Microsoft pushed out a rather significant update to Windows 10 last week to users. The update, commonly referred to as the Fall update to Windows 10 brought a handful of new features as well as a bucket-load of performance and security fixes to the operating system.
Among some of the optimizations found in last week’s update, improvements to the Edge browser should be noticed by many users. The Fall update for Windows 10 brought syncing, wireless casting, tab management and web note improvements for Windows 10 users utilizing Microsoft’s latest web browser. However, improvements to the Edges browser go much deeper than consumer-facing features. The Fall update for Windows 10 also brought EdgeHTML 13 as the first platform update for Microsoft Edge.
According to Microsoft, “These updates bring Microsoft Edge to a score of 458 on HTML5Test – an improvement of 56 points in just a few months, and 117 points over Internet Explorer 11.”
Other highlighted features for the addition to the platform include:
CSS
- CSS Mutability Pseudo-classes ◦:read-write
- ◦: read-only
- CSS Range Pseudo-classes ◦:in-range
- ◦:out-of-range
- CSS initial keyword
- CSS unset keyword
File APIs
- a[download] attribute
User Input
- input type=text selectionDirection
- input type=time
- input type=datetime-local
- <meter> element
- oninvalid event handler for the element document and window
- Pointer Lock (Mouse Lock)
Graphics
- Canvas Ellipse
- Canvas blending modes
- Extended srcset and sizes (see the associated blog post and demo)
- <picture> element (see the associated blog post and demo)
- SVG external content
Communication
- Object RTC (see the associated blog post and demos)
Tools
- Restored support for docking the F12 Developer Tools
Web Components
- <template> element (see our blog post on this and other Web Components Technologies)
Some other under the hood improvements to the Edge browser also include an update to feature support in Chakra and the JavaScript engine. The new update of Edge also marks the first time the company will have the same EdgeHTML version running on all Windows 10 devices. Be it on the Xbox One, Windows 10 Mobile or a PC, EdgeHTML will enable adaptive image rendering, in-browser gaming with WebGl, and consistent UI across devices.
While the Edge browser is still a Spartan experience for some Windows users, it seems as though the Edge team is working rather quickly to fill out the feature set for Edge.
