COMPLEX TECH: The developer builds of Microsoft Edge built on Chromium are getting interesting

Microsoft Edge on Chromium

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted any tech-related items. I was just using a newer browser I’ve been testing out and thought some of you might be interested in it. Microsoft is rebuilding their Edge browser with the open-sourced chromium browser engine. Google’s Chrome uses the same rendering engine. But I distrust Google (mightily) and have decided to move away from as many of Google’s services as possible (for example, I have stopped using gmail as a backup archive and email aggregator for my personal emails, switching to outlook.com instead). So that leaves the current Edge version in Windows 10 (okay), or Firefox (better with privacy but it continues to have erratic bugs), or all the other fringe browsers out there.

So, instead, I’m looking at the developer versions of Edge on chromium. You can download versions here. The beta channel will be the most stable, but it isn’t active yet. That leaves the weekly update developer channel or the “canary” version that gets daily builds. I decided that the canary channel was too wild west even for me, so I’m running the weekly update version. Given that it isn’t even the beta channel version, it’s surprisingly stable. Features are being added almost every week, in addition to the squashing of bugs. Sites render well. I may move to it as my full-time browser when it comes out of its developer/beta state.

Edge on chromium is far enough along, that it is now ready for enterprise evaluation, as mentioned by Windows Central.

Friends don’t let friends do Google.