Extensions will be hosted in the Windows Store

Aug 2, 2015 08:52 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft launched Windows 10 with a completely new browser, but just as announced earlier this year, it lacks one of the most eagerly awaited features - support for extensions.

The company has already confirmed that Edge will receive extension support sometime in the near future, and in a statement for The Verge, Edge program manager Drew DeBruyne has provided a few more details on how exactly this new feature will be integrated into the browser.

Basically, as Microsoft said when it first presented Project Spartan, the browser is designed to work with Google Chrome extensions, as long as their developers apply a number of small tweaks to port them to the new browser.

This obviously raises a number of challenges, as it could be difficult to convince developers to port extensions to Microsoft Edge, so the Redmond-based tech giant is now working on something a little bit different.

DeBruyne has revealed that Microsoft wants to make Chrome extensions work in Edge with zero modifications, which would clearly make its new browser a bit more appealing to both developers and users.

“The intention is that there’s not much work to do, or zero work to do,” DeBruyne was quoted as saying. “We’re doing a lot of work to essentially support the same APIs that Chrome does.”

Extensions hosted in the store

With Windows 10, Microsoft is making everything available in the store, including apps, games, music, and TV content. What's more, the same store is available across all devices running Windows 10, so you can find the same content on PCs, tablets, laptops, and smartphones.

So it's only natural to expect extensions to be available in the store too, and DeBruyne has confirmed this. This means that, when extension support is rolled out later this year, you only need to fire up the store, pick an extension you want and hit the install button.

As far as the release date of this new feature, it's believed that extension support would arrive with the first major update for Windows 10 (not SR1), which could see daylight in October.

Google Chrome web store for extensions and themes
Google Chrome web store for extensions and themes

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Microsoft Edge, the new Windows browser
Google Chrome web store for extensions and themes
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