Microsoft Edge Preview Now Available on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1

Your national nightmare is over. Microsoft has finally announced the availability of preview versions of the new Edge for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1.

“Today we are excited to make preview builds from the Microsoft Edge Canary channel available on Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1,” the Microsoft Edge team just announced. “This rounds out the initial set of platforms that we began to roll out back in April, so developers and users alike can try out the next version of Microsoft Edge on every major desktop platform.”

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Microsoft says that the experience and feature set of the new Edge set on Windows 7/8/8.1 will be “largely the same” as it is on Windows 10, including forthcoming support for Internet Explorer mode for our enterprise customers. That said, there are a few known issues, including the lack of Dark Mode and AAD sign-in support. Microsoft is working to resolve those issues soon.

You can grab Microsoft Edge (Canary) from the Edge Insider Preview website.

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Conversation 17 comments

  • noflames

    19 June, 2019 - 7:43 pm

    <p>If I had to use Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 again that would be my nightmare. I'm quite happy with Edge (dev and canary) builds on Windows 10.</p>

  • Dan1986ist

    Premium Member
    19 June, 2019 - 7:45 pm

    <p>Surprised to see new Edge available for testing on 7, 8, and 8.1. Though it would just be for 7, 8.1, and 10. </p>

    • jimchamplin

      Premium Member
      20 June, 2019 - 5:49 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#436375">In reply to Dan1986ist:</a></em></blockquote><p>If it runs on 7, it’ll run on everything after.</p>

  • moruobai

    19 June, 2019 - 8:13 pm

    <p>Let's do it! Just installed on my Windows 7 machine. Buh-bye Chrome. </p><p><br></p><p>Now let's see if I get any warnings about my browser on Google web properties &lt;raises pinky finger to corner of mouth&gt;</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    19 June, 2019 - 8:57 pm

    <p>This may boost Edge usage above that of Internet Explorer finally.</p>

  • red.radar

    Premium Member
    19 June, 2019 - 10:28 pm

    <p>Linux? That would make this just about perfect. It could replace Firefox for me. </p>

  • justme

    Premium Member
    20 June, 2019 - 3:30 am

    <p>Interesting. Now, can they be convinced to put out a Linux version? Wondering how well it will run under WINE, if at all….</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      20 June, 2019 - 8:29 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#436413">In reply to JustMe:</a></em></blockquote><p>Makes more sense than a Windows 7 version… Given that it will still be in Beta by the time that they close up shop on Windows 7. :-S</p>

  • dcdevito

    20 June, 2019 - 6:54 am

    <p>I've really been enjoying this browser. I removed Chrome from my machines and even have my family using it and no one's even noticed – which I guess is a good thing. </p>

  • Tony Barrett

    20 June, 2019 - 7:44 am

    <p>You've got to admire Microsoft's perseverance, but this whole 'Edge on Chromium' thing just shrieks of desperation. For MS to now release it as a win32 app, and backport it to their older operating systems just says <em>we admit defeat,</em> and it signals the death of UWP. Windows 10 is turning into everything MS didn't want it to be, and at this rate, despite them doing everything to try and appease Windows 7 users, there's a strong possibility MS may have to do a 24th hour extension of the Jan 2020 cutoff point.</p>

    • codymesh

      20 June, 2019 - 8:38 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#436445">In reply to ghostrider:</a></em></blockquote><p>Microsoft builds their own browser: failure </p><p>Microsoft builds browser based on other more successful browsers: also failure</p><p><br></p><p>Microsoft builds UWP app: failure</p><p>Microsoft builds win32 app: also failure</p><p><br></p><p>Microsoft fails: failure</p><p>Microsoft admitting defeat: also failure</p><p><br></p><p>Microsoft abandoning Windows 7 users: failure</p><p>Microsoft appeasing Windows 7 users: also failure</p>

    • Greg Green

      20 June, 2019 - 9:09 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#436445">In reply to ghostrider:</a></em></blockquote><p>They’ve had to look backward to catch up. A whole generation of ideas and time lost.</p>

    • jdunn0

      22 June, 2019 - 7:07 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#436445">In reply to ghostrider:</a></em></blockquote><p>What you wrote is a bit incorrect.</p><p>Because the new Microsoft Edge is based on Chromium, no backporting is necessary as the Chromium codebase already supports more OSes then the UWP Microsoft Edge did.</p><p>So we may also see Microsoft release a Mac and Linux version too as those are also supported by the Chromium codebase. </p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As for releasing the new Microsoft Edge on Windows 7, that is an odd choice by Microsoft as even though the Chromium codebase supports Windows 7 because Windows 7 is no longer in mainstream support, it's in the extended support phase which means that Microsoft shouldn't be making products that support Windows 7 even if they can for consistency with their public support policies.</span></p><p>I don't really agree that this is a sign of desperation but it is certainly hypocritical of Microsoft to both support Windows 7 and replace one of their UWP apps with a regular app when for many years now Microsoft has been telling third-party developers that they should be making UWP apps for Windows 10.</p><p>It's also true of Microsoft Office which not only has Microsoft not converted the full featured product to UWP, it's not possible for them to do so, Microsoft Office has many features that require Windows APIs that aren't available to UWP apps, even the OneDrive client can't be a UWP app because it has a shell extension to so File Explorer can show the sync status and show sharing settings on OneDrive apps.</p><p>The UWP platform has no support for Shell Extensions which many apps on Windows have.</p><p>One thing I have thought for a while now is that is that if Microsoft can't make some of their most popular products be built using UWP then how do they expect third-party developers to do so.</p><p>If they really believed in UWP they should have given it less restrictions and ported their most popular apps to it to show third-party developers that it is something good, worth the effort and something they should use.</p><p>Microsoft did remove the OneNote app in Microsoft Office 2019 in favor of people using the more limited UWP OneNote app in Windows 10 but when I last checked the comments page on the blog announcing that, most people were very unhappy with that including me.</p><p>The regular app version of OneNote is a great program, the limited UWP app, not so much.</p><p>Now that the default browser in Windows 10 will go from UWP app to regular app is not good in the showing they believe in the UWP platform department.</p><p>It appears that Microsoft is being pretty inconsistent as to which products use UWP and which don't.</p><p>However I don't think Microsoft is going to abandon the UWP platform any time soon as they still use it for some things and aren't ready to give up on it.</p><p>Also even they did get rid of UWP, I think people like Thurott are incorrect that the Microsoft Store would go away too.</p><p>I think if UWP apps go away then the Microsoft Store will just let users download and buy regular apps instead.</p><p>If Windows 7 suffers from the same problem as Windows XP did when it reached end of support where it was so widely used and hard to upgrade to the next version of Windows they will extend support for Windows 7 but I don't think that is really the case.</p><p>Most Windows 7 systems can easily upgrade to Windows 10 and the system requirements for Windows 10 should be fairly similar to the ones for Windows 7 that users shouldn't need to upgrade hardware.</p><p>It's possible that Microsoft knows that regards of support, there will be diehard fans that just won't give up on using Windows 7 even if they is no support at all so they decided that those users should at least have a browser that gets regular security updates to use.</p>

  • BruceR

    20 June, 2019 - 12:48 pm

    <p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Your national nightmare is over."</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Anyone know what this means?</span></p>

  • rmorrissey

    20 June, 2019 - 1:02 pm

    <p>Isn't Windows 7 EOL in January? Will they have this product completed before it is obsolete on Windows 7?</p>

    • jdunn0

      23 June, 2019 - 7:24 am

      <blockquote><a href="#436480"><em>In reply to rmorrissey:</em></a></blockquote><p>Yes, Windows 7 extended support will end on <span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">January 14, 2020.</span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">However I just found this on the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7&quot; target="_blank" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Windows 7 Wikipedia page</a><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">: "Microsoft announced a paid "Extended Security Updates" service that will offer additional updates for Windows 7&nbsp;</span><em style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Professional</em><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><em style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Enterprise</em><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">&nbsp;for three years after the end of extended support."</span></p><p>It's only for businesses with Volume Licensing contracts that want to spend money on each computer running Windows 7 to get the Security updates though.</p><p>Which as <a href="https://www.extremetech.com/computing/276582-microsoft-relents-confirms-extended-support-option-for-windows-7&quot; target="_blank">ExtremeTech</a> points out means that "businesses with a lot of Windows 7 machines will pay out the nose for continued support".</p>

  • Chris Payne

    20 June, 2019 - 1:42 pm

    <p>Only 4 years too late.</p>

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