News about the Microsoft Edge browser’s addition of extension support has captured several headlines in the past week. Rounding out the week, an engineer on the Microsoft Edge team revealed that alongside the release of last night’s Windows 10 Insider Preview build that brought early support for Edge extensions, the team is also working on a tool that will port existing Chrome extensions to the browser.
So, in addition to the three current extensions Microsoft has released for Edge and the ones it promises will arrive later this year for the browser, users can also expect to see existing Chrome extensions get ported over as well.
Lots of questions on this: yes we're working on a porting tool to run Chrome extensions in Edge. Not yet finished and not all APIs supported
— Jacob Rossi (@jacobrossi) March 18, 2016
Interestingly enough, evidence of Chrome extension compatibility with Microsoft’s Edge browser had recently surfaced, where a developer took the time to show how relatively easy it would be to make Edge extension code and replicate a working extension in Chrome. Presumably, the reverse should be equally feasible.
The Edge team has an uphill climb to not only retain its current user base but convert Firefox, Opera, and Chrome users as more people adopt Windows 10 and choose their default browsers. Adding extensions, regardless of the commonality of usage, goes a long way when filling out the browser’s feature set.
