. Edge on Chromium won’t be limited to Windows 10 either, but will be available on Mac, Windows 7, and Windows 8. This project is still in beta with no set release date, so the Edge team is looking for people to test it out on Mac and tell them how it works. 
Chris and Zohair talk about the different parts of a web browser and what distinguishes Chrome from Chromium.  Chromium is not just a platform, it’s an entire browser that you can install. Google adds a bunch of Google services to Chromium, such as being able to sign into your Google account,  and that’s how you get Google Chrome. Similarly, the new Edge adds its own features on top of Chromium, so you can sign into your Microsoft account. By now the browser engines are so similar to each other that the users are looking for the user experience, interface, and services around it, so it made more sense for the Edge team to contribute to Chromium than to maintain their own engine and help it improve.
Chris and Zohair talk about some of the features in Edge on Chromium. One service they’re particularly excited about is the Collections feature, where you can drag images, text, etc into Collections and export it to Excel or Word. Collections was inspired by what users need, and they talk about some of the different use cases for it. The new Edge on Chromium will also have an IE mode for products that still require IE 11. If you define what services need IE 11, Edge will open an IE 11 tab within the browser so you will not have to jump between browsers. Unfortunately, this feature is only available on Windows. Edge on Chromium will also offer an integration with VS Code, called Elements for VS Code, which takes part of the developer tools from Edge and puts it inside VS Code. Since the tools are based on Chromium, it stays in the same context all the time so you don’t have to jump back and forth, and you can see the changes live in your browser. This feature is in beta right now and they are looking for people to test it. 
The Edge team talks about their process for creating tools. They are working on putting their tools into other languages so that they are accessible to more people. They talk about how they want to avoid creating Edge specific tools as much as possible because they want to make it better for everybody. One of their biggest struggles is everybody demands developer tools, but nobody wants to contribute, so they don’t have as much feedback and not as much outside contribution. That’s why they keep calling for people to try out the new Edge on Chromium and give them feedback. They want to make that change more transparent so that they build things that people want. They will have to make some of their own tools, but they make sure that they don’t have any third party dependencies. They mention that all Chrome extensions are compatible with Edge, so if it’s available in the Chrome webstore, you can add it to Edge, you just have to be sure to allow it. They talk about some of the testing tools available. The show concludes with a discussion of the fate of Chakra Node. 
Panelists
  • AJ O’Neal
  • Aimee Knight
  • Dan Shapir
  • Steve Edwards
With special guests: Chris Heilmann and Zohair Ali
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Transcript


Hey folks, I'm a super busy guy and you probably are too. You probably have a lot going on with kids going back to school, maybe some new projects at work. You've got open source stuff you're doing or a blog or a podcast or who knows what else, right? But you've got stuff going on and if you've got a lot of stuff going on, it's really hard to do the things that you need to do in order to stay healthy. And one of those things, at least for me, is eating healthy. So when I'm in the middle of a project or I just got off a call with a client or something like that, a lot of times I'm running downstairs, seeing what I can find that's easy to make in a minute or two, and then running back upstairs. And so sometimes that turns out to be popcorn or crackers or something little. Or if not that, then something that at least isn't all that healthy for me to eat. Uh, the other issue I have is that I've been eating keto for my diabetes and it really makes a major difference for me as far as my ability to feel good if I'm eating well versus eating stuff that I shouldn't eat. And so I was looking around to try and find something that would work out for me and I found these Factor meals. Now Factor is great because A, they're healthy. They actually had a keto line that I could get for my stuff and that made a major difference for me because all I had to do was pick it up, put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and it was done. They're fresh and never frozen. They do send it to you in a cold pack. It's awesome. They also have a gourmet plus option that's cooked by chefs and it's got all the good stuff like broccolini, truffle butter, asparagus, so good. And, uh, you know, you can get lunch, you can get dinner. Uh, they have options that are high calorie, low calorie, um, protein plus meals with 30 grams or more of protein. Anyway, they've got all kinds of options. So you can round that out, you can get snacks like apple cinnamon pancakes or butter and cheddar egg bites, potato, bacon and egg, breakfast skillet. You know, obviously if I'm eating keto, I don't do all of that stuff. They have smoothies, they have shakes, they have juices. Anyway, they've got all kinds of stuff and it is all healthy and like I said, it's never frozen. So anyway, I ate them, I loved them, tasted great. And like I said, you can get them cooked. It says two minutes on the package. I found that it took it about three minutes for mine to cook, but three minutes is fast and easy and then I can get back to writing code. So if you want to go check out Factor, go check it out at factormeals. Head to factormeals.com slash JSJabber50 and use the code JSJabber50 to get 50% off. That's code JSJabber50 at factormeals.com slash JSJabber50 to get 50% off.

Hey folks, I'm a super busy guy and you probably are too. You probably have a lot going on with kids going back to school, maybe some new projects at work. You've got open source stuff you're doing or a blog or a podcast or who knows what else, right? But you've got stuff going on and if you've got a lot of stuff going on, it's really hard to do the things that you need to do in order to stay healthy. And one of those things, at least for me, is eating healthy. So when I'm in the middle of a project or I just got off a call with a client or something like that. A lot of times I'm running downstairs, seeing what I can find that's easy to make in a minute or two, and then running back upstairs. And so sometimes that turns out to be popcorn or crackers or something little, or if not that, then something that at least isn't all that healthy for me to eat. Uh, the other issue I have is that I've been eating keto for my diabetes and it really makes a major difference for me as far as my ability to feel good if I'm eating well versus eating stuff that I shouldn't eat. And so, um, I was looking around to try and find something that would work out for me and I found these factor meals. Now factor is great because a, they're healthy. They actually had a keto, uh, line that I could get for my stuff. And that made a major difference for me because all I had to do is pick it up, put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and it was done. Um, they're fresh and never frozen. They do send it to you in a cold pack, it's awesome. They also have a gourmet plus option that's cooked by chefs and it's got all the good stuff like broccolini, truffle butter, asparagus, so good. And you can get lunch, you can get dinner. They have options that are high calorie, low calorie, protein plus meals with 30 grams or more protein. Anyway, they've got all kinds of options. So you can round that out, you can get snacks like apple cinnamon pancakes or butter and cheddar egg bites, potato bacon and egg, breakfast skillet, you know obviously if I'm eating keto I don't do all of that stuff. They have smoothies, they have shakes, they have juices, anyway they've got all kinds of stuff and it is all healthy and like I said it's never frozen. So anyway I ate them, I loved them, tasted great and like I said you can get them cooked. It says two minutes on the package. I found that it took it about three minutes for mine to cook, but three minutes is fast and easy and then I can get back to writing code. So if you want to go check out Factor, go check it out at factormeals, head to factormeals.com slash JSJabber50 and use the code JSJabber50 to get 50% off. That's code JSJabber50 at factormeals.com slash JSJabber50 to get 50% off.

 

AJ_O’NEAL: Episode 1,300,006.4. Welcome to JavaScript Jabber. On this week's episode, we have. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: AJ, does that mean you're kicking it off now? 

AJ_O’NEAL: Nope, that was it. I just. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: Well, I think we're gonna roll with that. Okay, I'll carry it. All right. We have our panelists, myself, Amy Knight and coming at you from Nashville, AJ. 

AJ_O’NEAL: Yo, yo, yo. You got gray haired AJ, the wizard, the gray. Coming at you from sunny freezing Provo. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: Oh man. Dan. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: Hi, all the way from Tel Aviv, which where it surprisingly rained today, but it's still really hot. So yeah.

AIMEE_KNIGHT: Hello, Steve. 

STEVE_EDWARDS: Hello from Portland, from the left coast.

AIMEE_KNIGHT: And today we have two special guests. We have Chris Heilman. You want to say hi? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Hello, Chris Heilman from Berlin, Germany here. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: And we have Zohair, and I'm going to let him pronounce the rest of his name. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: Yeah, so I'm Zohair Ghidiali. I'm from Seattle, also on the upper left. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: Awesome. 

 

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AIMEE_KNIGHT: Today we are talking about Edge on Chromium and the future of developer tools. So I think we probably should even like take a step back for people who may not be aware. So Edge on Chromium is also something new. So either one of you, Zohair or Chris, if you want to give us a brief description of what you're planning on talking about today. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: OK, I can take that on. So I did a JavaScript job a few months ago where he was very excited, where you were excited about talking about the change that we're doing to the Edge browser on Windows. We didn't have enough time for it, so we wanted to have a special edition of that where we now have. Soher and me from the Edge team in Microsoft to answer a few of the questions that people might have. So if you haven't realized it yet, there is a new Edge coming out, which is based on Chromium. So it's not its own engine any longer. So we're aligning it much more with what is being used on the open web by people right now. And we have an opportunity right now to bring something into the Chromium project that comes from the needs of millions of Windows users and especially our enterprise clients and also our internal needs in the company. So we decided to go for the Chromium engine to actually give a browser out or contribute what we need in our browser back to an open-source project that kind of runs the open web right now. So there were a few questions about that, and now we have a longer episode to actually answer all these questions. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: To give it a try, you can just head to microsoftedgeinsider.com. We have preview builds already published and ready for you to download and try out.

CHRIS_HEILMANN: And that's not only on Windows, that's one of the biggest changes as well that people on Macs, I'm actually on my Mac right now here, can use that right now as well. So we need a lot of people to give that a go and see what they're thinking if it integrates nice with the operating system or not. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: And it's not just Windows 10, we also go to down level Windows now, 7, 8.1, 8, whatever version you're running. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: So I also have it installed on my Mac, and that's excellent. I really enjoy using it and it works really well so far I've not encountered any problems with it. I just wanted to clarify though. So it means that it's also going to be the end of edge on edge HTML, correct? Or I think that was the name of the engine you were using or are currently still using. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: Yeah, I can take that. That is correct. Uh, we are no longer continuing to, you know, develop an advanced edge HTML. The edge browser will now be built using the Chromium web platform. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: I'd love to kind of shape our episode. So like I dove into this a couple of years ago when I did a talk on how the browser renders CSS, but could you kind of give us like maybe a little bit of an intro to like the architecture of a browser and like the difference between Chrome, Chromium, what you mean by like the browser engine and the various parts to it? We don't have to spend like too much time on that, but I think it would be interesting so people can kind of picture the architecture in their head as we're talking about this. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: I can try to do a little bit about this and Chris, you can correct me if I say anything wrong. Okay. So basically one way to think about browsers is kind of like the way we think about websites or like a front end and a backend. So like what I call like the front end of the browser is like the browser Chrome. It's the tabs and it's the history. It's what you interact with. And then when we're talking about what the backend of a browser looks like, that's where we talk about, you know, the HTML rendering. So what actually parses the HTML that the server returns and like draws the rectangles and draws the elements and the text and colors and animations and things like that. So that's part of it. That's HTML rendering. Then you have the JavaScript engine. And so that's the part that's actually running the JavaScript code. It'll run your react code. It'll run your transpiled compiled react code, all that jazz. What we call edge HTML was kind of a way to refer to Microsoft's in-house web platform that powered the old edge browser. So the, we, you know, we had tried it, which was the name for our HTML render. And then we had Chakra, which was the name of our JavaScript engine that was actually open-sourced and you know, we had a bit of a community around that. When we talk about what Chromium's web platform looks like, their JavaScript engine is called V8. I actually don't know what their HTML rendering thing is called, if they have a name for it. But basically what, yeah, it's blank. My bad. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Chromium is entirely, it's not just a web platform. It actually is an entire browser. Like you can go and you can install the Chromium browser if that's what you want to do. What the Google team does is they take Chromium and they add a bunch of Google services to it. And that's kind of how you go from Chromium to Google Chrome. Opera does this as well, Brave and Vivaldi. These are all Chromium based browsers. Let's start from the same place and then kind of take the browser and evolve it as they need to add their own features and stuff like that. So we are doing a similar thing with Microsoft Edge now. 

AJ_O’NEAL: So everybody has their own spyware and rebrands it to attract their customers. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: No, actually not at all. The interesting bit about it is that we just talked earlier before the show of how I used to work with Netscape and old browsers and everything. By now, the browser engines are so similar to each other that what users actually want to have from a browser is much more about the UX of the browser itself, what the interface is giving you, and the services around it as well. When the first browser started offering you to translate websites, when the first browsers had an easy reader mode. That is what end users are much more excited about. So we were looking into like how much effort we put into maintaining our own engine, but it would make more sense to contribute to the engine itself. And as you said, if it's an open-source project has more than one company maintaining it and several companies playing into it, then it's actually much harder to put something nefarious like you alluded to into that system. So one of the big things that we're thinking about with the new edge browser is actually having a lot of tracking protection on a very granular level in there and not just say like, okay, we are helping you to actually stop trackers, but you can set the level that you want tracking to happen. And a lot of it is also taking third-party dependencies out of the engine itself. So it actually runs only on your machine and not something that keeps calling back to somewhere. That is also a performance thing. If I'm in China or if I'm in India. I don't want my browser to actually call back to an American server all the time, because that would make it slow. So we had a lot of opportunities to take the engine and clean it out and upstream it back into the Chromium project as well. So one of the big things we're doing when it comes to rendering, when it comes to the performance of the system itself, that one all goes back into the Chromium project and not only in Edge. So by that, we're actually making all the browsers based on Chromium better and very much the privacy and the security of it is something that we need to be very concerned about as a company like Microsoft because we have a lot of customers that are from the enterprise base that have a totally different approach to that than a normal end user would have. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: I also wanted to be... Oh, sorry. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: I was just going to say that this is very interesting because I remember where Google's like incentive to split a blink out of WebKit was to get rid of a lot of Apple related stuff and and things that they said that were slowing the browser down because they were no longer needed or stuff like that. So it's interesting that in a way you're saying that you're kind of doing something similar now on top of Chromium. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Well we're not necessarily doing the changes to our ones. We're not forking at all. We're actually contributing back to the Chromium project everything we put in there except for the interface elements or things that are Windows specific that only make sense in our environment. But we're actually contributing to the performance improvements and security improvements of the Chromium core itself. The split from WebKit to Blink was a longer time ago. And a lot of it was also quality of code or the way Google back then said they want to build things. So there's a lot of changes already. We are already in discussion with Google about a few things that are happening in Chromium right now that we're we're helping with re-architecting some of the things in there. So more eyes on the project actually help with that rather than like, oh, we're going to take it away and do our own thing. That's the last thing we want to do because that would negate the whole idea of using something that already is existing. We might as well have stayed with our own engine then if we wanted that. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: I just wanted to be really crisp about like kind of what these services are. So like to go from Chromium to Google Chrome, Google ads the ability to sign in with your Google account and you know, like have all of your settings persistent as you sign into Chrome on a different device with your Google account. We do a similar thing where we add the Microsoft account MSA. But what we can now do with that is like one of our enterprise features is we can customize the new tab page with all of the documents, all of the data from Office that we have using the Microsoft Graph. That's what we mean when we say we add our services into Chromium to build Microsoft Edge or on top of Chromium. 

STEVE_EDWARDS: What's interesting is I was about this, you're talking about adding stuff on top of it. I remember listening to the episode with Douglas Crockford from a few weeks ago. And one of the things he specifically mentioned back in the Netscape days was how they had these browsers and they were adding all kinds of features on top of them, you know, reading your email and this and that and the other thing. And they realized that that was getting in the way or I don't remember the reasoning, but they ended up just finally stripping a lot of that stuff off because people just wanted a browser itself. And it seems to me that we sort of come full circle. And correct me if I'm wrong here, in that we're taking the basic browser now that it's sort of homogenized across the different engines and adding stuff back onto it. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: No, the changes that we're doing right now are mostly on the interface of the browser itself. Like when I remember Netscape, Communicator was basically, it was a what you see is what you get editor. It was an email client, it was a chat client, and it was a browser and everything in one go. Opera had that at the beginning as well, that it actually had an IRC client in there, even under BitTorrent client inside the browser. And over the years, they stripped those things out again and made them much skinnier. I mean, most of the browsers nowadays, I mean, you even see it in the interface itself, have gone in the background and are not like in your face any longer. In essence, the web content that's actually you're consuming with the browser is something that we want you to actually have a great time with and do something with. One of the services, for example, that we have in the browser is an immersive reader that right now turns a website into something like an ebook. You don't have all the ads and the automatically playing videos, but you can actually just read the content of the thing and you can get it read out to you with generated voices as well. You can change the font sizes to what you need in terms of accessibility and you also make it easier to consume websites that way. So that's the kind of services that we have, not like build a toolset of like different user interfaces inside the browser. All the browsers that I know right now are actually very much about like. We help you to consume content on the web and make it as easy as possible and accessible as possible. So an accessibility and simplicity is very much on our main radar as well to make it available for everybody to have a browser and to surf the web. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: Yeah, like Chris said, one of the features that we've started to turn on in the browser is called collections. And it's entirely geared around the idea that it's really hard right now to kind of gather a bunch of information on the web when you have like 80 tabs open, it's kind of hard to put all of that in one place. And so collections is a feature that's built directly into the browser, tell you to drag images, drag text, drag, you know, if you were planning a trip, if you were comparing prices for different types of cameras that you were looking to buy, you can put all of that information into a collection and then export it directly to AccelerWord and work with it further from there. And so that's really kind of the area that we're looking at is how can we make browsing and people on the web more productive? 

DAN_SHAPPIR: So if I look at a feature like Collections, for example, is that a feature that's going to be specifically part of Edge? Or is that something that you think might be making its way into Chromium and from there to all Chromium-based browsers? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: That will be specific to Edge, mostly because we don't want any UI elements that are not necessarily part of the web standards or part of a web view to actually go into Chromium, because that would actually limit the reuse of Chromium because Chrome wants to have their own interface. The Samsung browser has a completely different interface. So the idea of the UI of the browser and UX of the browser is how browsers actually differentiate with each other. We have other things that we're considering bringing back to the platform, like the accessibility enhancements that we put in there, like keyboard accessibility for developer tools that we didn't have before, for example and the opportunity to localize some of the interfaces in the browser as well, because they haven't been localized yet in the Chromium space as much as we need to. But features like the collections are something that is a differentiator for the browser and also makes more sense right now, as Saur said, when you're also considering the export to Word and export to Excel. Like, Google would probably not be too excited about having an export to Word in their browser, so it makes no sense to send that back to the main core of Chromium. The fun thing about that collection thing though, and I don't want to go too much into it because we're actually from the DevTools team, but the fun thing is that we actually built that after we did research, what people need. So a lot of the new features that will go into the browser and that's where we need all of you listeners and you as well, tell us what makes sense to you. And then we actually validate it with end users and then we build it. We are kind of done with the idea of inventing something, throwing it in the browser, and hoping people love it. It makes much more sense to actually do three or four rounds of user testing to find the proper needs. And the collection was something that, for example, teachers kept telling us it's a great idea to do assignments for kids to search the internet and put a document or an Excel document together. And other people said, when I'm shopping, I love to do that. Or when I'm planning a party or I'm planning a wedding, this is a great feature to have. The fun thing is, when I looked at collections the first time, I worked for Yahoo and we had like. In hack days, we build things like that for the web as like a toolbar for all the browsers back then. So these ideas keep cropping up, but nowadays we have actually the right interfaces in the browser to make them look smooth as well. So I'm very happy that these ideas come back. But it's a very big goal of us to only build things that people really want to use, because right now browsers are kind of overloaded already, especially when it comes to developer tools. You open them, there's lots of tools that you never touch that are just there for a specialist need, for a specialist time, and they're still in your way. So we're actually reconsidering some of the UX of developer tools right now as well. So hopefully something will come out of that. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: So before we move to developer tools, I'll show you one suggestion for a feature that I've kind of been wishing for browsers to have for years, and I'm still surprised that no browser actually provides it, although I do understand the technical challenges, and that's a vertical separator being able to split the browser screen so that I can view two sections of a web page at the same time. I would love browsers to have something like that. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Okay. The simplest way to actually tell us is by pressing the smiley inside the Edge browser. There's like a smiley button up there and that one creates a feedback or goes to our feedback mechanism and we actually meet twice a week and triage through them. the god of that, I'm very confused how fast he is in doing that. If you want to talk about that process quickly. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: Yeah, so the best way to provide feature requests or feedback on the new Microsoft Edge browser is to use the Smiley. We have actually two Smiley's, Smiley face icons within the browser. There's one when you download our preview builds, that will actually be in the top level UI next to the URL bar. And then within the DevTools itself, we have one that specifically routes feedback on the DevTools directly to us. And that's what Chris is talking about there. We actually meet twice a week. We, like a human looks at all of that feedback and we respond to it when we have follow-up questions or things we don't quite understand or if there's something we'd like to clarify with you. So definitely send us your feedback and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: One thing that I don't think we've mentioned so far, maybe you can elaborate on that, is do you actually have a timeframe for the official release of the new Edge browser?

CHRIS_HEILMANN: We have no definite date as of now. We are full heads down on getting the thing out and we want to make sure that it is a proper product and it's properly tested and we don't want to rush it. We actually want to have a browser that has features that people will be using and also that we have a good opportunity to roll it out with new features of the operating system, for example, or when something interesting is coming out of that one. That said, the cadence of the browsers is going to be much better than it is right now. It will be released every few weeks and there is right now the nightly build as well. So what you know from other browsers like Firefox and Chrome will now also be our cadence of releasing the previews of the browser and later on the browser as well. So for the first time, we actually completely separated the update from the browser from the operating system. So we won't have the issue any longer that to get a new Windows browser, you have to wait for the next Windows edition. So this is something that will make it much easier for people to have an up-to-date evergreen browser that is not in the way any longer, but it actually keeps them secure without having to upgrade their operating system all the time. But there's no definite date of when we're going to roll out the browser yet. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: Yeah. Just to echo what Chris said, quality is ultimately the driving decision here. We want to make sure we're shipping a browser really high quality you know as our stable browser. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: And I think you also mentioned talking about the fact that you're disconnecting it from the operating system version. I think you actually mentioned that you're also going to support older versions of Windows with this browser, correct? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Correct. That was one of the main things why the Edge browser was not the massive success that we wanted it to be. Because we realized that a lot of companies, especially in the enterprise space, cannot upgrade to Windows 10 that easily. They still have like 6,000, 7,000 machines standing around with Windows 8.1 and Windows 7. And we want to make sure that they actually get an official Microsoft browser for those operating systems as well that is up to date and is a new one. And they're not the ones that actually keep us in the IE 11 space for a few years more to come. That was a learning for me as well coming from Mozilla. I always thought like it much easier for everybody to be able to roll out software all the time. But there's a lot of companies out there that basically have a very strict way of saying when they can upgrade their infrastructure. And that's something by separating the browser out from the operating system upgrades, that's an opportunity to keep those people up to date and secure as well. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: I definitely think one of my biggest hopes concerning the new Chromium Edge is that it will assist us in the final demise of IE, IE 11. But yeah, really, I mean, seriously, we've been stuck with that for so long and we still need to support it all over the place. You mentioned the support for older versions of Windows and the fact that it's manageable by Microsoft Management Services. And also the IE mode, I think it's called. Is that something you can say something about? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Yeah, very much. That is actually one of the more interesting things that I've seen for enterprise customers that is a very clever way of dealing with it because we still have a lot of enterprise customers that have web products that need IE. So there might be ActiveX controls in there. There might be a really old.NET solution or an old SharePoint that has been upgraded. And these things are very hard to update. So we want to make sure that all the users of Edge, the new Edge will be using mainly Edge as their browser and not jump between Internet Explorer and Edge like they have to do right now, because the functionality like ActiveX will never be coming into Edge. We wanted to keep that in the old Internet Explorer space and we just didn't need to include that any longer. So what we now have is a feature only on Windows, of course, because we're not going to ship the old Internet Explorer browser engine to all the other platforms when you define in your company which of the websites that you're using or which of the products that you're using are needing Internet Explorer 11 functionality, then you can set up a whitelist for that. When you now go into Edge, it will open up in a tab in the browser itself. You will not jump between Internet Explorer and Edge all the time, but you will stay in the same interface. You just have one tab that has an Internet Explorer icon then, so you see which one is the one running the enterprise old version of it and which ones are the new ones. So this was a very simple way to keep people in the flow and keep people in one interface rather than having to jump from one browser to another because we realized we lost people back to Internet Explorer 11 that way as well because nobody wants to maintain their logins in like two browsers, for example. So this is something that we wanted to build for the enterprise space especially. And there was a lot of confusion when people said like, oh, cool, so I can have an Internet Explorer tab on my Mac. And you're like, no, you're not because we're going to run a VM in the background to spin up an image for you because that would be quite painful to download. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: So, ideally, what you're saying is that after the new Edge comes out, within hopefully a couple of months, I should be seeing a significant drop in the number of sessions that are still using IE 11, for example, that I'm seeing? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: That is our hope, yes, and we give people the tools to do it. So, again, it's a communication aspect as well. But I'm doing a very, very thorough job trying to get some older finance institutions, for example, right now to upgrade their interfaces and think about using Edge as well. So hopefully, we will have a lot of users going from IE to Edge in the next edition of that one, because it will be on their platform. It will be an opportunity to be on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. And what I learned from a lot of enterprise customers is that they're actually happy to have a Microsoft browser for it they don't want their data to go to two different providers. They want to stay within one of them that is, for example, legally compliant in their country. I live in Germany where it's a very strict way of where data can go. So they don't want to use a browser from another company, but they're actually happy to have a evergreen new browser from the company that they're using all the other services off right now. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: So now if you can only do something about Safari on old iOS, life on the web will be perfect.

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Well, iOS is a big one and people don't realize that by definition, there's no other browser on iOS than Safari because everybody has to use the engine on iOS. All the other browsers that are available for iOS are just interfaces on top of the Safari engine. So of course, I'm not biased against that. I actually think they're doing amazing work when it comes to performance and also when it comes to privacy settings in the newer versions of iOS. But yeah, older iOS and outdated safaris are a big problem, much like older Android used to be a problem before the evergreen web view got rolled out for that one. I think there is a lot of opportunity to help out in that space as well. And that's why playing in the Chromium project and being a big player in the Chromium project is probably a good incentive for other players to upgrade as well and make sure that there's everything running on the web has like the same features.

DAN_SHAPPIR: Maybe we should move on to speaking about dev tools in edge, because I think that was supposed to be the main focus and we have. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: Yeah, I'd love to kind of talk about dev tools and add versus other browsers, but also maybe even before that. I know we're jumping around a little bit here, but I'm just like super excited about the next question, which is integration with VS code. So maybe talk about that first and then about dev tools and edge just because I think people are gonna be super excited about that. So I don't wanna wait any longer to ask that. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: I think so one of the unique like abilities that we have as Microsoft is that we build developer tools for many parts of your developer workflow, right? VS Code's a text editor. We have the browser and the browser developer tools. We have our Azure offerings. We have Azure DevOps for CI-CD. So one of the value propositions that I think we're putting forward to developers in this new Chromium world is that we can really kind of help you be productive and have a seamless experience kind of end to end across this entire workflow, across all of our offerings. And so the VS code integrations with the dev tools and with the browser are kind of like the start of that journey. And Chris, I'm gonna let you take it from there. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Okay. There's also an extension that just came out and I'm, yeah, I just got honed into being the product manager of that one. That's called elements for VS code. And what it actually is, is it takes part of the developer tools from Edge and puts it inside VS code. If you think about the use case for it, right now you're writing code in Visual Studio Code, then you tap over or you use a mouse to go to your browser and see what's going on there. You see some of the things the CSS isn't right, so you actually open the developer tools in the browser. You tweak numbers around until it actually looks good and then you hopefully find a way to get it back into your code, or you just have to reimagine again in the editor what you've done in the browser. So what we've done as both with VS Code is using Chromium under the hood, because it's an electron app, and the browser developer tools are now based on Chromium, we had the great opportunity to put these two together. So the elements for VS Code extension is an opportunity to get, or is not an opportunity, is actually bringing the developer tools, including the breakpoints and including the CSS editor inside of VS Code. So you're staying in the same context all the time. You're not jumping between contexts of developing and testing or seeing the changes, but you get the changes live in your browser. So what it does, it opens an instance of Edge in the background, and then you get a view of what's in the browser, and you can click directly in your editor to change the things around change the CSS to your needs, and you have set up your source maps the right way, your SAS or whatever you use to compile your CSS will automatically change with that one as well. So we made sure that we have one less step from production to release in there. So that was the main thing that we're trying out right now. It's a beta. It's, well, I think we're soon going to have a 1.0. But if you want to try that out, I've seen a lot of people using it especially in trainings and coaching people. It's a very, very simple way of telling people, just stay in the editor when you change that around. Here you can see what it means, that you set the color to this one and here's the generated color, for example. So the benefit that we found with that is that you're staying in the same context. That was something that VS Code was really good for as well from the start. I mean, I hate going to teaching somebody CSS, HTML and JavaScript, and then like, oh, and now we go to the terminal and I teach you Git as well. The Git integration inside VS Code was something that I always found exciting as well, because when you have somebody starting as a new developer, instead of telling them, here's 10,000 Git commands that you forget two minutes later, you tell them, okay, I just did a change to that file. Here's an M that shows you merge it back into the project. So please describe what you just did to the thing. Press that M button, and that way we made version control much more human. And with elements extension for VS Code, we want to make sure that the the most used developer tools that you use can come directly into your editor without you having to jump between the two of them all the time. And this is not only that you start a new instance, but you can actually connect to instances running on your machine already. So if you have a browser running an edge browser, you can connect to that one. Or if you have a node instance running, you can also connect to that one and use the developer tools on that one. So it's an interesting way to take a part of the developer tools and put it in another editor. And it's something we want a lot of feedback for if that makes sense, because I find it an interesting way to take the developer tools outside of the browser and make them their own thing to a degree. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: This is so cool. Like sold. 

STEVE_EDWARDS: Yeah, it's like someone who lives in the debugger. I'm drooling. 

 

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DAN_SHAPPIR: VS code is an awesome tool. And it's a great thing that Microsoft has done for the community. I know that a lot of the developers at Wix use it and really enjoy using it. And in fact, have created a lot of extensions for it. I do have a question though. So this integration that you're talking about, is it between VS code only with Edge or is it with other Chromium-based browsers as well? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Right now it's only with Edge, but there are similar extensions for example the Chrome driver where you can connect to Chrome instances as well. But it needs to be a Chromium-based browser. I don't know if there's something for Firefox. There probably is. I would have to look it up. But the extension that we have right now, you need one of the new browsers, one of the new beta or canary or Developer Edition to actually run on your machine because we did a few changes to the driver there and we're actually doing video streaming of the instance into the VS Code browser, but I don't see I don't see how it's not possible with other browsers if they want to put the same work into it It's a lot of work at the moment and a lot of is like in a beta stage. But once we made it more stable and we can talk to people about it I would be happy to connect to any other Instance as well because it makes no sense only to test in Edge. But then again it's a Chromium core, so basically the compatibility of the rendering capabilities of the browser is the same as in all the other Chromium-based browsers. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: Something about streaming the video into the visual VS code. Can you elaborate what you mean by that? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: That actually was far too much information that is actually not necessary. What we're doing is we're taking an image of what the browser is doing and we're actually rendering it into another web view drive the other instance of the browser that way as well. So instead of having like only an image of the website that other browser tools have done before, you actually have the live website inside Visual Studio Code. So you can interact with it as well. And you can, for example, listen to click handlers and hover events and these kinds of things. So that way it was only possible by using some video streaming kind of functionality under the hood, but that's nothing you need to concern yourself. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: So basically the workflow that you're describing is that I'm totally inside VS code and I don't actually need to go from VS code to the browser at all? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Correct. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: That's really cool. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: We also just shipped a version of the elements for Edge extension that actually integrates with our previous debugger for Edge extension, which allows you to set your breakpoints. It works in a very similar way. It allows you to set your breakpoints in your source code and actually trigger them when they run in the browser. So those two things now work together, which means you could not only debug JavaScript, but also debug the DOM, inspect your elements, change styles, all without having to leave VS code. 

STEVE_EDWARDS: So for those people that aren't using Edge, and I'm just looking at the tools themselves in the browser, are there any differences there for the DevTools that are actually in the browser versus Chrome? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: There are a few things brewing. We have a few good ideas. Again, we are actually validating them with internal teams and external teams right now. Right now, the main difference is that we are localizing the developer tools. So that's something we're working on pretty hard right now. So they will be available in other languages because we found out that, for example, a third of the Visual Studio code users don't use the editor in English. So there's a lot of people out there that would be helped by having the interface of the developer tools in another language. So that's something we're working on. And we put a lot of effort into bug fixing, of course, because there's a lot of legacy code that had to be fixed over time. And accessibility is something that we put a lot of effort in right now. So we made the developer tools available for screen reader users. And also that way we made it available for everybody who prefers using a keyboard like I do, rather than like having to use the, uh, the mouse all the time. Cause I normally have a horrible trackpad sitting on a plane. So the accessibility enhancements there, uh, actually is the biggest change that we put in there. And localization is something that we're working on as well. We have a few ideas of what other features to build. But nothing is finished for feedback yet, because we want to make sure that we actually can do it before we roll it out there. We are very much interested in having an open discussion about all the things that we're doing. So there's no secret in Developer Tools, because if you put it back to an open source project, we just have the features in there. And when people ask us, what are our Developer Tools, the main thing is it's the Chromium Developer Tools. We don't want to build the edge-only Developer Tools as much as we can. We want to put things back to the Chromium core so that other browsers can benefit from it as well. And I have friends, for example, in Samsung that have done great things with Visual Studio extensions for the Chromium project that haven't been put back in because they didn't have enough manpower. But we actually have now a chance to make the developer tools of Chromium better for everybody out there. We don't want to build our own that actually is only for Edge then. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: So just to clarify this point, so all the work that you're doing, you mentioned the localization and accessibility in the dev tools, that's actually part of Chromium and will actually be available in every Chromium-based browser eventually, correct? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: We are contributing it back to the project. If the other browsers will take it on, that's up to them. But the Chromium core itself will get these functionality. In terms of localization, we can actually only provide the opportunity to localize, not the strings, because there's a copyright thing going on there. And other companies might want to use their own localization strings. But that's something that is a discussion further down the line. But whatever we build in the developer tools, not in the browser UX, like when we talked about earlier about, for example, the collections, that will not go back into the Chromium core because other companies don't want that. That's something that we built especially for our end users because they demanded it. But everything that goes back into the developer tools will go back into Chromium. If the other browsers will put our features in their own developer tools, that's something that we cannot control. But it will be part of the Chromium core project. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: I think our overwhelming thought process here is we contribute back things upstream to the Chromium project if we believe that they will have value to the rest of the Chromium browser vendors like Chris said, so accessibility, the ability to localize. These are things that we think everyone could benefit from, and that's why we contribute them back to the Greater Chromium Project. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: Now, from speaking with developers working on the developer tools in Chrome or the Google team, I know that over the years they've put in a lot of thought and effort into tabs like the Performance tab, stuff like that. And a lot of these tabs are constantly works in progress, where you literally see them changing significantly between different versions of, let's say, Chrome Canary. How are you guys synchronizing with all this rapid change? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Well, we're actually part of the project. The fun thing is a lot of the people at Google that work on the developer tools are actually in Germany as well. So that's why I still have a reason to not move to America and be on the same time zone. So we're actually part of these discussions and we have bi-weekly meetings with a team right now. So the change that's happening there in Chrome is not the same change that goes into Chromium as well. So a lot of the changes that you're talking about in the canary in Chrome is not part of the Chromium project, but that's actually in Chrome, the browser. This is all a horrible misnomer thing because we talked earlier about the browser Chrome as well, which is just the buttons and interfaces of the browser themselves. Chromium is not Chrome, so a lot of the quick moves are actually happening in the Chrome core and not in the Chromium core. We don't have access to the Chrome core because that's Google's thing. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: What do you mean by click moves? 

ZOHAIR_ALI: Click moves? I think what Chris was talking about there was how I called it the front end of the browser. Another word for that is browser Chrome, which is all of the interactions. What I think Chris was saying there is the changes you're seeing in Chrome Canary from version to version are being done locally in the chrome repository not contributed to the greater chromium project that makes sense. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: I understand that but I'm speaking specifically about stuff in the dev tools like I mentioned the performance tab which as I said under when significant is and still undergoing significant changes from version to version. So for example the dev tools for edge would I expect to see the same functionality in the performance tab in the dev tools? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: If those are contributed back to the Chromium DevTools, definitely. What I know from the people that I work with, that's their idea as well, that basically we want to have a much more open discussion around developer tools and start more of a community around developer tools, much like we have a community around V8, the JavaScript engine, and the VS Code community. So right now, our biggest problem is that developer tools are something that a lot of people demand but nobody takes part in. We don't have actually as much feedback as we want to. We don't have as much outside contribution that we want to. So we see this very much as a need to make that change a more transparent and actually help people to build things that we want to. Just have a constant change in developer tools. I personally find more confusing than helpful for companies out there as well, especially people who have to train a lot of engineers if the thing changes every week then it costs a lot of time to catch up with it as well. And not everybody wants to be on the bleeding edge all the time. So we're considering seeing what makes sense for end users and developers as end users as well to be part of that. So of course, there's experimentation going on. So we have experimentation going in our developer tools as well internally before we actually put it back into the Chromium core. And the same way Google has experimentation in theirs, that they're actually shipping out with their cannery environment. The changes that you see there, that's the problem of a Canary browser. It can go away all the time as well. So a lot of this experimentation is just going one way. But there's a lot of communication, a lot more communication that I had hoped for happening between all of the players in the Chromium project right now. So hopefully, this kind of experimentation will be more on the road in the near future. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: And another question. So in about the DevTools. So for example, another open source project that kind of found its way into the DevTools, again, on Chrome is the audit tab, which is actually built on Google Lighthouse. So again, in an Edge, DevTools, would I expect to see this? Or would I expect to see, let's say, your own version of some sort of performance and analyzer for websites?

CHRIS_HEILMANN: We actually want to have feedback on the UP, probably not. But people are looking at Hint. That WebHint is a tool that we build for testing websites internally, and then we open-sourced it, gave to the JS Foundation as well. So it's an NPM module called Hint, where you can throw a URL at it, and then it does like all kinds of performance, security, accessibility, tests for you. So putting this into the developer tools would be something that might be interesting. So we would love to hear feedback about it. When it comes to the audit tab, that's very much a Google-owned product. So Lighthouse, I don't know if it's a JS Foundation thing yet, but it might be. We're considering that, but we don't, one thing we make very much sure is that we don't have any third-party dependencies in the developer tools, because a lot of our enterprise customers don't want that. When the audit tool, for example, is dependent on services by Google. So we don't necessarily can or, well, we could, but it's again we would ask our users if that's okay. So when you actually, right now, if you use the Canary build and you use the audit tab, it actually tells you that this is a third-party service, not by Microsoft and if it's okay with you to do that. So that kind of feels like it's a weird thing to do. We want to make sure that everybody knows where the data in their browser goes to and what kind of services are being used. So we're considering, please give us feedback if some like weapon is something you want to put in there, or if you want to, there was not a third party there's always an opportunity to put an extension in there because all the extensions to Chrome are also compatible to the extensions to Edge as well. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: Yeah, that's one important point that I really wanted to verify with you. So for example, I know that a lot of developers are using developer tools extensions that are related to particular frameworks like the React DevTools. So would these be compatible with the DevTools for Edge as well?

ZOHAIR_ALI: Yes, absolutely. You can actually acquire any extension that is available in the Chrome Web Store in Microsoft Edge today. You just have to navigate to our extension settings and allow extensions from other stores and you'll be able to add extensions from any web store. It's like the Chrome Web Store to Edge. And then we're also working on our own extension store with our own curation of extensions that we think are valuable to developers. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: Wow, that's extremely important. It's great that you're doing that. Otherwise, it would have been a real problem, I think.

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Again, we're following the cow path here, which was basically we want to use what people are using and we want to make it as easy as possible to go to edge from another environment that you're using right now. So building your own thing would be counterintuitive to that again. And we realized that there is no point trying to do that. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: So just to finalize my previous question about the audit app, for example. So basically what you're saying is that in Edge, in Audit, it might be something built on Lighthouse, or maybe it will be something that's built on WebHint, or that's your project, or maybe it will be something else. Maybe it will not be there at all, depending on the user feedback that you get. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: Correct. We are right now at a wonderful space where we're reinventing completely what the Developer Tools are about. We do that in a very open fashion. We also want to make it easier for people to contribute to the Developer Tools code as well, because most people don't realize that you actually don't need to use C++ or anything to actually contribute to them. The developer tools are an HTML application, well, 22 different HTML applications inside one big one, but they could be running outside of the browser as well. So one thing we're also wondering about is if we could provide a way to actually contribute to the developer tools without having to build Chromium every single time to see the changes to make that easier for people as well people like me who don't like C++, I would love to just write my TypeScript or JavaScript and have it run in the browser as an app to contribute to it. So that's something we're considering doing right now as well. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: Our devs on our team, for example, off of Chris's point, use the DevTools against the DevTools themselves as an HTML application. And that helps them debug issues that they find in their code. 

DAN_SHAPPIR: That's an awesome inception. Before we finish, because I think we need to move to picks soon. Is there anything else you think that should be said about this? 

ZOHAIR_ALI: I guess I just wanted to leave a note about, we talked about our shift to the Chromium world. We also have everything set up for you to test Edge the way you are currently testing writing your tests for your web application. So if you're using WebDriver, we have MSEdgeDriver, which you can get to from aka.ms slash MSEdgeDriver. And then we also have Puppeteer, where you can specify the runtime executable and point it at Edge and everything will seamlessly work from there. So those are ways to write tests that also work against the new Edge browser. 

AJ_O’NEAL: So one question that I had, does this mean death to Chakra Node? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: It doesn't mean death to Chakra Node. It's an open source project. And just that way, it's more like all of them are. But we didn't find the numbers or the feedback items that exciting. Chakra Node stays. It will still be maintained. It will get still security fixes we cannot keep up with V8 with it. So Chakra Node was our opportunity or our offer to say like, hey, we need more diversity in the node space as well, but we keep finding code that is dependent on V8 that people are not maintaining any longer and that stays on the internet for forever. And again, we kind of like understood what developers are doing and developers are our customers. So we basically we help you do the things that you're doing anyways in a better fashion rather than like offering an alternative that not necessarily people are using. I found it sad because I mean, I love more JavaScript engines. I mean, I worked in Firefox before and we have our own engine there and Safari has its own engine and there should be more diversity in the node space as well. But right now we're actually concentrating on contributing to V8 in the Chromium space as well in the JavaScript world. 

AJ_O’NEAL: So that's kind of a, yeah, it's a dead project now. Like realistically, it's not going to be moving forward. It's not going to get much more love other than some maintenance. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: I don't know actually, because it's actually a different part of the company. It's a different team, because a few people came from that project over when we started, we're going to do Chromium. But as far as I understand it, it is maintained. But again, when there's no feedback and there's no usage, it's really hard to what to put into it. Like we're not going to make the same mistake again, that we're just going to put features into an engine and hope people like them. We want to actually build things that people are using and make their lives better as developers that way. 

AJ_O’NEAL: Yeah, no, that makes total sense. I mean, I personally am not using it. I was just interested to follow this progress and I was interested to know if perhaps there was still some other use case that it was still going to be a focus. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: I saw a few news cases that people use Chakra, especially Chakra Lite on IoT devices when they just want to have a JavaScript engine for basic functionality rather than having a full beefy JavaScript engine to do things. You can also build apps on top of Chakra as well. So it will be interesting to see what's going on there. But every opportunity that we try to find, like say, like, hey, do you want to build electron apps on Chakra rather than electron apps on V8? And it was really hard to make them work because a lot of people just stayed in one environment. And that's something that development has kind of gone to in the near in the later future. Like we, when we released Edge for first time, the Spartan engine, the old engine, we had a fully compatible HTML5 compatible engine. We put it out on the web and then we realized that a lot of the web was broken until we also put things in there that were Chrome specific, that was Safari specific, that were Firefox specific. So a lot of developers actually write code only for their environment. And as browser makers, we cannot break that code. We actually cannot break the web under any circumstance. That's why we have to sometimes say, OK, we tried to make you understand the benefit of that. But the effort of keeping it fully staffed is making more sense to bring people onto the Chromium projects, because that one rises basically all the boats with the tides that we want to do here. So by improving V8, by improving Chromium. We actually support all the open web at the moment and all the environments that the web is running on rather than like giving an alternative that people can use, but probably won't. 

AJ_O’NEAL: The browser singularity. 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: In the mobile space, we still have a lot of different things going on there. But yeah, if you think about it, we have to talk about iOS as well in the near future and see what's going on there. But that's what I can't talk about and shouldn't make any points about. But I'm happy to talk to a lot of people inside Apple that are considering doing more open

AJ_O’NEAL: Cool beans. Thanks. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: Awesome. 

 

Back when we were starting up new shows, one of the shows that got started was Views on View. And one of the things that was really fun about that is that I got to know a bunch of really terrific people in the View community. And furthermore, one thing that happened that really hadn't happened on any of the other shows, we actually got a member of the core team to come on as a regular panelist on the show. We have Chris Fritz on there. The other thing is, is you may recognize some of the other voices, Ben Hong, who's on the official View News podcast is also a panelist on the show. He's worked for Politico and now works for GitLab. We also have a bunch of other terrific panelists that come on and talk to you about what's going on in the Vue community. And because they're so closely tied to Vue and they talk to people about Vue all the time, they're very up to date and very knowledgeable about what's going on in the Vue community. So if you're looking for a way to learn Vue.js, or if you're looking for a way to stay current with Vue.js and kind of have the water cooler conversations you wish you could have about it, in places where maybe they're not using it, then definitely check it out. You can find it at viewsonview.com. 

 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: I'm going to push us to pick since we are coming up on time. Dan, you want to go first? 

DAN_SHAPPIR: Okay, will do. I just have the one pick this time. In the past, a couple of podcasts that I participated on, I kind of set this mission for myself to reintroduce our listeners to fantasy novel classics. This time I want to mention the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. Roger Zelazny was kind of like a really big deal in the fantasy and science fiction engineer a couple of decades ago, but it's kind of fallen out of favor. At least I'm not hearing a lot about him anymore. And this was an awesome series of books. It's actually a fairly long one. It's 10 books in total. I actually have them in my library. It's this one huge volume. If you're into fantasy and magic and stuff, this is a really excellent series of books to read, which I highly, highly recommend for those who are into this sort of thing. And that's my pick for today. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: Awesome. AJ? 

AJ_O’NEAL: So I am still on the GameCube kick and I played Link's Awakening on the Switch and beat it. It was amazing. It was everything I hoped it would be. They really did a great treatment of the music, which is like half the game with most Zelda games, so that's super important. They really did a nice high fidelity remaster of the original tracks, really staying truthful to what they represented, and I thought that was awesome. So anyway, with that completed on the Switch, and having figured out everything that I wanted to figure out about GameCube and Homebrew, I now am playing oracle of ages through the Game Boy player using the homebrew Game Boy interface. And I'm having a good time. Other than that, Taylor Swift's new album took a minute to grow on me, but it's growing on me. So if you haven't checked out Lover, got to get it. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: You just made me laugh a little bit. Steve, you want to go next? 

STEVE_EDWARDS: Sure. So, I'm going to go next. I'm going to go next. Actually sort of continuing along the theme of our discussion today, one of the things I came across recently was an episode from Chris Coyer in his CSS trick screencasts and it's episode 174. And he talks about using local overrides in dev tools. It blew my mind. It was really cool. So, cause basically what he shows you how to do is look at a site that's hosted remotely and then grab copies of like the CSS or JS and download it and save it to your hard drive and literally run the remote site with changes that you made on your local copy that you saved locally. And he did some quick demonstrations with changing header colors and stuff like that. But from a debugging standpoint, it's really cool what you can do with this. So it's the CSS Tricks Screencast, episode 174. That's all I got for today.

DAN_SHAPPIR: That's, if I can interject, that's indeed an awesome feature. I actually did a workshop recently on the web performance APIs. And the way that they did the exercises throughout the entire workshop is to just show the people participating, how to enable this capability, and then use that to inject calls into the web performance APIs into the web pages that they were loading so we could really literally measure stuff as loading in the browser. It's a really super cool feature, the override feature. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: Awesome. I'm going to go next and then I'm going to let the guests go. So my pick is going to be a new testing library that can't see dogs put out. I'm a big fan of React testing library. And now there is a Cypress testing library. So that is going to be my pick for this week. We're starting to use it at work and I really like it. Chris, you want to go next? 

CHRIS_HEILMANN: OK, I mean, we got the official stuff that we wanted to talk about. If you take a look at Webhint.io, that'd be great because that's an open source project that needs your love. And as we said, we might be considering putting there's, of course, the elements for code extension that I need a lot of feedback for, please. And please kick the tires and see what's going on there. When we're also talking about other features and not only web stuff, I think I just really enjoyed watching the Marvelous Miss Maisel on Amazon. That's one of the best shows I've seen in a long, long time that is really uplifting and fun to watch. Lots of swearing, but at the same time, I just enjoyed it very much. And if you're a film buff like me, I just found this great website called doesthedogdie.com where you can look at different triggers of movies and if they're going to happen in there or not. So if you've got people who have like anxiety issues that want to watch movies with me. That's a great resource to look things up so you're actually not ending up with an unhappy evening at the end of it. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: Interesting. So Harry, you want to go next? 

ZOHAIR_ALI: Yeah, sure. Just to echo Chris, we need all the feedback we can get. So please download Edge, give it a try, click the smiley. And I guess my pick is I started a graphic novel series called Saga that I'm really impressed with. The art is gorgeous. The story is so compelling. I sometimes don't even have time to look at the art because I'm reading so quickly. So that's my pick, I guess. 

AIMEE_KNIGHT: Very cool. And with that, I'm going to say goodbye. We'll see you all next week. 

STEVE_EDWARDS: Adios. 

ZOHAIR_ALI: Bye, everyone. Thanks for having us. 

 

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