Microsoft Revamps Its Edge Feature Roadmap

Microsoft has maintained a feature roadmap for Edge since shortly after its public release last January, but now it’s making that roadmap more visible to the public.

“We have been working on improving the [Edge] release notes and will continue to investigate changes that we can make to be more immediate and descriptive,” Microsoft’s Elliot Kirk writes in a Tech Community blog post. “For the roadmap, we are happy to announce that in addition to the Enterprise focused roadmap we have revamped the What’s Next page on our insider website.”

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The Enterprise-focused roadmap is available as part of the broader Microsoft 365 roadmap, and it outlines 7 features that are currently in development, including kiosk mode privacy features, single sign-on for Microsoft accounts on Mac, people and bookmark suggestions via Microsoft Search in the address bar and new tab search box, and more.

But the new What’s Next page for Edge is perhaps of more interest. Here, you can find a feature roadmap describing a long list of features that Microsoft plans to implement throughout at least the first half of 2021.

For example, Edge version 89—the current version is 88—will add the ability to manage extensions from the address bar, improvements to text selections in PDFs, more page scrolling options for printing, clipboard-based autofill suggestions, and more. And Edge version 90 will support a “Current page” option for printing PDFs, improvements to font rendering, user-initiated search for autofill suggestions, and more.

Microsoft says that it will update the Edge roadmap as each new Beta version is released.

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Conversation 13 comments

  • CalvusVir

    Premium Member
    29 January, 2021 - 9:56 am

    <p>Is this list of "what's next" just the new features Microsoft is working on specificially for Edge or do they include what is being added to Chrome by Microsoft, Google, and others?</p>

    • behindmyscreen

      29 January, 2021 - 11:50 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#610722">In reply to CalvusVir:</a></em></blockquote><p>just edge</p>

    • Stokkolm

      29 January, 2021 - 2:39 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#610722">In reply to CalvusVir:</a></em></blockquote><p>Microsoft does contribute to the Chromium open source project, so some (but not all) of their work makes it's way over there.</p>

  • j5

    Premium Member
    29 January, 2021 - 10:51 am

    <p>Can anyone explain how or why the move to Chromium has brought all these additions, and regularly, to Edge versus its previous version? I mean it takes coding to build these features in both versions right, I know that's might be an oversimplification, but yeah why? Is it easier to code, build, or test with Chromium versus EdgeHTML? I remember a lot of sites, especially my kid's education websites wouldn't work well with old Edge. But can't you just sit down and get to work coding features to work correctly, test and tweak, etc? I'm not a programmer obviously lol. </p><p>I'm just curious what was the problem there.</p><p>Thanks!</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      29 January, 2021 - 10:52 am

      Legacy Edge was only updated when Microsoft released a new version of Windows, so twice per year. New Edge is updated every 6 weeks.

      • j5

        Premium Member
        29 January, 2021 - 10:56 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#610731">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>So was the issue more of a "this is how we do things" with Legacy Edge rather than the ability to bring new features and compatibility? </p>

        • Paul Thurrott

          Premium Member
          29 January, 2021 - 11:26 am

          I suspect that’s mostly the case. But as an integrated Windows feature, I bet there were other constraints too. And that this is part of the reason for the Project Reunion work to separate out Windows components (including the Edge web renderer) from being tied to specific versions of Windows. This was a huge problem, and not just for Edge.

          • j5

            Premium Member
            29 January, 2021 - 12:05 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#610752">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>Ah OK, that makes sense why it would be tied to the Windows release schedule. Stuck ina slow car watching faster cars drive by you. </p><p><br></p><p>I know this is super nerdy! But do you know where I could read more about this? Are there any good articles or even books explaining this? Was it old school Windows 98 thinking, etc? Have you written some in-depth articles about this, with who was in charge of specific areas at the time. I know it's ancient history but I do find this kind of tech history interesting.</p>

  • chrisg101

    Premium Member
    29 January, 2021 - 4:59 pm

    <p style="–editable-content-color:rgb(209, 203, 199); –original-color:rgb(0, 0, 0); –original-background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);">There must be a typo because the What's New site says Vertical Tabs are in v88 (rolling out) and they clearly aren't and presume it won't be until v89?</p>

    • mixedfarmer75

      Premium Member
      29 January, 2021 - 7:30 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#610865">In reply to ChrisG101:</a></em></blockquote><p>Can get them in the Canaray and Dev builds.</p>

      • chrisg101

        Premium Member
        31 January, 2021 - 3:03 pm

        <blockquote style=""><a href="#610912" style=""><em style="">In reply to MixedFarmer75:</em></a></blockquote><p style="">Correct – but Dev and Canary are on versions 89 and 90 respectivel</p>

  • ikjadoon

    29 January, 2021 - 9:02 pm

    <p>This is excellent to see; much more thorough than I expected and way more user-friendly and transparent than Chrome's "expected" new features.</p><p><br></p><p>I guess the only issue I can even nitpick is how the list is sorted: I don't really get it.</p>

  • jolla

    03 February, 2021 - 9:20 pm

    <p>Credge is my default, and I hardly notice that I'm using a Microsoft product, it just works. Hope they keep it up</p>

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