Chromium has always existed. Originally it was wrapping web kit and later they forked web kit into blink and diverged from Web kit. Chromium is a level above the engine.
WebKit is a rendering engine which is one of the major components of a web browser. Chrome/Chromium was released in 2008 using a modified version of WebKit as its rendering engine. Eventually in 2013 they created a fork of WebKit called Blink, which is the current rendering engine for Chrome/Chromium.
Pre-Chromium Edge wasn't even that bad. Sure, the engine had its issues and there was probably a bit of Edge-specific JS on some websites, but I'm sure they would've eventually got there.
But seeing that even Microsoft abandoned making their own browser engine, it goes to show how complex it is to make one nowadays and with new web APIs/features coming out every few weeks it feels like, it's almost impossible to keep up.
But seeing that even Microsoft abandoned making their own browser engine, it goes to show how complex it is to make one nowadays and with new web APIs/features coming out every few weeks it feels like, it's almost impossible to keep up.
No, Microsoft is just historically bad at making browsers. It was not until Internet Explorer 7 that they finally implemented HTML 4 and CSS 2 without major glaring bugs.
Microsoft was never bad at making browsers, their issue is that they tied browser release to Windows release cycle. IE6 was the best and the most compatible browser on the market in its release date. But it didn't get a single update during its long life. 5 years old Chrome is completely useless today even if it was a pinnacle back then.
Sure, but Windows Update was already part of the OS and web users were a customer segment that had an Internet connection. They could have pushed patches and bug fixes.
That's not Microsoft philosophy. Microsoft has strong backwards compatibility. If they would change how border box is rendered on the screen, that would break a lot of apps which use IE engine as a web view. Thus they only push security updates, but ensure that rendering stays the same within one Windows version.
I'm not sure how long you've been able to change the user agent in config pages tbh, I just remember Opera had it as an option in the GUI settings and even the right click menu.