Microsoft Edge To Support Chrome Extensions, The Company Announced

Microsoft has not provided much detail on Edge’s transition to Chromium, announced last week, but the company has now confirmed that it intends to add support for Chrome extensions in Microsoft Edge browser.

The shortage of extensions for Microsoft Edge has become one of the many obstacles in the adoption of Edge Internet browser by Windows 10 users. Microsoft Edge was designed as a modern replacement forĀ Internet Explorer and is the default browser in Windows 10. However, it failed before Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and even Opera.

Microsoft Edge To Support Chrome Extensions, The Company Announced

But following Microsoft’s announcement of the transition from Edge to Chromium, the publisher revealed that it could close the gap by supporting Chrome extensions in its Microsoft Edge browser. “We intend to support existing Chrome extensions,” wrote Kyle Pflug, Microsoft Edge project manager, on Reddit in response to users and developers looking for answers about this change.

Pflug did not specify how Microsoft plans to support the extensions, but, as Ed Bott noted, Microsoft would aim to allow all existing Chrome extensions to work without modification on the new Edge browser. However, developers will still need to pack the extensions for the Microsoft Store.

Microsoft Would Continue Support For EdgeHTML-based PWA and UWP

Pflug also answered Windows application developers looking for answers on what the change would mean for UWP (Universal Windows Platform) and PWA (Progressive Web Apps) applications if Microsoft abandoned the EdgeHTML navigation engine. Both application categories depend on EdgeHTML and may require revision if Microsoft ceases them completely.

Pflug states that existing UWP and PWA applications in the Microsoft Store will continue to use EdgeHTML and Microsoft’s Chakra JavaScript engine “without interruption.” Microsoft does not plan to add an interpretation layer to allow existing applications to run on the new rendering engine.

However, Microsoft plans to “offer a new WebView that applications can choose to use on the new rendering engine,” says the Redmond firm’s spokesperson. Microsoft also plans to allow PWAs to be installed on Edge from the Web, rather than limiting installations to the Microsoft Store as is currently the case for PWAs.

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About the Author: Anna Galvez

1 Comment

  1. Sadly you forgot to mention that one MUST NOT resize a vdisk which has existing snapshots/redos or one will mess up his whole VM (happened to me). So you have to commit all your snapshots (i.e. delete them in the snapshot manager) before you resize your vdisk. Also make a backup of the whole VM before resizing. I hope this helps someone sometime.

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