Hi Reddit! The Microsoft Edge Beta is here. We’re pretty excited to answer your questions and learn what you think. Got questions about new features? Future plans? Life at Microsoft? What we ate for breakfast? Ask us anything!

Why is it better to have a web built on webkit than having a diverse set of browser engines?
It feels a bit like the last Browser War against Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.

Great question! We totally support a diverse set of browser engines and love the great work that other vendors (including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari) are doing in implementation and in standards bodies, and the web is better off for it.

For our part, we want to balance two components: First, our desire to advocate for our customer needs in standards and in our implementation; second, our the need to provide a compelling and productive experience for customers and end users alike. You can read a bit more about our thinking here in Chris's answer.

For our part, after working with lots of customers and partners, our conclusion was that the best way for us to drive the Web forward, while meeting our customer needs (on all their devices!), was to adopt Chromium. As Chris mentioned, we're still super active as an implementer - our team has actually grown since this change and we've already landed over 1,000 commits in Chromium.

We believe this is a more productive way to land real-world impact on the Web than continuing to build a proprietary implementation that was necessarily locked to a single platform. We still retain the ability to ship differentiated features in the app/platform and tools as needed, but get to drive more impact on behalf of our customers without fragmenting the Web further. - Kyle

The current version of Edge works great on my surface device with touch but this new version is behaving much more like chrome. Are you planning to migrate some of the great touch work from the old version to this new one, including stuff like date pickers and other native controls?

We're doing lots of work in this area (and working on contributing back to Chromium where it makes sense)! I'd encourage you to check out this thread on Twitter from my colleague Greg with some of our early concepts and research. You can try some of these controls out today using the "Fluent controls" flag in edge://flags. - Kyle

Thanks for your hard work on Chromium Edge /Edge Dev. I've been using it as my default browser for several months and like it a lot. I also think it's very smart to focus on making the new Edge stable and feature-rich before release this time.

Questions:

1. What is Microsoft's position/strategy for dealing with cases where Google modifications break Google product functionality (YouTube, etc.) in other Chromium-based browsers like Edge Dev?
2. When "Set these tabs aside" is migrated to Edge Dev, do you plan to allow for setting aside individual tabs (not just all or none) and searching set aside tabs?
3. Any ETA yet for production release?

Update: I've been away from the computer all afternoon and missed the live action. Thank you Edge Dev team for taking time from your busy schedules to interact with us. Last but not least, something I've dreamed of being able to say for more than 6 years as a reddit user: Thanks kind stranger for the gold!

Thanks! We're so glad you're enjoying it.

1. As we build a new web browser, it’s not unusual for web properties to update their user agent string detection logic to support our browser. We’ve been reaching out to web properties and have been happy to see high level of support for these changes. With Microsoft Edge Beta, the likelihood of you running into these issues should be low. We're in touch with Google's engineers on a case by case basis for these issues and they have been great partners on resolving issues when they do pop up.
2. This is a neat idea! What would you want to happen when a single tab is set aside? As we shared at Build, we know know that "set tabs aside" solves a pain point for many users and we're exploring options for bringing it to the next version of Microsoft Edge. Our first builds are focused on fundamentals, but we love hearing feedback like this!
3. We're not ready to share details on the release date yet, but we'll make an announcement when we are!

- William

I've noticed that the current edge supports 5.1 surround sound much better than chrome or firefox. Will this new Chromium build support 5.1 surround sound? or will it have the same issues that chrome has.

We're working on lighting up Dolby/5.1 support on supported devices. Depending on your device, you may need to install the Dolby Access app from the Store to enabled 5.1 support for a given site. - Kyle

A bit more detail here - There are two aspects to 5.1 channel audio support - decoding and rendering. As mentioned above, we have added support for the Dolby AC3 and E-AC3 (Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus) audio codecs which are typically used for multichannel audio streams. These codecs are supported directly on Windows 10 as well - the Dolby Access app enables Dolby Atmos and is not related to 5.1 channel audio. In addition to the decoding aspect, the audio renderer needs to support providing multichannel audio to the WASAPI OS API. The inbox audio renderer supports this natively in both the EdgeHTML and Chromium versions of Microsoft Edge. - Isuru

Will you change the implementation of Manifest V3 to allow end users to continue with the full suite of ad blocking capabilities via extensions they have today?

Manifest V3 contains a number of changes to the extension model. We're committed to continuing to support extensions that block ads. The proposal has not been finalized yet and there are still changes that could occur, but Microsoft has been actively engaging with the Chromium community to represent the needs of ad blocking extensions developers as the proposal evolves. Once these proposals have been finalized, we'll evaluate if further changes are necessary to ensure the extensions our customers care about are still available, remain compatible, to ensure consumers are not exposed to unnecessary risks via malicious use of APIs. - Kyle

What's the plan to keep Microsoft Edge evergreen with the latest version of Chromium? Chromium iterates pretty quickly, and I'd love to hear that the Edge team plans to update the Chromium version very frequently.

We did a huge amount of work to build up a great software flighting process at the beginning of our journey. We use Git as our internal source control software, and we have a set of tools that run before the commit goes into the main branch. This allows us to keep our branch as clean as possible. We do sometimes have issues that do make it into Canary, and we will either revert the changes or get a fix in as soon as possible. We then pick the best build from the week to get promoted into our Developer channel. - Elliot

Why you don't support <datalist> tag. Chrome does support it, EdgeHTML partially.

Is it not the part of Chromium code base?

Datalist should work in the next version of Edge. Can you provide a repro case that isn't working as expected? Thanks, Eric

Try this in Chrome and in EdgeCanary/Dev/Beta and you'll know what I mean:

<html>
<body>
    <form>
        <input type="text" id="textinput" list="datalist_textinput">
        <datalist id="datalist_textinput">
            <option value="123456">Text description</option>
        </datalist>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

Investigating. Thanks for the repro!

what did you eat for breakfast?

Across the team answering your questions today, our breakfasts included numerous fried and scrambled eggs, four breakfast bars, three mini-donuts, two omelettes, two lattes, two teas, a coffee, a breakfast sandwich, toast with apricot jam, steel-cut oats with walnuts, a protein shake, and... performance bugs. :) -Rachel W.

When will we get more syncing features like extension syncing?

Great timing as we published a blog post with more info yesterday: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/08/21/sign-in-sync-work-school-accounts-aad-websso/ . No dates as yet but it is coming. Thanks! Colleen

Edge as it stands now holds the claim for better battery life than things like Firefox or Chrome, what's the plan for meeting this claim with the browser switching over to a Chromium-base? Interested to see what parts can be optimized!

Microsoft has been actively working on improving power efficiency for the browser. You can see some of these early power reduction proposals in our explainers:https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/master/AudioOffload/explainer.mdhttps://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/master/MediaCacheReduction/explainer.md - Eric

If you make a Linux version which distros would you support at first?

We're not quite ready to commit to specific distros just yet - we'd love to hear from you (both end users and web developers) about which distros are most important to you (and why)! - Kyle

Do you have any plans for Windows Timeline integration?

Yup, we're actively working on it!

• Candice

Why does a company like Microsoft feel the need to make yet another Chromium based browser. And what does this say about the company itself, is it incapable of creating it's own software nowadays?

We're building for a huge community of developers and end users, and have really focused on listening to their needs. One thing we heard from developers loud and clear is that having a separate proprietary engine was making things more difficult with no clear upside. Instead, people want to have less fragmentation on the web when it comes to building products. A different, big request was to have the browser on different platforms and not only on Windows 10. We heard these demands loud and clear and realised that contributing to the Chromium project has a lot of benefits: we deliver what people wanted and we contribute to a project that does drive a lot of different parts of the web (Browsers, Electron based apps). Instead of maintaining our own product, we bring our expertise, engineering power and the needs of our users to a commonly used open source project. Initial feedback shows that our contributions to the Chromium project solve a lot of issues our users have and all the other products based on it can benefit from that. So far, we contributed over 1000 commits to the project. These are focusing on important human needs like internationalisation, accessibility and performance. We managed to bring another browser to different platforms without much extra work for developers to support it. That makes the web better and strengthens and diversifies the Chromium project. - Chris

When will you finally deprecate internet explorer? IE still existing and the required backwards compatibility is single handedly slowing down development of modern websites by 30%.

Truth be told I’ll likely never use another Microsoft browser because of their attitude towards IE.

We understand the IE feedback. It will continue to be supported, more info here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17454/lifecycle-faq-internet-explorer .

However with the introduction of IE mode with the next version of Edge, this should help move people forward. More info here: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/07/16/microsoft-edge-enterprise-evaluation-roadmap/ .

Thanks, Colleen

A request for IE mode outside of Enterprise too. There are webpages besides intranets that needs IE and IE mode in edge should be more secure and a better user xp than IE11

You could enable it using the specific flag on edge://flags

Nice. Didn't know that

More instructions here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/DeployEdge/edge-ie-mode Thanks, Colleen

Thanks Colleen but as I read that page it requires GPO:s. My request is for a non-Enterprise environment aka stand alone boxes, home edition and so on. They still surf to pages that wont work without IE today

Whoops, sorry! Thanks for the clarification & feedback.

Since most people have questions about the backend, I’ll be the dude with a basic question about the UI. Is part of the design roadmap going to include a more compact UI?

At the moment you guys add more padding around each button than Google does and excessive padding is basically their design philosophy.

Since a lot of laptops still use 16:9, and not that many have high res displays, taking at least slightly less vertical space with the search bar + tabs + a fav bar is nice, but at the moment Chromium Edge has a bigger UI than old Edge, Chrome, and Firefox‘s normal density. And shrinking the padding around each button would also keep the Omnibox a bigger target to click even if I have a few extensions next to it.

The Edge UI design team is exploring some interesting work around density at different sizes - We're bnot quire ready to preview anything, but it's certainly an area we're interested in. - Stephanie

How will Teams be Integrated in it.?

Do you have specific asks for Teams integrations? Would love to know more. Thanks, Colleen

Will there be an option to set the user agent via Registry Key? This would help us a lot.

We'd love to hear more about your scenario, but registry-based extensibility was a top source of compatibility pain over the years in Internet Explorer, for instance. In the next version of Edge, the User-Agent string is not settable via the registry. We do support the ability to override the user-agent using a command line argument.
Try, e.g.

msedge --user-agent="FuzzleBunnies" https://bayden.com/ua.aspx

There also exist a variety of browser extensions that offer this functionality.

Thanks! Eric

At least please add it back to the Dev Tools, like on Spartan Edge and IE.

User-Agent spoofing remains in the Developer Tools. With DevTools open, press CTRL+SHIFT+P to open the Command Search prompt, and type Network Conditions to see the drawer with the User-Agent spoofing controls. If you have thoughts about how to make this easier or more discoverable, we're open to your feedback. -Eric

I upgraded from the Edge dev channel version on my Mac to the beta, and basically had to start from scratch (sign in, add all extensions, log in to web sites, etc.). This was a pain, and I almost decided not to do it. I'm hoping that in the final version this won't be necessary?

First of all, sorry that this happened to you. We're still working to improve the sync experience. Sync should now be working for favorites, passwords and form fill information. Sync support for extensions and other will come in the future. We just published a blog post with detailed information.

When will we get 4K Netflix playback via PlayReady on the Edge chromium builds?

This should be working today! If you're trouble having getting this to work, can you submit feedback with the smiley face in the top-right? Thank you! - Kyle

[deleted]

We published a blog post yesterday with more info on sync. Some features are ready and more to come in future previews. https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/08/21/sign-in-sync-work-school-accounts-aad-websso/ .

Thanks, Colleen

First of all,

I applaud the entire team for the amazing efforts put into browser. I've been using Canary and Dev since they were first available and have loved the performance of the browser. Now on to my questions:

1) When will the Windows ARM64 packages come through properly? Currently, the installer is still downloading and installing the x86 version of the browser although it's properly named like the ARM64 package.

2) Do you all foresee a day where IE will FINALLY disintegrate? I'm enjoying the fact that I can have IE mode enabled at work (Third party vendors hate putting in work to update things), but I would totally be happy to see a day where I wouldn't have to put in some sort of weird hack for IE.

​

Thanks!

No date as yet for Windows ARM64. Love the fact you are using IE mode with the next version of Edge! IE11 will continue to be supported, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17454/lifecycle-faq-internet-explorer, however with the introduction of IE mode, this should help people move forward. Thanks, Colleen

Flash is it built in?

It is but it is a part of the Adobe Flash deprecation plan announced by all companies (Adobe, Apple, Google, Mozilla, Microsoft) in 2017. More info here: https://aka.ms/FlashEOL .

Is there a way to transfer data from Chrome (most importantly: stored authentication credentials)? Most people just go along with Google's ecosystem because it's convenient to switch from desktop to mobile without having to bother with recalling passwords. Is this possible now or made to happen?

Yes, you can import stored credentials from Chrome when you first run the browser, or later by visiting edge://settings/importData?search=import

Thanks, Eric

How will stable edge chromium be installed? Via windows update or manually downloading it?

Hey there! We just answered a similar question above: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cu15pj/hi_reddit_the_microsoft_edge_beta_is_here_were/exqbrdd?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

-William

Fluent design coming to Microsoft Edge?

When MS Edge (chromium version) will show up as a default browser in Insider builds?

MS Edge (chromium version) will replace old edge in Windows 10 version 1909 or we will have to wait for 20H1?

Fluent consists of a wide range of controls and design principles, and many of these are in the the new Microsoft Edge today. We work very closely with the Fluent team to design the look of the browser, and some of the things we do eventually make their way back into the Fluent Design System as well. While we can't share any specific details at this point, we're always looking at how we can adopt even more of Fluent.

We're excited to share the next version of Microsoft Edge with everyone once it's ready. We'll be sharing more details about how you'll be able to move from the current version to the next version in the future.

-William

WDAG without Edge UWP?

WDAG is available on the next version of Edge. Was that your question? Apologies if I misunderstood. Thanks, Colleen

Will you implement PIN PAGE TO START? Please!

We're glad to hear you're a fan of the feature! If you want to pin a webpage to Start right now, you can go to Settings and More > More Tools > Pin to taskbar. This will also create an entry in the Start Menu's All Apps list, which you can pin to Start.

-William

y u do dis?

Cuz we ♥ ya

-The Microsoft Edge Team

Will there be a return of the 'favorite' button? Or at least a way to enable it?

We definitely have heard the feedback that users want an easier way to access their favorites. We just added an option to add the favorites button in Edge Canary via edge://settings/appearance - "Show favorites button". Try it out and let us know what you think 😊

• Candice

How can I get a job at Microsoft? What should I study or review and where do I apply?

Everyone's path to Microsoft is a bit different (there's no one "right way"). I'm a PM and studied Computer Science, but we have a wide range of people from diverse educational backgrounds. We'd love to have you join us! The Microsoft Careers website has a lot of great resources, and we have a dedicated page with career opportunities on Microsoft Edge as well.

-William

[deleted]

We have different engineers on desktop vs. mobile but we have a shared roadmap and work very closely together! I can't speak to edge://flags specifically, but I'll take the feedback to the team. - Kyle

Will IE mode of MS Edge Chromium work on Mac, so developers can test IE11 on Mac?

IE mode is available where IE11 is currently supported so no, it's not on Mac. What issue/scenario are you looking to accomplish or solve with IE11 on Mac? Thanks, Colleen