One of the more interesting tidbits that came out of Ignite this week is that Microsoft is moving the desktop and mobile versions of Edge to a single codebase.
News of this change comes via Reddit, but I found out about this through Neowin.
Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!
"*" indicates required fields
In short, during the Microsoft Edge | Mobile Productivity in the Enterprise session at Ignite this week, Edge senior program manager Darryl Brown said that Microsoft was moving its browser to a common code base across desktop—Windows, Mac, and Linux—and mobile (Android and iOS). Of course, because of the limitations imposed by Apple, the iOS version of Edge will need to use Apple’s WebKit-based render. But otherwise, the codebases will be the same.
The reasons for this change are obvious enough, but the biggest is just related to efficiency. Today, Microsoft has to develop common new features across the browser three times—once for desktop, once for Android, and once for iOS—which makes it challenging to rollout those new features simultaneously.
But it’s worth pointing out that Edge mobile is still kind of its own thing and that that codebase—or those codebases, I guess—predates the Chromium-based Edge on desktop. A refresh is definitely in order, and this change will help Microsoft innovate more—and more quickly—on mobile.
dftf
<p>From the Reddit post you linked to:</p><p><br></p><p><em>"Talk about performance, I feel like Edge on Android is one of the worst performing Chromium browsers"</em></p><p><br></p><p>Maybe of the <em>Chromium </em>ones it may well be, but for me the overall slowest browser has to be <em>Firefox</em>. Sometimes you enter a URL and tap "Go", or tap a link and wonder "I did click it, didn't I?" before it finally does something — sometimes it can be fast. Very inconsistent. And I still get the odd website that decides, in Firefox, it will only display the desktop version of the site, as the web-devs have clearly just assumed "it's Firefox, so must be a desktop user".</p><p><br></p><p><em>"The Edge UI doesn't feel polished enough either"</em></p><p><br></p><p><em>Firefox</em>, <em>Brave</em>, <em>Opera</em> and <em>Vivaldi </em>all look fine to me, on Android. <em>Edge </em>just looks a mess. Can't stand the layout of the "new tab page", and I'd prefer to have the "Home" button on the toolbar, not "Share". I'd also rather just have a "…" menu which opens a full-screen panel list of settings, not the homescreen-style-grid they use now.</p><p><br></p><p>One thing I will note myself though — it's odd how the Android version of Edge has "Adblock Plus" built-in (inside the "Content blockers" screen), yet desktop Edge just has their own "Tracking prevention" feature. Odd.</p>
b6gd
<blockquote><em><a href="#616743">In reply to Singingwolf:</a></em></blockquote><p>The built in Ad Block plus is weak with Edge on iOS. </p>
b6gd
<p>Edge is my default browser on Windows and MacOS. I prefer Safari on the Mac but I have to work on Windows from time to time so having everything in sync is worth it.</p><p><br></p><p>I tried Edge on iOS but Safari is just so much better and I don’t really care about sync on iOS. </p>