14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Edge is Redmond’s new browser for Windows 10, and as we reported to you earlier today, the company is making serious efforts to turn this new app into a more secure solution for all devices it’s running on, including phones, PCs, and tablets.
While many of the security enhancement have already been detailed today, Microsoft has also revealed in a separate blog post that it’s giving up on ActiveX, the technology that was often used by cybercriminals to hack computers using Internet Explorer to access malicious websites.
ActiveX debuted in 1996 and allowed developers to integrate additional technologies in their websites when viewed with Internet Explorer, with all controls being downloaded and installed by the browser itself. Needless to say, this made it easier for attackers to compromise a vulnerable system, but Microsoft says that won’t be the case anymore in Edge.
“The need for ActiveX controls has been significantly reduced by HTML5-era capabilities, which also produces interoperable code across browsers,” the company explains.
Built-in support to replace the need for ActiveX
Adobe was one of the companies that actually used ActiveX to offer PDF support in Internet Explorer, but future versions of Edge will replace the need for dedicated controls by adding built-in features specifically developed with this goal in mind.
“Microsoft Edge will support native PDF rendering and Adobe Flash as built-in features rather than external add-ons. We recently demonstrated our early work on a modern, HTML/JavaScript-based extension model to provide extensibility beyond what is available with HTML5. We will enable this new model after our initial release of Microsoft Edge this summer and we look forward to sharing more details soon,” Microsoft confirms.
Browser Helper Objects (BHO), which debuted in 1997 and have been used for the majority of toolbars for Internet Explorer, will also be discontinued, again with the purpose of enhancing the overall security that users get when browsing the web.
Microsoft Edge will be offered alongside Internet Explorer in Windows 10 but will become the default browser in the operating system, while IE will be there only to address any compatibility issues that might arise.