Microsoft bringing a new color picker to Edge

Jul 18, 2019 12:00 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is working on overhauling Microsoft Edge not only by moving it to the Chromium engine, but also by adding new features and updating the existing ones.

Living proof is the color picker that is currently available in the browser.

As you probably noticed, especially if you’re a developer who needs a color picker every once in a while, the current version implemented in Microsoft Edge looks just like the one in Windows 95.

It’s old, outdated, and doesn’t align with Microsoft’s modern push by any means, so according to Redmond’s new strategy, it just had to be redesigned.

This is exactly what the company has been working on lately, so the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge recently received a new color picker that testers can give a try right now.

This feature is part of the Canary version of Microsoft Edge, but it should be promoted to the Dev build very soon. Of course, it’ll likely be part of the stable build as well.

This is the outdated color picker in Windows 10
This is the outdated color picker in Windows 10

The first thing you need to do is update Microsoft Edge Canary to the latest build to make sure the new flag is available. My version is 77.0.221.0, so if you’re running this build or newer, you should be just fine.

Then, fire up the browser and in the address bar type the following code:


edge://flags
Using the search box at the top, look for the following flag:
Web Platform Fluent Controls
The shortcut, if you want to do everything faster, is the one below:
edge://flags/#edge-controls
The Web Platform Fluent Controls flags is disabled right now, so click the drop-down menu next to it and toggle it to Enabled. Next, you need to reboot your browser to save the settings.

If you want to test the color picker, you can do so at Mozilla here.

And this is the modern color picker that Microsoft is working on
And this is the modern color picker that Microsoft is working on

In addition to revamping the color picker in Microsoft Edge, the Redmond-based software giant also wants this experience to expand to other Chromium browsers too, as per WL. Microsoft has already submitted a commit to detail its work in this regard.

“This change is the first of several to introduce (behind the form controls refresh flag) a new popup-based color picker to power the color control.

This is the top-level custom element for the color picker implementation. The color picker is compromised of three main parts: a visual color picker to allow visual selection of colors, a manual color picker to allow numeric selection of colors, and submission controls to save/discard new color selections.”

Microsoft Edge is currently in preview stage, so there’s a lot of work to do before the browser is promoted to a more stable channel.

Early builds of the browser are currently available on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and macOS. A Linux version hasn’t been ruled out, but on the other hand, it hasn’t been confirmed either, albeit it would make sense for Microsoft to release one given the new browser is based on Chromium.

The new color picker should thus show up in the Dev version as soon as the next release, while the other browsers could get it once the work on the feature is finalized. There is no ETA when this is likely to happen, but as far as Edge is concerned, the stable build should replace the original browser in Windows 10 in the spring of 2020.

Rumor has it that the Chromium-based Edge would become the new default in Windows 10 beginning with the 20H1 update, but this is obviously something that remains to be seen given everything is still a work in progress.

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Microsoft Edge browser on Windows 10
This is the outdated color picker in Windows 10And this is the modern color picker that Microsoft is working on
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