Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser could close the extension gap.
Microsoft didn’t reveal many details about Edge’s transition to Chromium, announced last week, but company officials have now confirmed it’s aiming for Edge to support Chrome extensions.
A dearth of extensions for Microsoft Edge has become one of the many obstacles to Windows 10 users adopting Microsoft’s modern answer to Internet Explorer.
But following Microsoft’s announcement that Edge will move to Chromium, the company has revealed it may address the add-on gap by supporting the much larger population of existing Chrome extensions.
“It’s our intention to support existing Chrome extensions,” Kyle Pflug, a Microsoft Edge project manager, wrote on Reddit in response to users and developers seeking answers about the switch.
Pflug didn’t clarify how Microsoft envisages extensions being installed. As Ed Bott noted, Microsoft is believed to be aiming to allow all existing Chrome extensions to work unmodified on the new Edge browser, but developers will still need to package the extensions for the Microsoft Store.
Pflug also responded to Windows application developers looking for answers about what the switch would mean for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) if Microsoft ditched the EdgeHTML browser engine.
Both app categories depend on EdgeHTML and may need overhauling if Microsoft completely abandoned them.
