Internet Explorer’s more modern and speedier successor, which Microsoft is hoping will take over the world and was previously codenamed “Spartan”, has now officially been given the permanent monicker “Edge”.
Edge maintains Spartan innovations such as page markup, reading view, and Cortana integration. It’s also a Universal Windows app, meaning one application will run on PCs, phones, tablets, and whatever other Windows devices may emerge. However, in the view of many, including myself, the greatest innovation will be its wide support for extensions.
Edge and Extensions
Extensions have become an almost essential part of user requirements in their Web browsers, and while Internet Explorer has limited extensibility, Edge is set to bring the full-on experience of Firefox and Chrome style extensions.
Edge’s extension developers will use the same JavaScript and HTML standard code used by the two competing browsers for their extensions, meaning that extensions programmed for Chrome or Firefox would only require minimal coding to work in Edge.
I admit I am still an habitual Firefox user, and that’s largely because of my favorite extensions which I would hate to be without. Lack of a viable compehensive extension library has always been one of Internet Explorer’s major failings in competing with both Firefox and Chrome. Edge’s support for popular extensions should see this disparity disappear at least and add a whole lot of appeal to using Microsoft’s new browser.
So, here’s my question to you – if Edge supports all your favorite extensions, would you consider switching?
They had to do something, as the name ‘IE12’ would instill confidence from no one.
I’m playing around with it, but from what I see, Edge does not support the ‘Picture element’ and ‘CSS Filters’ as of yet, and only partial supports ‘srcset’, and ‘Grid Layout’. I imagine I’ll find some more.
Not that big of a deal for most though. I imagine MS is working on it.