Category Archives: tech

Aw, snap! What if Every Tab Crashes?

For a small number of users of Chromium-based browsers (including Chrome and the new Microsoft Edge) on Windows 10, after updating to 78.0.3875.0, every new tab crashes immediately when the browser starts. Impacted users can open as many new tabs as they like, but each will instantly crash: As of Chrome 81.0.3992, the page will showContinue reading “Aw, snap! What if Every Tab Crashes?”

Web-to-App Communication: DirectInvoke

Note: This post is part of a series about Web-to-App Communication techniques. Background Typically, if you want your website to send a document to a client application, you simply send the file as a download. Your server indicates that a file should be treated as a download in one of a few simple ways: Specifying aContinue reading “Web-to-App Communication: DirectInvoke”

Livin’ on the Edge: Root Causing Regressions

As we’ve been working to replatform the new Microsoft Edge browser atop Chromium, one interesting outcome has been early exposure to a lot more bugs in Chromium. Rapidly root-causing these regressions (bugs in scenarios that used to work correctly) has been a high-priority activity to help ensure Edge users have a good experience with ourContinue reading “Livin’ on the Edge: Root Causing Regressions”

Web-to-App Communication: App Protocols

Note: This post is part of a series about Web-to-App Communication techniques. Just over eight years ago, I wrote my last blog post about App Protocols, a class of URL schemes that typically1 open another program on your computer instead of returning data to the web browser. A valid scheme name is an ASCII letter followedContinue reading “Web-to-App Communication: App Protocols”

Browser Architecture: Web-to-App Communication Overview

This is an introduction/summary post which will link to individual articles about browser mechanisms for communicating directly between web content and native apps on the local computer. This series aims to provide, for each mechanism, information about: Application Protocols Read my Blog post. tl;dr: Apps can register protocol schemes. Browsers will spawn the apps when navigatingContinue reading “Browser Architecture: Web-to-App Communication Overview”

Livin’ on the Edge: Dude Where’s My Fix?!? (Redux)

In my last post, I showed you how to use OmahaProxy’s Find Releases tool to discover which versions of Chrome contain a given bugfix. I noted that if you’re using Microsoft’s new Chromium-based Edge, you can look at the edge://version page or this extension to see the upstream Chrome version upon which Edge is based: OctContinue reading “Livin’ on the Edge: Dude Where’s My Fix?!? (Redux)”

Livin’ on the Edge: Dude Where’s My Fix?!?

Yesterday, we covered the mechanisms that modern browsers can use to rapidly update their release channels. Today, let’s look at how to figure out when an eagerly awaited fix will become available in the Canary channels. By way of example, consider crbug.com/977805, a nasty beast that caused some extensions to randomly be disabled and marked corrupt: ByContinue reading “Livin’ on the Edge: Dude Where’s My Fix?!?”

Updating Browsers Quickly: Flags, Respins, and Components

By this point, most browser enthusiasts know that Chrome has a rapid release cycle, releasing a new stable version of the browser approximately every six weeks (2022 Update: now every four weeks). The Edge team adopted that rapid release cadence for our new browser, and we’re already releasing new Edge Dev Channel builds every week.Continue reading “Updating Browsers Quickly: Flags, Respins, and Components”

Challenges with Federated Identity in modern browsers

Many websites offer a “Log in” capability where they don’t manage the user’s account; instead, they offer visitors the ability to “Login with <identity provider>.” When the user clicks the Login button on the original relying party (RP) website, they are navigated to a login page at the identity provider (IP) (e.g. login.microsoft.com) and then redirectedContinue reading “Challenges with Federated Identity in modern browsers”