14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s Build developer conference kicked off today with some pretty exciting news in terms of browsers, as the Redmond-based software giant promised users the new Edge would be the best choice on Windows 10, period.
And it’s all because the company is working around the clock on polishing Edge, and the upcoming version 91 will introduce two important new features specifically supposed to help improve the performance.
The first of them is startup boost, which will allow some core processes to run in the background, therefore allowing the browser to load much faster.
And the second is called sleeping tabs, a feature that’s been around for a while in testing builds and which Microsoft is now bringing to everybody with the update to version 91.
A cross-platform effort
Sleeping tabs is a clever concept that allows the browser to automatically suspend tabs that haven’t been used in a while, therefore making sure they don’t eat up any resources.
“Early internal testing of devices with sleeping tabs has shown a median memory usage reduction of 26% for Microsoft Edge. Our internal testing has also shown that a normal background tab uses 29% more CPU for Microsoft Edge than a sleeping tab. These resource savings should result in excellent battery savings. Although individual device performance varies depending on configuration and usage, we expect the decrease in resource and battery usage to create a better browsing experience for users,” Microsoft originally said when announcing sleeping tabs for testers.
Microsoft Edge is a continuously evolving browser, and the migration to the Chromium engine allowed the Redmond-based software giant to expand it beyond the world of Windows 10 too.
At this point, Edge is available not only on older Windows, such as Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, but also on Linux and macOS, with Microsoft also offering mobile versions on both iPhone and Android.