Microsoft confirmed a few months ago that it’s building a Chromium-powered version of its Edge browser. The company has announced today that the browser is officially available for testing. It’s releasing early builds to developers today with both Canary and Developer builds receiving daily or weekly updates with the changes that are in the pipeline for Edge.
Both downloads are now available from the new Microsoft Edge Insider website. These builds are meant more for developers so that they can get an idea of just how much is changing with Microsoft’s Edge browser.
The early version of Edge that it has built on Chrome focuses on the core features that users would expect from a modern browser. They include speed, reliability, and support for extensions. Since it has the same engine as Google’s Chrome browser, this version of Edge already has full support for all existing Chrome extensions. Microsoft is also working on sync support for browsing history, favorites, and extensions across Edge.
Microsoft and Google engineers have both been working together to make improvements to the underlying Chromium project so that their browsers, Chrome and Edge, can offer users a better experience on Windows. Microsoft’s almost 150 commits have been accepted into Chromium. The Canary and Development builds released today are only for English 64-bit installations of Windows 10. Microsoft will add support for Windows 7, 8, and macOS down the line.
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