Microsoft Edge finally gets support for extensions

Apr 30, 2015 05:33 GMT  ·  By

One of the biggest setbacks of Internet Explorer was its limited functionality, and despite the availability of plug-ins, Microsoft’s browser was years behind rivals such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, which both had stores full of extensions ready to add new features developed by third parties.

With Windows 10, Microsoft is rethinking this strategy, so extension support will finally be available in the new browser coming with the operating system.

Baptized Microsoft Edge and codenamed Project Spartan, the new browser will work with both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox extensions, but with a small catch: developers will have to slightly adjust the code of their extensions to make them run on Edge.

Basically, with this change, Microsoft makes it possible for every extension developer out there to simply create an extension that works on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, everything with very small tweaks. Microsoft hasn’t detailed the tweaks that devs need to make, but Joe Belfiore explained that it’s all possible with little effort.

Public demo of Chrome extension

During the BUILD event on Wednesday, Belfiore demoed a reddit Google Chrome extension developed with HTML and JavaScript that was running on Microsoft Edge. Microsoft’s VP of Operating System explained that only minor tweaks were needed to make this work, but he pointed out that Edge should be able to run any extension that is available right now in the two stores.

While there’s no doubt that this is exciting news for Microsoft users across the world, there still are a number of questions to be answered here.

Does Microsoft plan to launch its very own store for extensions tweaked to run in Edge? The answer to this question is expected to be provided in the coming months before the public launch of Windows 10, which, according to company executives, should take place during the summer.