14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Edge has been reinvented for the modern world, so it’s now based on the Chromium engine, the same one that’s powering Google Chrome and a bunch of other browsers out there.
At the same time, Edge has become cross-platform, which means it’s no longer exclusive to Windows 10 and it’s also available on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and macOS. A Linux version is also in the works, and a preview build is expected this month.
Needless to say, users on all these platforms can download the new Microsoft Edge manually, though Microsoft has also pushed it via Windows Update on Windows systems. But on the other hand, just like any other browser, anyone can simply head over to the official page and download the installers for whatever operating system they are running.
But as it turns out, downloading Microsoft Edge with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox (and possibly other browsers too) has become quite a challenge lately, as Microsoft has changed the download page in order to request users to launch the legacy version of the browser.
In other words, if you load the Microsoft Edge download page, you need to be using Microsoft Edge Legacy to be able to get the installer. Otherwise, you won’t be served the download link in Google Chrome or Firefox.
Spotted by TechDows, the change happened at some point recently, and Microsoft hasn’t said a single thing about it. Once you load the download page in Chrome or Firefox, you can now see a Try Now button right in the middle of the screen that prompts you to launch the Legacy version of Edge.
The link on this button uses the microsoft-edge parameter, which on Windows 10 devices launches the “Open with” screen to let users launch the legacy version of the browser. On the other hand, if you manually browse your files to point the prompt to Chrome or Firefox, the link still isn’t loaded, so you’re stuck with this message on the screen.
This behavior, however, doesn’t seem to happen in all browsers. For example, everything appears to be working correctly in Opera on my device, as the download page shows a “download” button which when clicked offers the official installer for Windows 10.
The change is surprising, to say the least, though there’s a good chance it happened by mistake and would be corrected rather sooner than later. Microsoft itself hasn’t said a single thing about it, so don’t be too surprised if everything returns to normal in the coming days, especially after more people find out about this broken download page.
On the other hand, Microsoft has previously been quite aggressive in its attempt to convince users to try out Microsoft Edge on their devices, so it wouldn’t make any sense for the company to restrict the download page to the legacy version of the browser. In the meantime, if you want to download the latest version of Microsoft Edge for Windows 10, you can just head over to the download link on Softpedia, where you get the installer much easier. And of course, you can always switch to the legacy version of Edge for the whole thing, though it goes without saying that doing this isn’t necessarily the most convenient thing to do since the app is already abandoned.
The adoption of Microsoft Edge keeps growing, so Microsoft should correct this blunder as soon as possible. We have reached out to the company for more information and will update the article if we hear back.