Microsoft Edge Being Rebuilt Using Chromium

[Corrine]

Key aspects from Microsoft Edge: Making the web better through more open source collaboration - Windows Experience BlogWindows Experience Blog:

We will move to a Chromium-compatible web platform for Microsoft Edge on the desktop. Our intent is to align the Microsoft Edge web platform simultaneously (a) with web standards and (b) with other Chromium-based browsers. This will deliver improved compatibility for everyone and create a simpler test-matrix for web developers.
Microsoft Edge will now be delivered and updated for all supported versions of Windows and on a more frequent cadence. We also expect this work to enable us to bring Microsoft Edge to other platforms like macOS.

Improving the web-platform experience for both end users and developers requires that the web platform and the browser be consistently available to as many devices as possible. To accomplish this, we will evolve the browser code more broadly, so that our distribution model offers an updated Microsoft Edge experience + platform across all supported versions of Windows, while still maintaining the benefits of the browser’s close integration with Windows.
We will contribute web platform enhancements to make Chromium-based browsers better on Windows devices. Our philosophy of greater participation in Chromium open source will embrace contribution of beneficial new tech, consistent with some of the work we described above. We recognize that making the web better on Windows is good for our customers, partners and our business – and we intend to actively contribute to that end.

Also see Microsoft is Rebuilding Edge Browser using Chromium for Windows & macOS.

 

[Digerati]

Kinda wish they just fixed IE and rebranded it as Edge. It seems just about all the major browsers will be based on either FF or Chromium. I would rather we have more choices.

Oh well.

 

[Corrine]

Pale Moon is no longer based on the FF engine. :smile9:

Additional information from Microsoft Edge Engineering: GitHub - MicrosoftEdge/MSEdge: Microsoft Edge

 

[Digerati]

Pale Moon is no longer based on the FF engine.

I understand what you are saying because both FF and PM have moved on since PM was forked off FF. But I would still consider them more like cousins than no relation at all.

 

[A Guy]

Pale Moon and FF are both Mozilla. I use Vivaldi, and while both it and Chrome are Chromium based, that's where the similarities end. Because it uses Presto, the Chrome extensions work, if you are an extension person. So it's possible that this new Edge will not be a Chrome clone as well. A Guy

 

[Digerati]

Pale Moon and FF are both Mozilla.

Not really. As Corrine noted above, PM is no longer based on the FF engine. When it was forked from FF years ago, it went in a very different direction. PM's development is totally independent from FF while Vivaldi still uses the same Blink rendering engine as Chrome does. So while there are similarities between PM and FF, frankly, Vivaldi is much closer to being a Chrome clone than Pale Moon is a FF Clone.

So it's possible that this new Edge will not be a Chrome clone as well.

It surely won't be a "clone" by the time it is pushed out to users.

Regardless, since all browsers must do the same tasks (display the exact same web pages as the author intended, supporting the exact same Internet protocols running under the same operating systems on the same hardware), all browsers are really more similar than different - at least from my non-programmer perspective.